The current hate speech rule could end up destroying TU

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TLDR: focus everything marked bold.

i know that this kind of post shouldn’t have appeared in this forum, but i find something that potentially destroys the entire TU’s operation, and as someone who has been here for more than three years including two-year patronage on Patreon, i think it would be a pity for TU to go. therefore, allow me to speak about this.

while discrimination should have no place here, the most important part of that is - how do we know if someone is actually enacting hate? from what we have learned in the recent years, anything can be hate speech. from the entire internet, everything that can abused is eventually abused.

in the recent year, Tower Unite has changed the rules regarding how the discrimination is handled, and if you look at the changes through 2022 to 2023, it has been more political and hostile than it was. however, this rule in the current state has rather brought in concerns regarding its side effects, because violating this rule is permanent ban, and more importantly, you have no right of appealing it.

so my point is, this rule now has basically opened the door to the potential power creeps who identify themselves as those; and by making the other users have to guess which kind of speech is allowed and what leads to permanent ban without the chance of appealing, they have full control of the community and the game operation.

if someone wants to get a large number of people banned, then instead of having to start any DDoS attacks or hacking any admins’ accounts, all it takes is by identifying himself a part of that spectrum, and sending a mass report to those he wants to ban including any wordings he thinks it “discriminates” him.

this is not some sort of speculation and let alone made-up conspiracy theories, because similar cases have happened before, and there are developers fallen victims to those.

one of the closest example is Tabletop Simulator last year (i was literally banned from that server for talking about so), where a bunch of people identifying themselves trans raided its in-game public chat, and then an official developer tried to stop them because they flooded the chatroom, but then got called transphobia and cancelled through Twitter’s incident, ultimately having to settle that down through paying tens of thousands to a trans community. since then, the game is basically abandoned in terms of anymore updates.

i made a video looking into certain users who participated in that, which most of them had no clear involvement of that game - even worse, some of them had no backgrounds.

indeed, after speaking this, you might say that “TU knows how to deal with them” or this is fear-mongering, but imagine getting permanently banned for hate speech based on something you said that they don’t like, without you knowing.

i think TU cannot afford to cope with that scenario i talked about when it actually happens, including the possibility that more than half of the users are potentially banned for this. it is better to handle these cases accordingly.

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You say this like someone at Pixeltail is gun ho’ing bans without evidence, which isn’t the case at all.
Every single report is handled manually and requires video or plaza chat history evidence. These bans also tend to not be permanent the first time, being usually 24 hours communication ban.
So they can learn not to do it again.
Repeat offenses tend to be a longer or permanent communication ban.

Emphasis on communication ban, these people can still play the game.
In my experience at least, these violators tend to be the same types of people, the types that use those deragotry terms or slurs to get a rise, and they know exactly what these words mean.
This isn’t ignorance, it’s feigned ignorance.
And we shouldn’t be cowtowing to these people, thus creating an unsafe environment for everyone.
If you can’t be nice, don’t say anything at all.

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the reason i am talking about it is what is boldly emphasised on the “Game Rules” tab. if we go through the first quote, it already goes:

:warning: We have a zero tolerance ban policy regarding racism, transphobia, homophobia, anti-semitism, and any other forms of discrimination. Usage of racist slurs will get you permanently banned.

and the “permanent ban” has been here only since Febuary this year, which you can go through its change history, it is right there.

moving on to the appeal instruction page, it is emphasised once again:

We have a zero tolerance ban policy regarding racism, transphobia, homophobia, anti-semitism, and any other forms of discrimination. Usage of known racial slurs will get you permanently banned and you will not be able to appeal the ban.

indeed, every single report is handled manually, but most importantly, “you will not be able to appeal the ban” is the reason i made this post.

of course, never comply to those people that would create an unsafe environment.

postscript: there are people calling themselves trans or anything else who are far more radical than anymore hate speeches against them.

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We’ve always had a zero tolerance ban policy regarding racism, transphobia, homophobia, anti-semitism. The rules page goes into details on what that means and how we enforce it. Occasionally, we’ll update the rules to be more easy to understand.

We handle every report manually, including ban appeals.

Our moderators follow strict guidelines and communicates when there is something that needs to be discussed.

We don’t ban without evidence and mass reports don’t sway decisions.

As written already on the rules, we have these rules in place to keep Tower a safe environment for everyone.

I’ve personally seen the type of messages that would lead a user to receive a perma ban, and you’re lucky not to have to read these messages every day. They’re brutal, very obvious, and clear cut violations.

Plainly speaking, don’t be racist or discriminate others.

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frankly speaking, outside this community, there are people calling themselves that kind of spectrum (homo, trans, semites, etc.), who try to get away under those narratives when when they are under someone else’s accusation of clear-cut rule violations, or even changing the relevant definitions.

if you are aware of those people, then i think that is all i needed to throw out.