Question about Players

[Lizard Wizard]

So.. how do you report players for blatant hate speech? There doesn't seem to be an option in game.

Simply muting the players does not do enough. I feel the rampant racism, sexism, and overall bigotry is attributing to the low player-base.

Yes, the devs should focus on developing the game out of Early Access, but it doesn't seem like a huge task to implement some simple things like censoring certain words. The current environment is extremely toxic.

 

[Younes]

Right now you PM Callum about it, a report function should be there next patch

 

[FearSpear]

Simply muting the players does not do enough. I feel the rampant racism, sexism, and overall bigotry is attributing to the low player-base.

The unsatisfying mechanics are to blame for the low-player base.

 

[EbdanianAdmiral]

Having a guy named Hitler telling me hes hacked my debit card and is using it to send 38 boxes of jiffy lube motor oil to my mother because she is a minority doesnt help.

Report function will be nice addition

 

[Lizard Wizard]

The unsatisfying mechanics are to blame for the low-player base.

I didn't say to what degree, and compared to what. I don't see how you could deny it having an effect though.

 

[FearSpear]

I don't see how you could deny it having an effect though.

I completely deny it having an effect. If you are playing a niche early access game such as this (in a fairly obscure genre), you know your way around a mouse and keyboard. Any gamer that has spent any amount of time playing North American multiplayer games has learned to ignore that dude named "Hitler" talking about his collection of "My Little Pony" dolls.

 

[Lizard Wizard]

I completely deny it having an effect. If you are playing a niche early access game such as this (in a fairly obscure genre), you know your way around a mouse and keyboard. Any gamer that has spent any amount of time playing North American multiplayer games has learned to ignore that dude named "Hitler" talking about his collection of "My Little Pony" dolls.

I don't accept your reasoning. Hate speech should result in a ban. We need a report system (and we should have one soon.) I like mount and blade and it should be accessible to any person without the discomfort of troubling players in the chat room. Case and point.

 

[FearSpear]

I don't accept your reasoning. Hate speech should result in a ban. We need a report system (and we should have one soon.) I like mount and blade and it should be accessible to any person without the discomfort of troubling players in the chat room.

Your reasoning is flawed for a variety of reasons you have probably not considered.

1. A report system implemented would only affect Taleworld's official servers. This is an issue because people will nearly entirely stop using the queue system once custom servers are implemented.

2. Hate speech is entirely objective, and this becomes an issue when most of the devs and the community managers are not from North America (like you seem to be). What is hate speech in Turkey is not hate speech in Europe and what is hate speech in Europe is not hate speech in North America. We have already had an issue in the community with this, as some Taiwanese players playing on Asian servers criticized the Chinese government and were banned by rogue moderators from China for hate speech (under the guise of cheating). Although this situation was resolved and the individuals were unbanned, it demonstrates the different standards that different regions will have.

3. Who will be filtering through these reports? Will Taleworlds dedicate paid staff to moderating this? Probably not, instead if such a system is implemented I predict they will call in unpaid interns under a system they will probably make a forum post about, with some smooth words about "community involvement". After this occurs, you will have untrained, unsupervised individuals from the community handing out bans for a game that individuals have paid for.

4. I still do not see why people are forced to participate with a chat and be "uncomfortable" when the mute button exists. Just hit the mute button. It's there... and I believe it permanently mutes individuals you click the button on until you unclick it. Considering the 100 active people in the entirety of North America, it seems fairly easy to just click click click and the issue is resolved.

 

[Thomasmb]

Your reasoning is flawed for a variety of reasons you have probably not considered.

1. A report system implemented would only affect Taleworld's official servers. This is an issue because people will nearly entirely stop using the queue system once custom servers are implemented.

2. Hate speech is entirely objective, and this becomes an issue when most of the devs and the community managers are not from North America (like you seem to be). What is hate speech in Turkey is not hate speech in Europe and what is hate speech in Europe is not hate speech in North America. We have already had an issue in the community with this, as some Taiwanese players playing on Asian servers criticized the Chinese government and were banned by rogue moderators from China for hate speech (under the guise of cheating). Although this situation was resolved and the individuals were unbanned, it demonstrates the different standards that different regions will have.

3. Who will be filtering through these reports? Will Taleworlds dedicate paid staff to moderating this? Probably not, instead if such a system is implemented I predict they will call in unpaid interns under a system they will probably make a forum post about, with some smooth words about "community involvement". After this occurs, you will have untrained, unsupervised individuals from the community handing out bans for a game that individuals have paid for.

4. I still do not see why people are forced to participate with a chat and be "uncomfortable" when the mute button exists. Just hit the mute button. It's there... and I believe it permanently mutes individuals you click the button on until you unclick it. Considering the 100 active people in the entirety of North America, it seems fairly easy to just click click click and the issue is resolved.

this.

 

[Younes]

Your reasoning is flawed for a variety of reasons you have probably not considered.

1. A report system implemented would only affect Taleworld's official servers. This is an issue because people will nearly entirely stop using the queue system once custom servers are implemented.

2. Hate speech is entirely objective, and this becomes an issue when most of the devs and the community managers are not from North America (like you seem to be). What is hate speech in Turkey is not hate speech in Europe and what is hate speech in Europe is not hate speech in North America. We have already had an issue in the community with this, as some Taiwanese players playing on Asian servers criticized the Chinese government and were banned by rogue moderators from China for hate speech (under the guise of cheating). Although this situation was resolved and the individuals were unbanned, it demonstrates the different standards that different regions will have.

3. Who will be filtering through these reports? Will Taleworlds dedicate paid staff to moderating this? Probably not, instead if such a system is implemented I predict they will call in unpaid interns under a system they will probably make a forum post about, with some smooth words about "community involvement". After this occurs, you will have untrained, unsupervised individuals from the community handing out bans for a game that individuals have paid for.

4. I still do not see why people are forced to participate with a chat and be "uncomfortable" when the mute button exists. Just hit the mute button. It's there... and I believe it permanently mutes individuals you click the button on until you unclick it. Considering the 100 active people in the entirety of North America, it seems fairly easy to just click click click and the issue is resolved.

Reporting systems have worked fine on countless number of games. If you can't distinguish the difference between hate speech and regular speech, it's your problem.

Taleworlds will put the official server rules and the limits of the speech. They are in the end a privately owned company and can decide what they want on their platform.

Also you're comparing two distinctive different things when comparing China. China is known for being into censorship a lot. There is a reason why the chinese community was almost unheard of in warband. They had their own servers. The situation with China was an exception due to the fact Taleworlds didn't have servers for China yet, and still don't as far as i know.

 

[MArdA TaleWorlds]

Reporting system is in the beta build and will be in the live build with the next patch hopefully.

1. A report system implemented would only affect Taleworld's official servers. This is an issue because people will nearly entirely stop using the queue system once custom servers are implemented.

You will be able to report every player you can see in the game. And, yes, we will be checking the reports daily. Humans, not bots.

Thanks

 

[Lizard Wizard]

Your reasoning is flawed for a variety of reasons you have probably not considered.

1. A report system implemented would only affect Taleworld's official servers. This is an issue because people will nearly entirely stop using the queue system once custom servers are implemented.

2. Hate speech is entirely objective, and this becomes an issue when most of the devs and the community managers are not from North America (like you seem to be). What is hate speech in Turkey is not hate speech in Europe and what is hate speech in Europe is not hate speech in North America. We have already had an issue in the community with this, as some Taiwanese players playing on Asian servers criticized the Chinese government and were banned by rogue moderators from China for hate speech (under the guise of cheating). Although this situation was resolved and the individuals were unbanned, it demonstrates the different standards that different regions will have.

3. Who will be filtering through these reports? Will Taleworlds dedicate paid staff to moderating this? Probably not, instead if such a system is implemented I predict they will call in unpaid interns under a system they will probably make a forum post about, with some smooth words about "community involvement". After this occurs, you will have untrained, unsupervised individuals from the community handing out bans for a game that individuals have paid for.

4. I still do not see why people are forced to participate with a chat and be "uncomfortable" when the mute button exists. Just hit the mute button. It's there... and I believe it permanently mutes individuals you click the button on until you unclick it. Considering the 100 active people in the entirety of North America, it seems fairly easy to just click click click and the issue is resolved.

I can understand 2 and 3, and I understand the complexity of how nations are different.

In 1. are you saying that we shouldn’t ban hate speech against race, gender, orientation because it would deter the player base from playing official server? Seems to be either pretty bad reasoning or you are saying the playerbase is mostly comprised of bigots who can’t refrain from using slurs.

 

[FearSpear]

Reporting systems have worked fine on countless number of games. If you can't distinguish the difference between hate speech and regular speech, it's your problem.

Taleworlds will put the official server rules and the limits of the speech. They are in the end a privately owned company and can decide what they want on their platform.

Also you're comparing two distinctive different things when comparing China. China is known for being into censorship a lot

1. Reporting systems have not worked fine on countless numbers of games, as evidenced the massive controversies across almost every multiplayer genre from RTS to FPS in esports communities.

2. If people could distinguish the difference between hate speech and regular speech to any type of regular consensus we probably would have had world peace by now. This is an incredibly silly and indefensible argument.

3/4. Taleworlds may make official server rules according to Turkish standards, and if you think censorship is exclusive to China and the Asian region as a whole you are in for a very rude awakening. Also, once Taleworlds begins to censor any type of speech they become a "publisher" for any speech on their game instead of a "platform". When one becomes a "publisher" as opposed to a "platform" they are responsible for any speech on their platform according to US law. When this occurs Taleworlds will probably be responsible for ALL SPEECH including on the custom servers they allow to be hosted (probably, this becomes a pretty big legal grey area)... If you cannot see the repercussions that would occur from this type of occurrence then I do not know how to explain it in a way you can understand, to put it shortly, people make their own rules on custom servers, as they can range in anything from some form of angsty teenager medieval roleplay from a type of roast-like comedy club. If Taleworlds makes the decision to ban people from custom servers by allowing them to be reported and building this into the game, they WILL be killing their entire NA custom server community, probably also snuffing out the possibility for any mods similar to PW until this foolish policy would be changed.

Here is a solution: add a mute button where people can permanently choose not to participate in the speech of others.

 

[Younes]

1. Reporting systems have not worked fine on countless numbers of games, as evidenced the massive controversies across almost every multiplayer genre from RTS to FPS in esports communities.

2. If people could distinguish the difference between hate speech and regular speech to any type of regular consensus we probably would have had world peace by now. This is an incredibly silly and indefensible argument.

3/4. Taleworlds may make official server rules according to Turkish standards, and if you think censorship is exclusive to China and the Asian region as a whole you are in for a very rude awakening. Also, once Taleworlds begins to censor any type of speech they become a "publisher" for any speech on their game instead of a "platform". When one becomes a "publisher" as opposed to a "platform" they are responsible for any speech on their platform according to US law. When this occurs Taleworlds will probably be responsible for ALL SPEECH including on the custom servers they allow to be hosted (probably, this becomes a pretty big legal grey area)... If you cannot see the repercussions that would occur from this type of occurrence then I do not know how to explain it in a way you can understand, to put it shortly, people make their own rules on custom servers, as they can range in anything from some form of angsty teenager medieval roleplay from a type of roast-like comedy club. If Taleworlds makes the decision to ban people from custom servers by allowing them to be reported and building this into the game, they WILL be killing their entire NA custom server community, probably also snuffing out the possibility for any mods similar to PW until this foolish policy would be changed.

Here is a solution: add a mute button where people can permanently choose not to participate in the speech of others.

Reporting systems have worked fine to deal with the biggest offenders of such rules. I'm not saying it will stop the behavior as a whole but it does give the initiative for people to stop engaging in such behavior.

You are pretending as if the speech used in most of the cases involves some hyper-complicated situations. We are talking about your everyday child who wants to act edgy and has to be learnt that saying things have consequences.

I am opposed to Taleworlds having a say in custom servers, let's make that clear for now. I am speaking about official servers only.

A mute button is already in place.

EDIT: Could you redirect which law about the US you're talking about?

 

[PijeIBije]

I'll throw a random vote against overdone language filtering. After all it's 2020 and by now everyone knows easily offended people are never satisfied with what they get and this request can lead to others in similar fashion. Like, ever noticed how when you make black character he has a regular angry white boy voice? After we make game forbid racist chat messages let's make the game itself not racist by whining how we want black chars to sound like hood gangstas.

 

[FearSpear]

EDIT: Could you redirect which law about the US you're talking about?

47 U.S. Code § 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material

www.law.cornell.edu

(Explanation of the general function of the code for non-lawyers: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/immunity-online-publishers-under-communications-decency-act)
If you want a more mainstream and accessible take you should google "Publisher vs Platform" should direct to a great number of articles.

A platform is something where no speech is regulated, and therefore the company in charge of the "platform" has US immunity from any content posted on their platform under 47 U.S.C. § 230
(AKA if someone ran a defamation campaign against an individual through the Taleworlds chat box, Taleworlds would not be legally responsible)

The main issue which is still a legal grey area is when a platform decides to censor speech (particularly political speech but it can be of any type since an argument can be made that almost all "offensive speech" is political speech) Then, if someone ran a defamation campaign against someone in the Taleworld's chat box (and Taleworlds was unable to stop it), then Taleworlds would be legally responsible for the defamation damages. So on a broader level, any type of illegal speech, or speech which retroactively became illegal, that is expressed through Bannerlord as a speech platform, would become the legal responsibility of Taleworlds if they decide to implement a report system which censors speech of any type.

 

[Younes]

47 U.S. Code § 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material

www.law.cornell.edu

(Explanation of the general function of the code for non-lawyers: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/immunity-online-publishers-under-communications-decency-act)
If you want a more mainstream and accessible take you should google "Publisher vs Platform" should direct to a great number of articles.

Could tou elaborate? From my understanding there still isn't anything broken.

(1)Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

 

[FearSpear]

Could tou elaborate? From my understanding there still isn't anything broken.

(1)Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

This code is still referring to a computer service which is still considered a "platform" as in it does not (overly?) moderate the speech (political?) on its service. When Taleworlds institutes guidelines for what is considered acceptable speech on their Bannerlord servers, they are in a manner of speaking "tailoring" or selecting which speech to display and this makes them lose their "platform" status and instead becomes a "publisher" (as they are selecting the speech presented on their service).

A lot of this is still up in contention as most mainstream tech companies (with billions of dollars and hundreds of lawyers so cases of this still in court) like to present themselves as "platforms" that only censor the "hate speech", but many argue that because a lot of the "hate speech" censored is political speech, they are in fact becoming "publishers" of what views they want to present on their service.

Edit: Nothing here can be construed as legal advice in any manner if any personal opinions can be thought to be gleaned from my posts they are not legal advice or counsel of any manner and only seek to describe the current shifting state of this law code and the debate taking place around it.

 

[Younes]

This code is still referring to a computer service which is still considered a "platform" as in it does not (overly?) moderate the speech (political?) on its service. When Taleworlds institutes guidelines for what is considered acceptable speech on their Bannerlord servers, they are in a manner of speaking "tailoring" or selecting which speech to display and this makes them lose their "platform" status and instead becomes a "publisher" (as they are selecting the speech presented on their service).

A lot of this is still up in contention as most mainstream tech companies (with billions of dollars and hundreds of lawyers so cases of this still in court) like to present themselves as "platforms" that only censor the "hate speech", but many argue that because a lot of the "hate speech" censored is political speech, they are in fact becoming "publishers" of what views they want to present on their service.

Isn't this kind of the same situation as Twitter, facebook or any other of the billion dollar companies? They are platforms but have been actively doing what you would consider publishers work.

 

[FearSpear]

Isn't this kind of the same situation as Twitter, facebook or any other of the billion dollar companies? They are platforms but have been actively doing what you would consider publishers work.

This is exactly the same situation and we have arrived at the crux of the point. While laws ebb and flow like the morning tide, if I were a betting man I would wager that these companies are going to lose "platform" immunity for their actions in the US as there is established law precedent for the idea of "companies being held liable for information presented by 3rd party actors" particularly in US copyright law. If YouTube hosts copyrighted material such as a full movie, and they do not swiftly take it down, YouTube as a company will be sued for damages, not the individual who posted it to his channel. Therefore, in my own opinion (which is not to be taken as official legal counsel or advice in any manner) the individuals who seek to hold these social media services as "publishers" and strip them of their "platform" immunities will be successful in their legal quest.

Therefore, it would seem wise to me if I was in the same position of Taleworlds, to offer users the option of self moderation

Spoiler

(mute button, avoid this user in future games option)

instead of taking it upon themselves to more actively moderate

Spoiler

(banning people with moderators through report function)

lest they be held accountable for all speech of their users in the future, opening up an undesirable can of legal trouble.