Microsoft To Ban 'Offensive Language' From Skype, Xbox, Office and Other Services (csoonline.com) 317
According to Microsoft's new Terms of Services agreement, you could get banned for "offensive language," resulting in the termination of your Gold Membership and/or any Microsoft account balances. The changes go into effect on May 1. CSO Online reports: [I]f you and a significant other are getting hot and heavy via Skype, you better watch your language and any nudity because that, too, can get you banned. The ban hammer could also fall if Cortana is listening at the wrong moment or if documents and files hosted on Microsoft services violate Microsoft's amended terms. But how would Microsoft even know if you had truly been "offensive?" Well, that part falls under Code of Conduct Enforcement, which states, "When investigating alleged violations of these Terms, Microsoft reserves the right to review Your Content in order to resolve the issue." Microsoft did add, "However, we cannot monitor the entire Services and make no attempt to do so." I'm not sure that will make you feel better, as another portion states that Microsoft "may also block delivery of a communication (like email, file sharing or instant message) to or from the Services in an effort to enforce these Terms or we may remove or refuse to publish Your Content for any reason."
Fuck that (Score:4, Insightful)
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I do, quite often, particularly when it doesn't work properly. Believe me, there are few things as irritating and capable of bringing out the foul language than dropped or frozen connections and the other insanity that goes along with trying to make Skype work.
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It's impossible to really police. People will just use code words. Already I know that the guys I worked with that had racist tendencies quit using the N word many years ago. Now they go "yeah one of those DEMOCRATS down there said" blah blah. It's a moving goal post. You can ban anything and it'll just get replaced with something else.
Re: Fuck that (Score:2)
What the Fuck that (Score:2)
Really, who uses offensive language on Skype?
You forgot the <sarcasm> tags and you were apparently taken literally in some way?
I think that censorship is insane and offensive language is sometimes the only or at least the best way to express certain emotional states or to show sincerity. Right now I'm still reserving judgment because I think the story is quite likely an early April Fool's joke. (The problem with that theory is why pick Microsoft? A cunning selection of the highly improbable target of the joke to make it seem credible?)
Re:Fuck that (Score:5, Funny)
Really, who uses offensive language on Skype?
Depends. Offensive how? I once skyped, 'Now that Steve Job is dead, where will Microsoft get their killer ideas? Xerox PARC?' Had problems with them ever since.
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Re: Fuck that (Score:2)
Remember when Skype used to be *good*? Before Microsoft bought them. And replaced the original p2p architecture with a server-based architecture, in order to facilitate snooping.
Re: Microsoft's reason to spy? (Score:2)
They already do. Don't think they even deny it, do they?
Why else would anyone use these services? (Score:5, Insightful)
The web was built on porn; remove it at your peril. :)
Re: Why else would anyone use these services? (Score:2)
No it's not, September child.
Yeah, pretty much it is. (Score:2)
The web is mostly pirated material, porn, and everything else no government wants you to have free and easy access to.
Given a free hand, most people would stay home and browse pornhub.
Search "Celebrity Deepfakes"
That shit has every celebrity in the world shitting their pants, because Celeb porn is going to be everywhere soon.
I saw how shutting down Pirate bay has worked, lol.
Sure businesses use the web these days, but 90% of people using the web are looking for porn of some kind.
That covers a lot of ground
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You said "built" which implies in this case historic perspective. Neither Internet nor WWW was "built" on porn. Being a media, not matter what was the original purpose, it is of course immediately used for sharing various sort of crap, be it porn, be it catz, or cute babies (yes, there was a time on the Internet, when cute babies were as popular as cute pets, nowadays of course, a human degraded so much and so suddenly that the only feeling that a human being can feel looking at a picture of a cute baby is
Solution time [If it's not an April Fool's joke.] (Score:2)
No it's not, September child.
But it is close to April, as in April Fool's day... And yet, that actually appears to be an authentic Microsoft website and the MSA does include the actual word "offensive" and MS is not known for its corporate sense of humor. Right now I'm leaning the other way, that it is for real, as in real crazy.
I'm really straining my brain for some way to interpret this as reasonable. Maybe it's a new make-work project to avoid firing people? From a company that used to have a policy of continuously firing the bottom
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Big US brands support the political views of SJW.
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SJW?
This is a direct result of the actions of our Republican-led Congress. They would be horrified to be called SJWs. SJWs, in general, would not approve of this kind of attack on free speech on the web.
We've now seen Craigslist, Google, and Microsoft cave. These are all companies that make monies in other ways, so they have the least to lose by cracking down to avoid the new penalties and the most to lose if they don't cave in. They are the first wave. The companies that have everything to lose, such as da
Re: Why else would anyone use these services? (Score:2)
The SJW contingent have always been running dogs of big money. They really are dreadful joyless Puritans, that's not an act. It just happens that their brand of nutty zealotry is fully compatible with tyrannical Financialism.
So the Financialists trot out the SJW tools who willingly, proudly take the blame for the heinously unpopular, anti-American laws their masters demand.
This is f**king ridiculous (Score:2)
A dumb pipe should be a dumb pipe.
It should be an insulated pipe (i.e. end-to-end encrypted).
Do Microsoft and whoever really want to be considered responsible for everyone's sh*t-stained content out there? Really?
They should be doing everything in their power to not be technically able to know what's flowing.
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With FOSTA passing they don't have much of a choice-- they're potentially liable anyway. I understand why the're hedging bets on their services.
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With FOSTA passing they don't have much of a choice-- they're potentially liable anyway. I understand why the're hedging bets on their services.
I'm curious to see if Slashdot has to start censoring posts to avoid prosecution under FOSTA. With all the GNAA and other troll/shit-posting occurring here, it could come to where posts are delayed while they are examined for possibly-"offensive" content like libertarian/conservative views. (as if most aren't already down-modded by the 50-cent armies employed by the Left)
Strat
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Re: This is f**king ridiculous (Score:3)
Progressives are *NOT* liberals.
Re: This is f**king ridiculous (Score:2)
Fuck no they are not. Proper communists want NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the SJW puritanical running dogs of global imperialism.
Hmm (Score:2)
It looks like typical process. You must be reported for your content to be reviewed, and the other party can provide it to Microsoft.
In other words, MS isn't actively monitoring, so if me and friends are on Skype playing a game and we F-this and F-that, nobody's going to give a shit. But if I start swearing at someone on Skype during gaming, well, that someone could report me and provide chat logs or session times to MS, at which point I'd probably be banned or punished in some way.
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It's always a risk. Just like when you're at work and make a comment towards a female coworker, a comment which you deem harmless but she thinks otherwise. Guess who's going to regret it?
Re: Hmm (Score:2)
"In other words, MS isn't actively monitoring"
Soon...soon
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One wrong word and the account stops.
Images as files can be checksum to see if they are banned.
New images that should be reported can be automatically detected.
No more games and no desktop computer log in once that online account is detected and reported.
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It would never work. There's an endless number of ways text can be changed to fool automatic matching, same with images. Add some fuzziness to the image in certain areas, change a letter here and a letter there and you're good.
The list of bannable words would expand so much that it would drive normal people away because they won't be able to talk to each other anymore.
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The SJW don't care. They want the brand to detect the words and then ban the users they don't like.
Then links, images, video clips, politics.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when folks on Slashdot weren't convinced that every phone conversation in the US was recorded, translated to text, and the text indexed and searched for keywords in real-time. Snowden settled that argument. Seems a bit naive to assume that skype conversations don't get the same treatment - heck, if MS is doing it, it would just be part of the servers.
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Sorry, what I meant was "analyzed for this purpose" but my brain ate the full meaning of what I wanted to say.
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It was a nice talking point by the military–industrial complex.
Now every word used is compared in real time to a ban list and the user gets removed.
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Why do the chat logs need to be fully analyzed? A basic keyword search would be enough to find most offenders.
I would honestly be surprised if they even had a human review the chat logs, as doing so brings up obvious privacy issues. Just have the search bot look for X number of fuck/piss/shit etc mentions within a 24 hour period, and send out an automatic account suspension notice. If you're dumb enough to exceed the threshold a second time, lock their account and ban their IP from the service. If the users
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's why they've been unsuccessful so far, only succeeding in pissing off customers.
English isn't the only language in the world, you know.
In Romanian, "cum" is a very common set of letters and has absolutely no offensive meaning. Alone, those letters mean "how". There's also the word "precum" meaning "just like" or "similarly to".
In the Philippines, "porn" is a common part of the name. There are people called "Wanaporn", "Siriporn", "Pornsak", etc.
India has lots of names containing "Shit" in them, I had a colleague called "Sumana Shit".
I'm currently playing a mobile game which replaces "cum" in chat by stars, it's very difficult to talk to another Romanian player because of the constant "***" showing up instead of words.
Furthermore, people always find new and creative ways of slightly changing words so that a human can understand what's being said but automatic matching has no chance. "Fkc y00" or "Sk me ck" for example.
So yeah, I could say it IS rocket science. Actually, rocket science is more likely to succeed.
Who is to say what is offensive? (Score:2, Insightful)
What is offensive is subjective... and some times culture based.
To me the word Microsoft is extremely offensive. So they should block that one right away!
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Chinese hate Skeletons, finding that out sucked. (Score:2)
NT.
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I have to wonder WHY
Cultural change begins with right think.
Corporate Suicide (Score:5, Insightful)
What business would risk putting their documents on One Drive / Office with these terms?
No sane business would.
Between Windows 10 and now this, Microsoft is over for the business world. Over.
Re:Corporate Suicide (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you underestimate the entrenchment factor here. Micro$oft is the new "Nobody ever got fired for using IBM."
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Actually he is correct. If anyone of my employees attempted to propose a microsoft solution they would be fired on the spot. We switched to linux for a very good reason after all the insane decisions microsoft has been making and it was probably the best financial and business decision we ever made. Everything has been going wonderfully and our IT team and even most of the non-IT staff couldn't be happier that everything just WORKS now without having to perform what equates to high-tech voodoo just to ge
Re:Corporate Suicide (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually he is correct. If anyone of my employees attempted to propose a microsoft solution they would be fired on the spot.
All your employees must be terrified of suggesting anything.
At my workplace, if someone suggests something stupid, we may say "That's stupid", but we don't fire the guy.
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Right. Somehow, our business has been doing well for the past 15 years using MS stuff. It sounds like there might be some pretty poor management in your company (if it exists) that can't handle Windows workstations.
But, somehow I doubt that this little story is even real.
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What business do you think exists (other than MS devs) that absolutely requires Microsoft systems to run?
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Lol this is great for business, exactly what they want. Business is probably the reason these rules came in.
Business wants filters like these to protect employees, and by extension protect themselves from lawsuits over harassment and hostile work environments.
Businesses won't be worried. These are exactly the same ToS they put on their own services.
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What you're describing has never happened, and is unlikely to ever happen.
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Like these conservative SJWs, you mean?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl... [bbc.co.uk]
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Much safer to use Google Drive, they'd never remove your content.
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Only use Microsoft for computer games.
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Re: Corporate Suicide (Score:2)
Awwwwww shit - someone said "shit" in a company email. Quick, call the lawyers!!
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What business would risk putting their documents on One Drive / Office with these terms?
These terms are for worthless consumers only. Businesses aren't shitty lower class citizens like the rest of us.
Offensive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please define "Offensive".
Audience matters. What offends one audience, won't offend another.
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Please define "Offensive".
Audience matters. What offends one audience, won't offend another.
If it's anything that could possibly offend anyone, you are gonna be fucked.
I can't think of a sentence that I could say or write that wouldn't offend someone... (including this one) /s
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Politics and funny cartoons about politics.
History
Art. No using the wrong words about a movie.
Music
Books
Authors
Blasphemy
Words like illegal immigration.
Anything thats related to or translated from Cyrillic.
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How about banning Cosmo from Walmart shelves?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl... [bbc.co.uk]
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Offensive to our advertisers.
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Audience matters. What offends one audience, won't offend another.
Right, so as a practical matter it's the least common denominator. Which pretty much allows MS to arbitrarily ban people at will. Which theoretically could be bad.
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Please define "Offensive".
Audience matters. What offends one audience, won't offend another.
You want today’s definition? Or tomorrow’s? You can’t tell in advance what will be considered offensive. You just suffer the consequences when you overstep their arbitrary and shifting boundaries. Retroactively.
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Depends on the century or even the decade, the country, the state/province/region, etc.
Not to mention that you could debate about what "reasonable" and "offensive" mean for each person involved for a long time.
Re: Offensive? (Score:2)
Nah. In a court of law, they just weigh the briefcases full of money that each side brought along as a bribe. Biggest money wins!
Just mix in some Cyrillics (Score:3)
You can't, actually, do that on /., which rejects Cyrillic characters outright. But on most sites and with most applications you can replace the characters common between Latin and Cyrillic with those from the latter in the offensive words, and it will defeat today's filters. Of course, the censors will wise up to the technique eventually, but for now it works...
Not even your target will see it, screaming internally at his inability to call you "an asshole" in response, while enraged over your ability to use the terms like that with impunity.
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Fuçk you, assholè!
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Yes, something like that. Except Cyrillic characters would be a better replacement — tails and umlauts at all.
Essay on East European swearing (Score:3)
We could go international (until they improve the algorithms). One of the best swears is Serbian (swearing champions of Europe - Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria), immortalized in the movie Underground where it is used against both the Nazi and the UN "peace keepers" 50 years later - "Mamku im/ti iebem fashistichku". No translation I have seen gives it justice - the official one is "fucking Fascist motherfucker(s)" but it actually is a promise/intention/desire to fuck the mothers of the fascists (swearing on mothe
Wow... (Score:2)
I'm not welcome anywhere.... ... I give up.
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There is always IRC.
What I want to know is how they plan to censor office. Am I not going to be allowed to write certain words into my office documents?
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Maybe you could try inserting words into your documents and try to pass them up as typos. Sure, your cunter-arguments won't be the breasts, but at least you'll have fun.
Encrrypted? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, Microsoft is admitting that they can read or watch and listen to encrypted connections. Well, with "Legal Intercept" we knew that for some time. I banned Microsoft from my PC years ago in favor of Linux (KDE Neon on Btrfs). If you don't want MS to be your nanny then its time you moved to Linux as well.
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Well, (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTLBsIzk3UE
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Puritan mindset alive - God is watching (over) you, and from there an upbringing "don`t put foul words in your mouth", and on it goes, just always doing the "right" thing, in case of doubt, even more right, to be on the save side. Corporate culture, fitting in automagically....
This is not about "Puritanism" or any particular moral standards.
This is primarily/initially a CYA to protect themselves from the recently-passed FOSTA stupidity, which itself is not about sex trafficking, but getting the censor-camel's nose and his ass both into your pants and your thoughtcrimes.
With things like Citibank barring the use of any of their services by either individuals or businesses for the legal purchase or sale of firearms, how long do you think it will be before the list of "offensive cont
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They could not block the early internet, music, lyrics, movies, art, culture. If the USA was allowing religious intervention all that art and culture would have faced bans by the US gov in the 1980-90's.
The SJW are pushing this.
What can now ban words, images and users can then ban comments about news and links about US politics.
yet another reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cortana listening at the wrong moment"?? That's so wrong on several levels.
"Talk dirty to me" (Score:2)
"Sorry, I can't, Skype doesn't allow it."
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"Talk dirty to me."
"I haven't used the vacuum cleaner in six months. My sink is full of dishes. I haven't showered in over four days. I can't remember the last time I used mouth wash."
That kind of thing?
Tumblr, stop giving Microsoft ideas... (Score:2)
Who?
The FBI agent reading this.
This covers account.microsoft.com (Score:2)
So Microsoft is literally reserving the right to permanently lock you out of your own desktop if it doesn't like what you're doing it.
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Once that account is locked for any reason, so is the log in for the other OS.
Yet another reason (Score:4, Insightful)
to not use Microsoft product.
Another likely reason for this: (Score:3)
Spam, with no content but "Hey, check this out", and a link to goatse or something stored on OneDrive. They're saying this to give themselves cover when they nuke porno-spammers.
Any online cloud storage place that lets you share links to your content is infested with this. It's absolutely rampant, along with links to virus-infected documents, images of 419 scam letters, etc. It's the latest dodge to avoid spam filters.
Now, if they actually do start playing the eavesdropping Mrs. Grundy with peoples' Skype conversations, then we have another issue. But I really doubt that's going to happen. As someone else said, it's probably going to require a complaint about the content they're hosting to trigger action.
Done with M$: Try Linux! (Score:3)
This year marks another interesting milestone, another Linux desktop install and attempt to try to 'survive' without Windows. It's doable now, there's enough gaming choices for native Linux and plenty of emulation available to get a rich fulfilling gamer setup on Linux, at last. And in the nick of time, last fucking thing I need is my frickin' operating system telling me what I can and cannot type, look at, send and receive. Outrageous.
Still running a dual booting box, but, Windows 10 is seeing very little use now that I've got Linux taking over it's duties and doing a fine job too!
The point of posting? Try Linux. Start with Mint if you're frightened of Linux. It's plenty easy to use, as easy as Windows most of the time. Microsoft has pulled a lot of really dirty stunts over the years. This latest is the straw that breaks this camel. Done, finished. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gunna go play some SimCity 4 which runs fantastic on wine and Linux, flawless.
This more self censorship chilling effects from (Score:5, Insightful)
the "sex trafficking" laws. There are cam girls and whatnot that sell private shows, guess what some of them use? Yea. Microsoft's enemies (Facebook/Google/Apple) helped back this bill. [bloomberg.com]
There's a lot of "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN@)(*#)$*" bullshit with this. This is how free speech dies, passing laws based on knee jerks that make people, or in this instance, platforms self-censor rather than repealing the 1st amendment.
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The word detection system will be waiting in the OS for all words it can detect.
Well after any encrypted software to the OS.
Working encryption needs a trusted OS. Not an OS that reports every word and bans users.
Look, what we are really saying is.... (Score:2)
Our engineers are tired of hearing your foul mouths while they data-mine/eavesdrop on your conversations for incriminating evidence and trade secrets. Most of our employees are contractors with no health insurance, so I'm sure you can imagine how hard it is to keep all of our already overworked and underpaid people drinking the cool-aide in the break-room. That, and what-with our government looking for scapegoats and patsies for every nut-job with a gun these days, we feel you will understand. After all, s
Comment removed (Score:3)
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"How the hell is Microsoft still even in business at this point?" Who is propping them up?
Paying enterprise customers who aren't treated like shit like the rest of us. Don't pretend we are all equal.
Re: FuCENSOREDck MicCENSOREDroSoCENSOREDft (Score:2)
Inertia is a powerful thing.
For instance, I've lost confidence in Canonical Inc and therefore in Ubuntu Linux. But I'm not going to up and migrate all my company's systems to something else. Because that would be a huge amount of labor for dubious business value.
I think the same sort of thing happens with companies who are running Microsoft desktops. The setup they have works fairly well, so they're not going to invest the effort and risk of changing to something else.
Next up: offensive language on Windows 10 systems (Score:4, Insightful)
If you use any offensive language anywhere on or near your computer, or store files that have offensive contents, or do anything that's offensive to someone somewhere without even using a computer, Microsoft will withdraw your Windows 10 license and erase all your... I mean _their_, who are we kidding after all... files.
Yeah, this AI revolution will be so great... Only yesterday having automated nannies watching over everyone's shoulders and approving, or disapproving, their behaviour seemed like a dystopian future. Now it seems like it has become a dystopian _now_...
GMYS (Score:2)
Go Microsoft Yourself.
It's about time we made that innuendo mainstream.
Encryption (Score:2)
... and be done with it.
Obviously you can't do that via Skype, but if you're storing your data on Microsoft's servers (cloud! synergy! apps!) why aren't you encrypting it?
Then, they can't see inside that data to look for "offensive" content.
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Its just the paid subscription to Xbox live, which you need to play multiplayer games and so on. Unless you had an xbox or at least kept up with that part of the market, it's not something you'd be aware of.
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Nah dude, I rock a PS4 and a gaming PC. I don't fuck with no Xbox.
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Wait, people have to PAY Microsoft in order to play multiplayer games, on top of buying the console, buying the games and also paying for their own internet connection? I can understand paying a monthly fee for some of the more complex games like MMORPGs, but paying Microsoft on top of that?
What bullshit is this? And people keep buying Xbox consoles?
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"Wait, people have to PAY Microsoft in order to play multiplayer games"
Yes. $50/year or something like that, I think. I *don't* have an xbox (and that's one of the reasons why).
You need to pay that annual subscription to be able to use free 2 play games (yeah, I know!!) as well as online multiplayer play, and voice chat support.
I'm under the impression that you also need to have multiple subscriptions for multiple players who use the same xbox in the same home, if they want to have their own profile (their
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Fuck the fucking fuckers. - 50% of the letters are the word "fuck".
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So you're saying Linux Apple Google are the reason servers are slow to respond to requests?