Microsoft Announces Xbox Content Moderation To Cut Back on Toxic Comments (cnbc.com) 183
As Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social platforms come under fire for enabling hateful speech, Microsoft is stepping up to thwart toxic comments among its 63 million Xbox live users. From a report: Microsoft needs to make sure Xbox players don't hear or see content that might turn off users, or scare younger players away. Microsoft is making these moves after the ascent of the Gamergate controversy, which led to people harassing and making threats against women. The changes follow Microsoft's recent update to its Xbox "community standards" for gameplay, which pointed out several practices that aren't acceptable. Now it's taking that a step further with moderation tools.
"This summer, we are empowering our official Club community managers with proactive content moderation features that will help create safe spaces for fans to discuss their favorite games," Microsoft's executive vice president of gaming, Phil Spencer, said Monday. "We plan to roll out new content moderation experiences to everyone on Xbox Live by the end of 2019." Xbox Live has 63 million monthly active users, and the service includes groups where people can post content and submit comments, along with chat rooms. "Our industry must now answer the fierce urgency to play with our fierce urgency for safety," he added.
"This summer, we are empowering our official Club community managers with proactive content moderation features that will help create safe spaces for fans to discuss their favorite games," Microsoft's executive vice president of gaming, Phil Spencer, said Monday. "We plan to roll out new content moderation experiences to everyone on Xbox Live by the end of 2019." Xbox Live has 63 million monthly active users, and the service includes groups where people can post content and submit comments, along with chat rooms. "Our industry must now answer the fierce urgency to play with our fierce urgency for safety," he added.
Forgot the Censorship Icon (Score:3, Insightful)
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The creepiest part is when he says “Our Xbox Safety team is nicknamed the ‘Defenders of Joy’ because we will defend you in every humanly and technologically possible way, so gaming remains fun.” Great, so now we've got the speech police rebranded as the "Defenders of Joy."
Christ, I feel more like I'm living in some dystopian scifi novel more and more every day. Some of these press releases read like fucking Onion articles that we once would have all laughed at.
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I should have the right to piss and shit on whatever, wherever, and whom ever I please.... As a libertarian... If they don't like it they need to put their money where their mouth is and pay me to stop....Let the markets decide!!
So you want ransom payments? Nah... You're not that important. The market found a cheaper way to deal with you and your fellow trolls, by paying a relatively small team of programmers to create systems that allow the community to report and shut your piss and shit spewing mouth for free. The market decides that you lose.
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They inspire joy-joy feelings in everyone around them and...Christ, when did Demolition Man become the most prescient science fiction move ever? It happened so slowly we barely noticed.
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Demolition Man was mocking conservatives. It was an era when Disney started warning parents about "mild peril" in their movies and cartoons had to have a clear moral message. There was far less sex and violence on TV back then, and conservative politicians were complaining about violent video games. There was a lot of hand wringing and "think of the children!"
In Demolition Man the conservatives are trying to enforce moral standards in real life the way they were doing on TV. Hence when you swear you get a f
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Microsoft is a private company. If they wanted to censor everything that isn't a childish insult, that's their prerogative. If want only the purest of bile, that's their prerogative. If they don't want any of that, it's still their prerogative.
Microsoft is a for-profit company that is opportunistic enough that it would sell tickets to show a horse screw it's own mother, if it could make a profit off of it. Implying this political is childish at best.
No actually it doesn't (Score:1)
Ask yourself who owns most media? It's billionaires. Now ask yourself if they tend to be left wing or not? They do not. They tend to be right wing. Very, very right wing.
So the people in charge of virtually all media and who fund most political campaigns and who thanks to Citizens United have unlimited political spending power are right wing, and you think a few folks getting upset at you using off color words on XBox Live matter in the slightest?
You need to get out of
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Soros is a terrible human being (Score:2)
And you're right about one thing, you'll join the poor ("teeming peon class") everyone but a few wealt
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Microsoft are a bunch of leftists now.....
Re:Forgot the Censorship Icon (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh. Stopping every other comment being "I fucked your mom" on a private platform due to the target audience being of a mentally handicapped age is *not censorship*.
When your dad told you not to swear did you also cry *censorship* *leftist agenda* Help, help I'm being oppressed!?
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Of course it is. It's not government censorship, which is problematic because of the finality that legal backing gives it, and it's not the arbitrary censorship of views and opinions that need to be heard, but it's still removal of content based on its meaning, which is censorship.
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Nope. Removal based on the type of language is not removal based on meaning, and thus not censorship.
Next you're going to say Slashdot is censoring you because you can't write a post in all caps.
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If the type of language is not a means of conveying meaning, then what else does it do?
Arguably, it is.
Your problem is that you seem to have constructed this syllogism:
All censorship is bad. This is not bad. Therefore, it is not censorship.
The logic is sound, but your first proposition doesn't hold up: not all cen
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Isn't it usually the conservatives who are complaining about bad language, violence and other "unwholesome" content?
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I guess they have to do until you can change the system to allow you to draw blood?
Welcome to walking on eggshells, kids (Score:3, Insightful)
Better not say anything that could possibly offend anyone, anywhere--or you can kiss all those achievements goodbye.
But "what is offensive" you ask? Well, since that's entirely up to the interpretation of any hyper-sensitive person reading or hearing it, pretty much anything. And it's retroactive too. So if you say something now that is deemed offensive a few years from now, too bad. Flashed an "okay" sign in you gamerpic from 10 years ago? Clearly a white supremacist. No trial, no jury.
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Better not say anything that could possibly offend anyone, anywhere--or you can kiss all those achievements goodbye.
I guess we'll just turn a blind eye to the damn game content then, as if the language and content isn't ever offensive. The heads that would explode today if you even whispered the letters "G-T-A", is staggering.
But "what is offensive" you ask? Well, since that's entirely up to the interpretation of any hyper-sensitive person reading or hearing it, pretty much anything. And it's retroactive too. So if you say something now that is deemed offensive a few years from now, too bad. Flashed an "okay" sign in you gamerpic from 10 years ago? Clearly a white supremacist. No trial, no jury.
At some point we can only hope that Common F. Sense is going to bitch-slap the shit out of these SJWs and tell them to grow the fuck up.
I can't think of a better qualified group of idiots to permanently send to our lunar moon base. Let them go get offended by the color grey for a while.
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Yeah, I keep waiting for the intellectual Thermidorian Reaction to this increasing insanity from the Left. But it hasn't shown up yet. I keep telling myself that, surely, sanity will prevail. But the insane voices seem to gain more ground every day. It's almost to the point where literally nothing surprises me anymore. If it was announced tomorrow that a mainstream Democrat
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"But it hasn't shown up yet."
It hasn't happened because it's just a really, really shit conspiracy theory. There are no armies of SJWs, they aren't controlling anything.
You are like those guys who think the world is ending next Tuesday or that the Illuminati lizard men are really behind everything. Your constant surprise when the predictions don't play out doesn't make you re-evaluate the conspiracy theory.
"I wouldn't even bother double-checking"
Quite.
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Common F. Sense is going to bitch-slap the shit out of these SJWs
Holding my breath here. Sadly, that would just distinguish them further as victims of the patriarchy or something equally silly. It would sure be nice though.
Re:Welcome to walking on eggshells, kids (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think some consequences for bad behavior is a terrible thing. It happens in real life. Why should online behavior be magically exempt? Xbox Live has long been a toxic sludgefest of crappy behavior and foul-mouthed trolling, with immature edgelords having sport seeing who could offend the most people. A small percentage of players are making the experience highly annoying for a larger number of folks who just want to play and have fun.
Interestingly enough, you're on a website that demonstrates that, although far from perfect, user moderation works pretty well to curtail the worst of trolls. Sure, there are bad moderators who mark comments as -1 troll just because they disagree with someone, but those sorts of abuses are more rare than the fairly consistent success at clearing out Nazi swastika ASCII art, unambiguously insulting or degrading comments, and so on.
Essentially, it's on Microsoft to provide effective moderation tools, and to ensure that unfairly targeted players have a reasonable process for review and recourse. I'm not saying that will happen, but I'm going to withhold judgement until I see how this works. These sorts of systems are dependent on the majority of users being able to make reasonable determinations about whether an okay sign in your gamer pic is seriously offensive, or whether it's just a stupid okay sign. For the time being, I'm betting on that a majority of gamers still have enough integrity and common sense to still make self-moderation possible. And unless the moderation system is seriously whacko, just because a few disturbed individuals DO happen to think you should be banned for life for flashing an okay sign doesn't mean they'll actually be able to get you banned for life.
Maybe I'm too optimistic, and things will actually go all Chinese social credit score like you're suggesting, but I'd tend to think it's pretty unlikely. After all, Microsoft has a pretty strong financial incentive not to ruin things for the majority of their paying customers.
Welcome to walking on eggshells, trolls (finally) (Score:2)
...interpretation of any hyper-sensitive person reading or hearing it, pretty much anything...
In my experience it's the trolls that more hyper-sensitive...just watch how they respond when they are told by an admin or anyone with authority that their anonymous hate-spewing shit is unacceptable.
Muh conservative viewpoints (Score:1, Informative)
"it's not toxic hate speech, it's just my personal philosophy"
A Mistake (Score:5, Informative)
Sad to see that the GamerGate boogeyman is still alive and well. But hey, it's easy and profitable to sell fear. But honestly, it has nothing to do at all with this article.
With that out of the way...
Fact of the matter is, there is a really easy solution. There are people who want freedom, some who want security, and then spectrum that lies in between those. It shouldn't be hard to setup communications for different types of players. There's the curated, family-friendly group. There're the pros. And then there're those that want to trash talk. Funny enough, Microsoft set up "zones" on the Xbox 360 with this type of grouping in mind. Why they don't go back to something like this is beyond me.
This actually steers me away from Xbox. It feels very easy to get reported and to be banned. Why should I risk my account if I said "fuck" when someone kills me in-game? I don't need daddy Xbox to tell me what I can and can't say to other people who consent to what I say (and if someone doesn't consent, well, there's a block button). This will only remove communication, at which point, why not just play with bots?
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Sounds like they can still have that, they just need to create a private chat channel instead of using the public one. Seems like a decent solution.
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True, it's not as if everyone has a pocket communicator that can connect to any number of private end-to-end encrypted networks.
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But at the same time, if people want a wild west pure trash talk experience, they should be able to have that as well.
I don't think anyone's proposing that they shouldn't, but Microsoft certainly aren't obliged to provide one. If they want one, they can rent a VPS and ruin a private discord server. Then they can all share views on their fellow gamers sexual orientation and whether or not they have had intimacy with various family members.
The main thing is that a bunch of people here are too lazy and cheap t
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Lots of people are proposing they shouldn't; it's pretty much what Xbox is saying. A VPS and a discord server? You may as well just game on PC at that point.
Gamergate, really? (Score:2)
Sad to see that the GamerGate boogeyman is still alive and well. But hey, it's easy and profitable to sell fear. But honestly, it has nothing to do at all with this article.
Even if they weren't lying (for the millionth time) to cover up the journalism scandal, GG was over four years ago. Jeez, M$, just admit you want to rule your platform with an iron (partisan) fist, so that's what you're doing.
Re:Gamergate, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
We need to have a "5th anniversary journos won't let their fav boogeyman zombie die" party.
It's getting to the level of Weekend at Bernie's comical at this point.
You know journalists got pissed they got called on their crap for being sellouts if 5 years later they're still trying to poison the well with their "it was about harassing women" narrative.
Even tho the claimed "harassed" women were very public activist figures and have provably behaved before, during, and still behave in ways * that aren't considered proper for anyone, men or women. But it seems those journalists want one standard for men and one much, much lower standard for women.
Just look up how one of those treated boogie2988 and used her position of power on stage to throw insults at one of her critique sitting calmly in the audience and demand he be thrown out. A critique that can't take critique and calls that harassment.
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very public activist figures
You mean a tiny little Kickstarter that only blew up when it started getting abuse?
used her position of power on stage to throw insults at one of her critique sitting calmly in the audience
You mean that time Carl Benjamin flew across the Atlantic just to go and harass her in person with a bunch of other asshats?
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very public activist figures
You mean a tiny little Kickstarter that only blew up when it started getting abuse?
You mean her damselling plan worked perfectly?
used her position of power on stage to throw insults at one of her critique sitting calmly in the audience
You mean that time Carl Benjamin flew across the Atlantic just to go and harass her in person with a bunch of other asshats?
You mean she's a public figure (A professional critique of gaming & culture as she calls herself) giving a public panel talk at a YouTuber conference that Carl,
who is also a very popular YouTuber attended with other YouTubers.
Geez, it's almost like it was meant for YouTubers and he had every right to be there, sit, and listen to what she had to say (and others, she wasn't the only one on the panel).
just to go and harass her in person
Right, There was nothing else of interest for him at that en
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Steady on old chap, I'm running out of booze here!
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Right, that's why there's an entire web site dedicated to documenting game journalist misconducts: http://deepfreeze.it/ [deepfreeze.it]
I never heard any of you jackwads condemning the name of the actual game journalist involved in the supposed scandal
Your wilful ignorance isn't proof of anything other than you being uninformed.
Re: A Mistake (Score:2)
None. In my day we learned not to fear words.
Re:A Mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Shit, it would be nice if it were even that concrete. I could at least make sense of a list of "words you can't say" (a la George Carlin). But in today's SJW outrage culture, it's not even possible to define what "offensive" even is anymore. Basically "offensive" is entirely subjective to the person hearing it. And since even that ridiculously vague and broad definition changes on an almost daily basis now, it's almost impossible to know what someone might possibly be offended by at any given time. Something that today is considered completely innocuous is just one 4-chan troll campaign away from branding you as a hateful Nazi tomorrow.
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Amen.
Even a list of "words you can't say" doesn't work. What do you do when people speak another language and it triggers the auto-ban hammer using voice recognition or just chat text?
Well, phoque.
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Masterful, a truly inspired succinct encapsulation of a riposte that even elrous0 will surely acknowledge as objectively offensive.
If I may offer a modest critique, greater inventiveness and wit might mitigate the inherent juvenility of your response, something that will sadly cause most adults to disregard it as too puerile to warrant their attention.
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There are people who want freedom, some who want security...
Everyone wants security but only some are smart enough to have figured out that freedom is the only way to ensure it.
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Stop discussing functionality. This is about appearances. 110%.
Um.. dude (Score:2)
And it's got nothing to do with Gamer Gate, Penny Arcade was making fun of this shit almost 20 years ago [penny-arcade.com]. God I'm old.
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It shouldn't be hard to split up your community into three fragments potentially splitting existing relationships and creating envy among those who belong to one group but would prefer to be part of another (you implied pro's don't trash talk, LOL)?
Basically every solution that starts with "It shouldn't be hard" can instantly be dismissed as poorly thought through and unimplementable.
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Funny enough, Microsoft set up "zones" on the Xbox 360 with this type of grouping in mind. Why they don't go back to something like this is beyond me.
Because the trolls naturally didn't stay in their troll-pen, they went to the Pro and Family Friendly zones. Sometimes they didn't even bother swearing in them, they just flagged other players to get them booted out.
Any solution has to be troll proof.
Why should I risk my account if I said "fuck" when someone kills me in-game?
Could you not turn the mic off when you need to swear? Push-to-talk is a good idea.
Rated M for Mature (Score:2)
You can set it up to whitelist your friends mics, and mute other by default/
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Games that simulate the repeated murder of people (Score:2)
I have never understand why, in a game that simulates the repeated murder of other human beings (like almost ANY game out there), people get offended when someone says something mean or "offensive." We're so far removed from realizing that we are all playing games that simulate murdering other human beings.
I like being an asshat in games sometimes, I like that games are not real life, I like that I can pretend in games and do things I'm unable or unwilling to do in real life.
Terrorists have won, the Snowfla
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Let's create a game where all we shoot are snowflakes.
Or maybe shooting bugs with salt guns. Oh wait, that's a thing in reality:
https://www.amazon.com/Bug-Sal... [amazon.com]
I want one.
Darn! (Score:2)
Oh no the “Nazis” have won! (Score:2)
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That might be a valid point if someone could at least define in concrete terms what an "insult" even is anymore. Even MS themselves can't do it. The closest thing they can produce is a vague list of "Acceptable Trash-Talk." [dualshockers.com] I wish that were a joke. But, no, that's really something they did. Self-parody isn't even possible anymore.
And even that won't help you anyway, because who knows how many of those suggestions will be re-branded as offensive tomorrow. S
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Shit, now MS is going to have to ban themselves for offensive language.
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And even that won't help you anyway, because who knows how many of those suggestions will be re-branded as offensive tomorrow. Someone could decide tomorrow that "Potato" is an offensive term
Too late, that already happened, see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Here is an automated translation of the relevant section from above article on the use of the (German word for) potato as an insult:
Use and history of terms
The derogatory use of the word 'Kartoffel für Menschen' (potato for humans) is not a phenomenon of the 21st century; as early as the 1960s, 'Kartoffelfresser' (potato eater) was used in the Federal Republic of Germany in particular by Italian guest workers as a counterp
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retroactively ban you
Has this ever happened? Do you have an example of someone being retroactively banned when the rules changed in such a relatively minor way?
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https://www.leicestermercury.c... [leicestermercury.co.uk]
No ban, unless he declines to pay the 5k fine or complete the mandatory 'hate white people' course.
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Fails the "rules changed" criteria. What he said was shitty even five years ago, and against the rules at that time. The delay is only in the coming to light.
Twitter should have a periodic "five years ago you posted this shitty thing, do you want to delete it?" feature.
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He wasn't beholden to those FA rules at that time. He was a fucking child.
Twitter should have a periodic "five years ago you posted this shitty thing, do you want to delete it?" feature.
Why even ask? Just automate it; delete everything people post five seconds later.
It'll improve online discourse immeasurably.
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Actually I do agree with you here, he was 15 and every 15 year old is some kind of idiot. It's important that we let children make mistakes and move on. £5k is about 3 days work for him, seems a little excessive but I can see why they did it, given that there is a problem with this stuff in football.
Why even ask? Just automate it; delete everything people post five seconds later.
I'm sure that already exists...
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You’re there to play games, not insult people. If you can’t play other people online without insulting or offending verbally you’re welcome to play off-line. All those complaining of free speech remember this isn’t a social media platform, it’s just to play games with other people.
Exactly... it's a game, not a platform for spreading the internet's worst shit around. As a gamer myself, I have become totally desensitized to all the rampant trolling racist, homophobic, sexist, etc. nonsense of anonymous basement-dwelling coward gamers... their shit just rolls off my back. I'm no triggered snowflake, I can handle it just fine, but there's no rational reason that HAS to be the reality of playing a game online. If anything this sort of move from game makers is LONG overdue.
Pitch check (Score:2)
If the voice is high pitched, just mute it.
"Toxic comment" problem solved.
All I can say is... (Score:2)
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After Microsoft rolls out content moderation, (Score:3)
After this goes live, instead of random kids insulting you, now report someone only now for a moderator to call you "a faggot". Or let's say some kid is spamming annoying wav files, you report it to a moderator only for the moderators to reply with "I'm busy fucking your mama, faggot, lern to game nigga"
Hehe, I wouldn't be surprised :-P
Little by little toward the cliff (Score:1)
One great story is of a Pakistani player that got auto-suspended for typing "Paki" in Rainbow6 because his nationality is considered derogatory in France. (We're hitting peak good intentions & road into hell here)
There's also stories of automated system banning/suspending people for chatting in non-English languages and triggering the offensive words detection over similar sounding words from a completely different language.
What's offensive in one locale isn't in others. Or even context.
But soon we'll a
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One great story is of a Pakistani player that got auto-suspended for typing "Paki" in Rainbow6 because his nationality is considered derogatory in France.
No. The term Paki is deemed derogatory, so people using it are suspended.
His nationality is not being considered at all.
There's also stories of automated system banning/suspending people for chatting in non-English languages and triggering the offensive words detection over similar sounding words from a completely different language.
That's a trickier one to handle, along with living in Scunthorpe.
I find it funny (Score:2)
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Karma System (Score:2)
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being bombarded with "1 pwnd u..." is a real turn off.
So are you advancing the idea censorship is a good solution to the problem?
Re: I don't think we are aware of the issues here (Score:2)
Or maybe the lack of supervision has created unstable personalities that cannot stand adversity or criticism. These 'defenders of Joy' (is this some Soviet gulag?) will just make it worse.