
Blizzard Courts Controversy with New 'Overwatch' Anti-Toxicity Measures - Jerry2
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2018/01/29/blizzard-courts-controversy-with-new-overwatch-anti-toxicity-measures/#333129823ad6
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sushid
It's stupid to claim that Blizzard is being a "thought-police" when they are
acting on recorded game footages where players are being abusive/toxic.

The article also derails a bit as the author chimes in with his personal
opinion. IMO they're approaching this the right way.

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onezerozeroone
The problem is that it could be a slippery slope with no transparency,
oversight, or recourse.

First, it's creepy that a company I paid money to for a _game_ is actively
scraping the internet trying to associate my Blizzard-Activision
account/identity with other online identities. What if they get it wrong?

Second, there's nothing preventing them from taking action based on subjective
aspects. What if the employee reviewing my "behavior" is racist and bans me
because they figure out I'm black? Or because I posted a political video they
didn't agree with and deemed "toxic"? What happens if a Blizzard employee
decides to dox someone as a form of punishment?

There's no way they have enough properly trained _and_ ethical support people
to have any real checks and balances to prevent abuse.

Sure, initially I would hope (for their sake) that they're only considering
in-game or game-related posts/content, but once these tools exist it's only a
matter of time before they are abused, or they see how far they can push
things until there's a financial backlash.

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nikdaheratik
> The problem is that it could be a slippery slope with no transparency,
> oversight, or recourse.

There's actually a very simple recourse: don't pay them any more money or play
the game. In this case, Blizzard is definitely more afraid of making their
customers unhappy and turning off their funding, then the other way around.

Which is part of the reason why they have been very slow to act on some of
this abusive behavior to begin with: players blame other players for abusive
behavior, but they blame the company when they get banned.

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SheepSlapper
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. If bans start coming in for
activity _outside_ the game, it'll be a complete shit show (and rightly so),
but if the info they collect is just another data point to strengthen/weaken
the case of reports it might improve the system as a whole... time will tell I
suppose.

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abritinthebay
Yeah, at this point it's a bunch of hand-wringing and crying over what they
_might_ do _maybe_ at some _hypothetical_ point in the future.

So dumb.

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abritinthebay
Why am I not surprised they end up quoting tweets by well known GamerGate
supporters?

