They're coming after in-game chat. Microsoft is already participating in this inevitable crackdown, with the recent snitchware changes they made to Minecraft. Microsoft is tight with the US federal government.
I know some gamers wondered where Microsoft's firm insistence on chat reporting in Minecraft came from; the game became a runaway success without such a system and there were no major media scandals that seemed to prompt this change of attitude or priorities. I think this is the answer. There is a general push in the government and big tech corps (the line grows fuzzier by the year, a hallmark of fascism...) to consolidate and centralize control of digital discourse so it can be monitored and moderated by them.
> I know some gamers wondered where Microsoft's firm insistence on chat reporting in Minecraft came from; the game became a runaway success without such a system and there were no major media scandals that seemed to prompt this change of attitude or priorities
This comments suggests a profound ignorance of the realities online services. I've seen a lot of doubt that the Minecraft chat monitoring system is actually catching bad people and may, largely, be used to ban people for innocuous online mischief. If that's true, it's a shame and a black mark on Microsoft - but it's irresponsible to run around pretending that abusers are not trying to use these platforms to get to people. I have not seen a collection of incidents in minecraft, but there was a good article posted on HN covering some of the issues Roblox has in this area[1].
I assume that, if one goes through collected Minecraft chats, there's some pretty concerning content in there. I assume that because I've been playing online games for years and I've always encountered concerning content. There are no perfect solutions, but it seems obvious that we can do better than no safety net at all and have an obligation to try. That means we should both push back on flawed, un-neuanced systems like this new one in Minecraft and on lazy critiques of the attempt that pretend there is no problem.
If you think that online spaces are a goodness and an important part of life, then I think you need to take seriously the need to setup controls that will let children and other vulnerable people use those spaces with greater safety while minimally restricting adults. It's not an easy problem at all, and as you note the authorities often start with a digital surveillance state, so we all have to be the change we wanna see in the world and advocate for solutions that are better for all the stakeholders.
Both chat reporting and bans were extended to LAN, effectively cutting people off from the product they've bought. The context of the messages beyond a certain point aren't sent, so kids are already bullying other kids into cracking and reporting them.
It has got to the point where modders are actively warning people against the report system.
> So, what’s new? Minecraft moderators may ban players who do not follow our Community Guidelines when sending online messages using our services (Realms) or Featured Servers, and communicating online through signposts and books.
If you conduct yourself such that you manage to get banned from hosted / promoted servers, I have no problem with you being unable to participate in privately run servers. Nobody wants to be around people who act like that.
Furthermore, action only comes about from player reports - contrary to the grandparent comment's misrepresentations about "snitchware" and so on, Minecraft moderator action can only come about from player reports - and only in certain specific, defined categories.
There is no "right" to free speech in a private game. There is no "right" to play a private game.
And perhaps the company that build your house or apartment building should install microphones in the walls, with a term in the dense sales contract / TOS that forbids modification of course. After all, you could be muttering hate speech in your living room, ahem, I mean their living room. They built it after all, so clearly it's rightfully theirs even if its ostensibly your property...
Minecraft having a message reporting system in a publicly playable game run by a game studio, and a team of people who decide what to do with those reports, has nothing to do with "microphones installed in the walls of people's homes."
You've gone from misreprsenting things to suit your worldview (like you did in your initial message claiming "snitchware." Nothing in minecraft's moderation system is automatic - content must be flagged, first, by another user) to wildly unhinged "analogies."
Company A builds Apartment Building. Company B builds game server software.
Company A sells Apartment Building to Landlord. Company B sells software to Server Admin.
Landlord leases Apartment to Leaser. Server Admin allows Gamer to connect to Server Software.
Microphones installed by Company A in Apartment's walls catch Leaser saying Bad Word. Chat spy installed by Company B in Server Software catches Gamer saying Bad Word.
Company A bans Leaser from all Apartment Buildings they constructed. Company B bans Gamer from all Server Software they leased out.
People don't need laws. People just need to bomb Company B, in Minecraft. My original post illustrates why they would, in Minecraft, be inclined to do so, in Minecraft (I formulated this idea about a fantasy situation in Minecraft while role playing a person who would think of such things in Minecraft).
If it’s a private instance of a server, run by you where the only people on it are you and your friends, shouldn’t be up to you and the other people to figure out what is and what isn’t appropriate to say? Why should you care about what the company who made the game have to say?
Yes but "in game" on a private server run by you means a chat between you and your friends. That's why I find it puzzling that you'd think that a company has the right to police that kind of content. When it's public and you're interacting with strangers makes total sense but on private servers?
But regardless of public/private, it’s still in their game right? They’re not banning me for the text messages I send or what I say in a Slack channel right? It’s their game, their chat system, and their decision.
We are not discussing whether Microsoft has the legal right to censor people on their platform.
We are discussing whether it is right for Microsoft to police communication on private servers or whether behavior on public servers should prevent you from accessing private servers.
Many consider that private servers should be PRIVATE.
I don’t believe the government should know all my private conversations without due process. But I also don’t believe my in-game chat is a private conversation.
A communication service provided by a company is no different than a room in a physical building. The government cannot "bug" a privately owned room without a warrant. Tech companies have granted the government freedom to "bug" all of their digital rooms.
I long ago gave up on the idea that online communication is ever private. The FBI started recording all internet traffic in 1997 with Carnivore after all. But I do believe it should be private and require a warrant for the government to see. There are just too many bad things that can come from government monitoring all communications. The government shouldn't get a pass just because we haven't quite figured out how our rights apply in a digital space.
There's a large segment of HN that doesn't get the same abuse online that women or minorities get so they think that everything digital should be a free-for-all, so you're getting downvoted by them for supporting moderation of publicly accessible online spaces.
I agree with you. There is no expectation that someone should be able to say whatever they want in in-game chat. If people really want to do that, they're free to create their own game and accompanying chat infrastructure.
> If people really want to do that, they're free to create their own game and accompanying chat infrastructure.
The reason that what Microsoft did is so horrendous is that they're banning people from the chat infrastructure that individual servers owners are running themselves. Or are you saying that if you don't want to be censored, it's not enough that you run your own chat server, but that you write all of the code from scratch for it too?
I think people need to accept that any form of communication will result in “radicalization”. This was true of the printing press, the radio, tv and the internet. If the government is concerned with these things, they’ll do better by fulfilling their basic duties. Radicalization tends to affect sick societies far more than healthy ones.
I grew up pre-commercial Internet in a computer age, with FIDONet, dial-up BBSes and whatnot. Message forums. Teenagers. Boys. Weirdos. Anonymity. I learned this: people have a mean streak that spills out, it's often teenage insecurity and anger. It was extremely common, borderline the norm for teenage boys who were spending their days in front of a computer screen instead of (in the U.S.) playing high school sport and doing the Proper Stuff.
I never had any political memes, but I was angry just the same. I want to say that there's something that is psychologically so commonplace in this development that it is borderline possibly genetic. Either that or our societies are a bit broken that teenagers are so angry.
Either way - the desire to censor and control, the calls for which appear to be coming from a mix of politicians and academics, I find "problematic" (an ironic technical term I've heard the academics use).
No one seems to have studied history: WHO decides what ideas need to be policed, monitored and such. Today it's someone you agree with, tomorrow it might be someone you don't.
I have a problem with people who call themselves ethicists who use studies to come up with correlations between ideas and behaviors, and then propose to tell us what laws or controls we need for a more just society. I call these people secular priests at best, and authoritarians at worst.
I remember experiencing intense anger as a teenager also, but I think it was situational - the vast majority of my time I didn't feel like I could make any genuine contribution, and didn't feel like I had much control over my situation. It seems like many people get through their adolescence without that kind of trouble, but also many (at least in norcal) who go through a period of intense frustration.
IMO it's better to contribute in the form of messages online than criminality or worse in the real world. I know a lot of people who were kept from the streets thanks to the former.
Yeah, that's not a surprise. I see a lot of goyper shit in online games. People logging on with names like ANNE FRANK with a badly veiled nazi profile pic going on who say racist shit at the end of every game so they don't get kicked and then they have like a bunch of impressionable kids who think hitler is funny in their nasty horrible racist groomer tow on discord.
I'm not surprised this is getting investigated, those guys are the worst creeps, especially how they get kids involved.
There are mean people everywhere, especially when they can be anonymous. I've been on the internet long enough to remember when corporations weren't the arbiters of what can and can't be said in games. Back when servers were owned by players.
The DHS has no responsibility to investigate what is most likely an edgy 14 year old saying edgy things in a game. The only thing that will come from this is, indeed people say mean things on the internet, therefore total censorship is the only answer. They will find a few real cases. Things like you pointed out. These will be use for a typical on-brand message about how widespread the phenomenon is. No one wants extremists in their country and all they will have to say is something like "first person shooters are a hot bed for white nationalists" and suddenly we are back to 1991 when we thought that first person shooters caused people to become violent killers. History repeating itself.
This is basically a solution looking for a problem. The particular flavor of radicalization "white nationalism" or whatever is being spammed in the media ahead of an election because it's the current party's boogeyman. It's scary, it sells ad space, and it drives campaign speeches. I'm inclined to believe that the population of these alleged "white nationalists" is a lot smaller. At least until they arbitrarily extend the definition.
I suspect the actual problem is rising inflation, lack of housing, lack of income to afford anything, and the 1000 mile wide chasm between the incomes of congress and the average citizen that are leading to the majority of radicalization. However, this will never be discussed because it implies the government is the problem. When the investigators investigate themselves they always find nothing wrong.
> I'm inclined to believe that the population of these alleged "white nationalists" is a lot smaller. At least until they arbitrarily extend the definition.
Arbitrary extension of definitions is a big part of it. For instance the way the definition of violence has been extended to include silence. This is particularly chilling since "silence is violence" is a flagrant reformulation of "If you're not with us, you're against us." They also like to talk about hateful statements of opinion being violence too, under theory that hateful remarks cause stochastic terrorism. But by the same standard, "silence is violence" is a call to arms against people who are simply trying to live their lives peacefully and not get swept up in a political movement. If being silent is a form of violence, that suggests a justification of violent "self defense" against those who are merely keeping to themselves. Redefining violence is an implicit modification to the rules of engagement.
I'm specifically referring to the phenomenon of grown ass adults grooming impressionable kids into acting like this. It's a real problem and I'm not surprised it's being looked into, these guys need chris hansen showing up in their kitchen level.
You imply they are allegedly grooming these kids to be white nationalists on discord. Discord is a monitored platform. Do you have any evidence of the FBI cracking down on these discords? Actual terrorism falls into the purview of the FBI and given the current administration you'd think they'd be all over using that honeypot as a way to find them. I have yet to see any evidence that the FBI has stopped a discord turning kids into white nationalists so I suspect the problem is not actually the problem you suppose it is, or you and I have very different definitions of what grooming means.
There have always been groomers, sadly, but I'm not sure there's a groomer behind every sieg heil. It's funny to kids and teenagers to shock and disgust polite society and always has been. It becomes even funnier when people out of the in-group think they're in serious danger because of it, which just spurs on more hardcore trolling.
I'm not convinced that most of this is anything but the current generation's version of Belsen Was a Gas.
It seems to me you're making a lot of assumptions and jumping to conclusions. How do you know these trolls are adults and not angsty teens? How do you know it's not a niche problem (I've only ever seen this cringe behavior in low-effort FPS like CoD)?
Not saying you're wrong but your experiences don't match my own. I'm open to having my mind changed but the idea of some conspiracy to influence kids by screaming naziisms at them at the end of video game matches just seems... hilariously ineffective.
I played a lot of csgo during the pandemic, you'd be surprised how much of this is prevalent in the casual lobbies. It's to a point where I don't play a lot of csgo anymore.
It sounds stupid as hell because it is, but it's all part of a tactic of normalization. That's all they're after here.
A lot of those people with nasty names/pfps are the 12 year olds. I remember being that age in the gaming (and internet) communities. and all's sorts of rage bait go. There is even a well known word for this act: trolling. Let's not pretend it's all a bunch of 30 y/o racist groomers.
The real issue is that these 12 year olds hold this mentality into their entire adult life.
Seems especially rampant on FPS games. Often I see swastikas in custom banners in games like Battlefield. Reporting results in no change.
Many women for instance I know pretend to be men in these online games. Often the only people screaming and utilizing voice online seem to be of a specific demographic.
You can go after the bad apples and hope things will change but racism and all sorts of hate based ideologies are constantly touted by what I presume individuals with a lot of idle time.
I also see lots of talks of depression and mental health issues in the chats. I rather that they just remove the online chat feature and custom banners. Remove voice chat especially.
Really miss the days before voice chat because now its the equivalent of giving a village idiot a megaphone.
Is it really so much to ask for a player who doesn't want to listen to voice chat to click through a menu to turn off voice chat? Or click one or two buttons to mute a player in chat/voice? Do we really need a heavy handed approach like "remove online chat features and custom banners"? If the company provides no method to turn off chat/block/mute/etc then that's one thing. Ask for that. But I've yet to play a game where you can't do this.
Best I can do is a vast government surveillance apparatus for identifying and targeting individuals and then tossing them in jail on questionable charges until they spend $20,000+ on a lawyer. Hard for them to make that hitler talk while in jail, check-mate. Since DHS is known to be the most honest and highest caliber agency of the US, we know this power will be used fully constitutionally, ethically, and impartially.
Voice chat is incredibly useful if not necessary in certain game types, and it also makes the game far less social.
The people who are abusive in voice chat know exactly how to be abusive to avoid getting caught / identified.
In one game I play, there are several phases of the game when it is both impossible to mute anyone and you cannot see who is talking.
Guess when people spew racist stuff or otherwise scream into their mics?
It's a minority, and they never have anything useful to say - but it causes a lot of people to shut off voice chat entirely because it's so exhausting/jarring to an otherwise good time. And as a result, you don't get to meet the people who are friendly and good natured.
Essentially, by letting them run wild, we're allowing them to dominate the platform. Kick their asses.
> Essentially, by letting them run wild, we're allowing them to dominate the platform. Kick their asses.
So the option is learn how to deal with trolls or remove voice chat completely from games to protect the delicate sensibilities of players? I guess that's up to the company. I had no problem with this prior to company's controlling the servers for extra MRR. Don't like a server? Leave. Unless the entire game is filled with nazi LARPers you'll probably find a place more amicable to your delicate sensibilities. For me, I've had no problem blocking particular trolls and in particularly infested servers I can find a new one that's better for me. It's like the world has forgotten "don't feed the trolls". I'm willing to wager 99.9% of these people are just doing it to get a rise out of someone because honestly. People are so sensitive these days it's made it incredibly easy to say something and get a rise out of literally anyone.
Is it too much to ask to be able to use the game with voice chat and just been the people who are abusive?
DHS doesn’t need to be involved but the answer shouldn’t be people who don’t want to be abused are the ones who have limits on what features they can use.
There are documented cases of minors being offered DIY hormones by adults (thanks, KiwiFarms!) via Discord and online games. This seems more like Democrats are trying to equate silly screen names to the grooming and pedophilia taking place within their own transgender movement.
Between young impressionable children and vulnerable teenagers being groomed into mutilating their bodies or being "groomed" into a le funny epic hitler meme phase (which they soon grow out of in a few years), it should be quite obvious what the lesser evil is
Is there anywhere left on the internet where the general consensus on a three letter agency going after edgy children playing video games is that it’s a bad thing? Does anyone distrust the government by default anymore?
Nobody would pause for a moment on studies investigating the cultural impact of messaging in movies or TV; in fact we talk about it regularly. Games and the culture of discussion around them have started to have a huge impact. This is worth studying.
The YouTube channel Innuendo Studios has done some interesting reflection on gaming in general (I really like "Adventure Games About Jesus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr5qgaasOYY ) and some specific stuff on cultural conflict and radicalization in gaming:
This seems like a dumb contract to a consulting company. A few interns will write a report. This is a tiny waste of money compared to everything else dhs wastes money on.
The other 43 grants awarded with similar $ amounts (totalling $20 Million) are interesting to browse: https://www.dhs.gov/tvtpgrants and address a range of different angles to prevention of targeted violence and terrorism prevention, from local to national. Some interesting "learn about propaganda" and critical thinking type of programs look good to me.
Of particular note to NH readers with it's interest in surveillance, is that only one program has the word "monitoring" in it's brief, and that's the one mentioned in the article.
Violence from governments is a greater threat than all other forms of violence combined. Governments murdered tens of millions in the 20th century, but now governments cite violence from nongovernmental sources, two or three orders of magnitude less bloody than government-directed violence, to justify giving governments more power.
I am not an anarchist, I know that nature abhors a vacuum. The inescapable nature of government is no reason to blind yourself to the risk posed by government. The dangerous nature of governments is the reason we're supposed to have power distributed among many, not concentrated to a few, with a complex system of checks and balances. But these hard-earned protections are being eroded. Federal judges rubberstamp every fishing expedition search warrant put before them, a handful of corporations concentrate the power to control public discourse, and common fools cheer the premise of the "Department of Homeland Security" (the very name of this organization is some sort of Orwellian joke) pursuing common bullies.
Anyway, to loop this discussion back around to my point:
> Terrorism is a real threat.
It isn't. The threat of terrorism is massively exaggerated by the government, for the purpose of justifying the government acquiring even more power. You are many times more likely to be killed by the police than by terrorists. Government and the media want you to fear terrorism because that fear lets them control you.
Criticism of government workers is not terrorism, even when somebody is exceptionally rude about it. If the harassment was criminal in nature, then enforce existing laws. Construing it as terrorism is harmful to the public because it reinforces the government's anti-terrorism narrative used to justify unceasing scope creep and power grab.
>> Federal judges rubberstamp every fishing expedition search warrant put before them
> Is this in any way related to the investigations into a former president?
I am talking about surveillance capitalism and government dragnets aimed at the general public. I'd be a happy man if Trump fucked off and died years ago. He was a willing and eager participant in all that I describe.
41,222 warrants requests submitted to a secret Federal court since 1979. 85 rejected. 0.2% rejection rate, they rubber stamp virtually everything submitted to them, and I don't believe for an instant it's because federal investigator and prosecutors are just that good.
This sort of shit is a greater threat to civil liberty than any sort of terrorism.
A federal judge approved a search warrant against me because supposedly an unnamed dog told an unnamed officer who told a (named) detective that it smelled "potential contraband" up my ass. Not even the testimony of an officer, just 3rd degree anonymous hearsay.
FISA warrants are bad and the regular federal warrants process isn't much better.
In several online games I've been playing the last few years, I've made in-game acquaintances, people I look to 'party' with. I've noticed a clear pattern with some people.
It starts with a "light" "off-color" joke here and there to "test the waters."
Over the period of a couple of gaming sessions, things get worse and worse until they're being openly bigoted, such as declaring a certain playable character in the game as "that dyke bitch". I've also had people get really mouthy about "illegals", stereotypes about welfare/crime and black people, and so on.
If there are bigots specifically fishing around in gaming communities for like-minded individuals, from what I've seen, it's a target-rich environment, at least in first/third person shooting games.
I know some gamers wondered where Microsoft's firm insistence on chat reporting in Minecraft came from; the game became a runaway success without such a system and there were no major media scandals that seemed to prompt this change of attitude or priorities. I think this is the answer. There is a general push in the government and big tech corps (the line grows fuzzier by the year, a hallmark of fascism...) to consolidate and centralize control of digital discourse so it can be monitored and moderated by them.