Main stream news site MSNBC has published an article about the widespread use of hate speech in online games. It’s an introduction to what many of us have either experiences first hand, have friends who’ve experienced abuse online, or we have read stories about it. The article notes that game developers are trying to crack down on it:
Players trade racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic insults so frequently that game makers are taking steps to tone down the rhetoric.
The post also singles out certain marginalised groups that are frequently targeted by many online gamers:
One gamer told an opponent he presumed to be Jewish that he wished Hitler had succeeded in his mission. Many exchanges involve talk of rape or exult over the atomic bombing of Japan. There are frequent slurs on homosexuals, Asians, Hispanics and women.
So, pretty much the status quo in terms of random people you meet in online games: homophobes, racists, misogynists, and other bigots. The article does note that reports of abusive behaviour and hate speech is increasing, which is great, however a lot of people aren’t seeing those effects reflected in most people’s behaviour. Unfortunately, players outnumber the customer support teams trying to take action on abusive gamers.
In the article, the National Coalition Against Censorship cautioned against limiting people’s speech:
“They respond occasionally and erratically and incompletely,” she said. “Some people who are doing what everyone else is doing get caught.”
The coalition, which works to protect First Amendment rights, does not generally endorse actions to limit speech, she said.
However, as we know the First Amendment doesn’t apply to online communities. The government isn’t limiting anyone’s ability to express themselves. Game makers are trying to keep their communities welcoming to as many people as possible.
There’s no doubt that hate and abuse can only negatively impact a community. Giving hate speech a free pass gives licence for people to engage in it, and silences people who feel cultural pressure to tolerate abuse to be accepted or because they lack the institutional power to combat it. If you’re playing a game online, and everyone is being hateful and abusive, it can be very difficult to speak up against it, particularly for marginalised groups, where speaking out can make you a target for further abuse. However, if people continue to speak out against hate speech and report people engaging in abuse, perhaps it will generate cultural change. Eventually. At the very least, it could make a gaming session more tolerable, welcoming, and even (gasp!) fun.
What did you think of the article? Do you think it accurately reflects the current situation in online gaming culture?
[Thanks to Muse for submitting the link!]
I kind of wished online game communities worked more like web communities, so that you could first connect to groups of other players based on explicitly shared interests and viewpoints. After you’ve met up with people you can enjoy being around and communicating with, then you can go and start disarming the battlestation/killing the monster mob/building the ultimate farm/whatever.
It doesn’t solve the problem of people being bigoted jerks on the Internet, but it would at least make it easy for people who don’t enjoy being around bigoted jerks to enter an online game and not be subjected to their nastiness.
I consider it Interent thing, generally i think there is more hate speech and agression on the internet then there is actually encounterd in everyday life. Why ? Maybe it’s the medium, or it may be there are actually lots of frustration and agression in people that society is not really dealing with but shuffling it under the carpet, but when social control is weaker like on the web it gets released. So i would generally disagree with statments about bigoted jerks, sure there are plenty of them, but seeing the scale of this problem i would rather seek some social basis of it.
*rolls eyes*
“But everyone else was doing it too!” didn’t work as an excuse when I was 6 and it certainly shouldn’t work here. If you break the rules and get caught, you face the consequences. If you’re upset that other people broke the rules in the same way and weren’t sanctioned, the solution is to report them.
One of the things that really upset me, was when you first signed on to Xbox Live, you had the option of picking a “community level” – sort of like G- R movie ratings- it explained what level of talk was acceptable. I signed on to the family level, hoping I’d get sorted into a mod’d area without that drama.
Sadly, it never manifested, which is why I simply refuse to play a lot of online games, because it’s guaranteed you’ll be facing this kind of hate. Period.
I still champion games with small, closed play, because at least I can play with folks I know and not have to deal with that crap.
“However, as we know the First Amendment doesn’t apply to online communities.”
But surely free speech as a general value does, along with its underlying rationales? And one of those – the inevitable haphazardness and incompleteness of enforcement – is even more so online.
I used to be one of those guys who’d hurl this abuse, and my experience is that the people who say these things aren’t saying them out of bigotry but knowledge that saying them will cause offence and since their purpose is to offend that’s just a convenient way to do it. Trying to stop “hate” speech in this context seems to me, at best, to be like putting a Band-Aid on an arterial wound – no effect, at worst like pouring water over a chemical fire – reacting to a superficial appearance of a problem without understanding its underlying cause, and thereby applying the wrong remedy that ends up making the situation worse.
They want to hurt people? On purpose? I am seriously crying now because this is so sad. It is sad not just for those hurt, but it is sad for those who would want to hurt.
A lot of the offenders are privileged, sheltered teenage boys who have no idea about things like sexual assault triggers and who believe their offence is nothing more than baiting some authoritarian, self-righteous prudes and leftist ideologues. I remember being at that age – given everything else I knew and believed I couldn’t have believed you (or a time-travelling me) if you told me anything counter to absolute “free speech”, whether it be framed in terms of triggers or oppression or the Biblical comparison of the tongue and rudder, since after all the human mind is subject ultimately only to free will and everyone can choose to be offended or learn to suck it up and get over it, right?
Here’s the ultimate rationale: by extension of the mind’s reactions being subject to free will, by exercising your free will over yourself (note: generic “your” throughout this free indirect speech) in such a way that you take offence at a mere joke, it is your fault you are offended by what you have made of these mere sounds coming out of my mouth. As such, you deserve every bit of abuse you create for yourself and if anything I’m doing you a favour by piling it on to goad you into knowing better, or at least “toughening up”.
Of course, it could all just be a way to rationalize the basest schoolyard taunting, but I did find it sounded very convincing in that mindset.
Wow, rereading that I just noticed how close it comes to “why are you hitting yourself”. Never thought of it that way before.
Yes, I am aware of the philosophical foundations for this behaviour. Professionally, I study philosophy particularly ethics and political philosophy (from a feminist perspective). I think there is much that is admirable in these liberal views you describe, but I think we have forgotten their original justifications, and I think liberals left many things out.
For instance, the most famous articulation of the justification behind the right to free speech is John Stewart Mill’s. He said we needed free speech to get all possible ideas into the public sphere where they could be debated. By this means he thought the best ideas would rise to the top. People should learn this when they learn of the right. It is not supposed to be used as a shield to allow just any ass-hole behaviour.
Second, I think liberal theory left a lot out that would be better included. For example, liberals did mention that all rights have corresponding responsibilities (or sometimes duties depending on how clearly they can be defined by the right in question). But everyone always talks about the “right to free speech” and no one ever mentions “the responsibilities of free speech.”
But none of this makes me any sadder. I cannot believe what we are teaching our children that they would grow up to believe hurting another human is fun.
I did not really understand your follow-up comment about hitting yourself.
Re the hitting-yourself bit: I see a very thin line between genuinely believing that people ought to adapt and learn to take the abuse, and using the underlying philosophy as an excuse to be wilfully blind to the harm someone is causing and thereby a means to go further with the abuse than one would go if they were merely saying whatever was on their mind rather than deliberately inflicting offence.
Totally agreed wrt responsibilities of free speech. It only seems to come up so haphazardly when someone is clearly doing something abusive (defamation, inciting people to violence, lying about something you’re trusted with) but I’ve never seen any attempt to articulate a broader theory.
I am actually working on articulating a broader theory that includes responsibilities in rights-discourse. My MA thesis was on responsibility (what is it, when do we have it etc). My dissertation is on respect (what is it, what is human dignity that is supposed to ground respect, how can we uphold the commitment to respect which we articulate in many documents and then ignore).
When I am done that I want to combine the two and talk about the responsibilities that go with rights in a way that keeps respect central (respect for people’s feelings and experiences as well as respect for their “free will”).
This was meant to go as a reply above. Not sure why it went down here.
I could be mistaken but I read the “why are you hitting yourself” as the abuser forcefully using the victim’s own limbs to cause harm to themselves.
-Ani8
That’s the way I see it as well. I’ve never seen the “Why are you hitting yourself” notion as a situation in which the victim isn’t being forced into self-harm.
I am actually working on articulating a broader theory that includes responsibilities in rights-discourse. My MA thesis was on responsibility (what is it, when do we have it etc). My dissertation is on respect (what is it, what is human dignity that is supposed to ground respect, how can we uphold the commitment to respect which we articulate in many documents and then ignore).
When I am done that I want to combine the two and talk about the responsibilities that go with rights in a way that keeps respect central (respect for people’s feelings and experiences as well as respect for their “free will”).
Free speech has its consequences and limits, especially when you [are] violate(ing) the another person. But I say that as someone who was/still is/will continue to be the target by people like you once were.
And even if it is still a band-aid as you see it, at least those behind the game have the likelihood of more profit while the afflicted can at least have something consolatory/some sort security from abuse.
And that offence I still find to be bigotry.
-Ani8
But surely free speech as a general value does, along with its underlying rationales?
There are appropriate venues for free speech, and inappropriate venues for free speech. If you went to a movie theater, and someone stood up and started ranting about politics or religion, they’d be thrown out.
Why? Because they’re disrupting the experience that folks have come there for. The person would be free to make whatever statements they wanted, outside of the theater, in an appropriate venue.
In the same sense, if I’m playing a videogame, online, I’m not playing because I want to hear “free speech”. I’m playing because I want to enjoy an experience, and OMG SURPRISE, hearing phrases which I may associate with people threatening me in real life, or having killed my grandparents to, might be a minor buzzkill to my enjoyment, as much as a screaming freako in the middle of a movie theater would be.
Under the same logic, one could say, “The govt. isn’t allowed to outlaw people from urinating, therefore I can urinate in the middle of a restaurant!”
I should clarify that the focal point wasn’t the “free speech” slogan but the underlying rationale that came after. It’s very easy to notice when someone’s taking a leak in a restaurant, but to watch every utterance that’s said in a big online environment? Who’s going to be paying all these people to do this? And training them and making sure they don’t, say, conflate someone using homosexuality as a term of abuse in their username and someone who is simply identifying as gay?
And again, none of this specific targeting of hate speech will do anything to address why people are lashing out like this to begin with. Reading words on a screen isn’t conductive to empathy the way talking to someone in person is, and even if you can be kicked or banned you don’t get that sort of feedback you get when you’re in a room and everyone around you just edges away and shuns you if you’re being a dick. The people lashing out basically experience road rage minus the possibility of injury or even confrontation.
(just fyi, there’s a reply button hidden in the dark grey bar with the name and icon – turn on javascript and move your mouse cursor over to the right hand side of the bar)
You mention “words on a screen” but hate speech online like this didn’t really have its hay-day until the advent and popularity of voicechat. I can’t recall in my days of RPing in IRC or participating in MUDs people using slurs, and in point of fact even in Quake 2 (ah, lets reminisce for a moment about the days before in game server browsers) people didn’t often use the text chat for obscenities. This is something I personally did not see until Socom for PS2, and then literally every single x-box live title ever.
Voicechat is where it is all too easy for people to let the obscenities fly, and there is far too much traffic for it to be sorted through the way sysadmins can sort through WoW/Guildwars chatlogs. So why not have a report button allowing users to detail their complaints? Also in super mega popular games why not have an opt-in/opt-out option where morons can segregate themselves and the rest of us can game in peace? Choose which community standards you want to live by and have matchmaking done on that basis.
I’ll admit I did forget voicechat, but I’ve regularly seen people call each other f-words and n-words and c-words and j-words for as long as there’ve been in-game server browsers.
I’ll agree that I have no such recollection dating back to the old Quake (2) days though. But back then I recall if you found a server anywhere near your location that wasn’t full, wasn’t empty and didn’t eventually lag or boot you out for some weird reason or other it was something to be cherished.
Maybe it is primarily a matter of availability, consequences and tragedy of the commons… just as a matter of principle I don’t like the idea of segregating people into the safe gated communities and the outer darkness of weeping and gnashing of teeth, so with that in mind I’d rather have a system where you could vote to kick someone but you’d only need a simple majority of more than one among the people who voted yes or no (rather than among them and the people who don’t care, missed the offending remark and don’t want to take sides, or didn’t read the manual and can’t figure out how to vote).
And again, none of this specific targeting of hate speech will do anything to address why people are lashing out like this to begin with.
But what it can do, is provide a space where everyone besides straight, white, racist fuckfaces can have fun.
And really, that’s not a lot to ask. Many communities use a combination of reporting violators and quick check in’s to see bad behavior. You’d really only need to see these folks in 2-3 games/matches, because they tend to do that shit 24/7.
Who’d pay these people? I dunno, the 60% of people I know who would play online but simply stopped because they don’t like hearing hateful shit.
Many companies produce TOS’s that explicitly point out this behavior isn’t acceptable- we’re just asking for them to live up to the TOS’s they’ve given us.
The only people who really would suffer are the asswipes who enjoy this behavior.
But what it can do, is provide a space where everyone besides straight, white, racist fuckfaces can have fun.
The more I think on this issue and the replies to my comments, and my own replies to those, the more I’m starting to think this is really a matter of cultural inertia – there’s this large well-established mass of gamers for whom this sort of nastiness is a tradition and a norm, and one of the key motivations to act out is to conform to and further that tradition and norm as a part of one’s gamer identity.
In this view, specific targeting to send a de-normalizing message seems a lot less bandaidish than if the abuse were simply a matter of consequence-less road rage.
Many communities use a combination of reporting violators and quick check in’s to see bad behavior. You’d really only need to see these folks in 2-3 games/matches, because they tend to do that shit 24/7.
I have little expectation that the big game companies could be on the vanguard of this – the ignorant privileged teenage boy market is just too big to risk alienating. But I’m optimistic that this sort of community involvement is where a lot of online indie stuff can really shine.
I agree with you yeloson, it would go far to make a safe space. I also think it does work, here are two examples:
1. PS Home was total crap at first, with so much harassment of female avatars and spewing of trash-talk. Then PS decided to crack down on this, using the method you describe, reporting and occasional mods being present. I am still not a lover of PS home (really what is there to do in that space?) but I have noticed that it is *much* better than when it started. There is much less harassment of female avatars (there is still some, but I can go in to check my “free stuff” and actually move from place A to B, which I could not before).
2. Smoking (at least in Canada), has been discouraged by an indirect method. Rather than attacking the source of why people smoke, Public Health Canada began an information campaign that was designed not just to inform of the dangers, but also to change social norms around smoking. This was very gradual. First banning smoking in businesses, then in bars and restaurants, then near doors and entrances. Now smoking is no longer seen as an acceptable habit, and many people have quit as a result. The total ban (including pubs and restaurants) only began in the early 2000s, but already there has been a measurable effect on lung cancer rates. So this stuff does work. And smoking is an addictive behaviour in a way that assholery is not.
Changing social norms does change behaviour, and it does so without imposing severe limits on freedom because you are still free to do these things, people will just disapprove of you. Turns out that can be a strong motivator.
This is true of all laws, policy, or rule whatever. I do not think it constitutes any kind of argument against having laws.
We do not have a 1:1 police force, so many criminals get away with breaking the law. A company might have a dress code and this dress code might be breached and some times the breach might escape the notice of the supervisor one day (e.g. because ze is distracted by something else) and a similar breach might get noticed the next day. That is the nature of enforcing policies that not everyone wants to follow of their own will.
I think it is much less of a problem when non-enforcement and enforcement is done “sporadically, erratically, and incompletely” and it is a much bigger problem when it is done systematically, in a targeted way and completely (against those targeted). This is a bigger problem because those targeted tend to be those already marginalized (e.g. the way the laws are actually enforced more systematically and stringently against the poor, Hispanics and Blacks than against the rich and whites).
When an authority imposes a rule that is sporadically, erratically, and incompletely enforced (which is true of all rules but to varying degrees), it creates an environment of contempt for that rule and, by extension, contempt and disrepute for the authority and its other rules.
And sporadic enforcement can easily also be biased.
I think many rules function aspirationally. When we articulate the codes of behaviour that we believe are tolerable and those that are not, it sets an expectation. That is the point of articulating them in the first place.
People can just be assholes and they’ll be more brave when they are doing it over voice chat. I bet most of the haters wouldn’t say the things they say online in face-to-face conversation. Some might, but most won’t, particularly the asshole teenagers.
First of all, I’m really interested in the idea of a peer-moderated, “friendly online” community. Everyone agrees to be cool or they’re out, which would make it possible to find people online who are A) currently playing the game you’re playing and B) not jerks.
It’d be amazing if that could exist within XBox Live – in fact, it seems to me that given how many users aren’t using their service for want of it, MS is probably already figuring out how to make something like that work. But it’s also the sort of thing that could be organized independently from XBL (on a site or discussion board) and moderate itself. “Nice Folks’ Gaming League” or something. It seems like such a no-brainer that something like it must already exist. Does it?
Anyhow, some have touched on an aspect of this issue that I think merits deeper consideration – the average age of the perpetrators.
I teach at a high school in SF and recently set about surveying and interviewing our student body for a piece I’m writing about students and games. One of the things I’ve been talking with them about is verbal interaction online, specifically during competitive games on XBL. Among the kids I’ve spoken with so far, there’s a fairly even split between those who turn off their headsets and those who engage in the taunting. But a lot more engage than I would’ve thought/hoped.
As I listen to the taunters gleefully recount particularly good jibes they got in, it’s clear that as far as they’re concerned, they’ve divorced the language from its original meaning – the goal is merely to come up with the most egregiously offensive, sick insult. It’s sort of a game within the game – the kids are empowered by their anonymity and break as many social taboos as possible in order to outdo the opposition.
They are, in effect, switching language modes – similar to how students are able to write fluently in text- and chat-speak but remain perfectly capable of keeping that speech out of their english papers, they learn gaming hate-speech but keep it separate from the language they use in everyday life.
The big problem there is that not only don’t they understand how hurtful the language they are using can be to others, they also can’t see the effect that their actions have on the online community as a whole, how far it goes towards making the rest of us want to switch off voice-chat and remove ourselves completely.
I think we should be exploring all avenues of curbing this sort of behavior, but given my sense of the average age of most of those who engage in gaming hate-speech, it strikes me as more of an education and socialization issue than a first amendment one.
That’s exactly my thought, but it also creates obvious question: what stir for such eager breaking social norms and taboos when social control lessen ?
My bet, there is more internal frustration and agression that society creates within the individual then we assume.
My bet, there is more internal frustration and agression that society creates within the individual then we assume.
I think role models in our popular culture play a lot in this too. Think of all the recent movies where you had a strong male protagonist lead who was sensitive to people’s feelings and needs, who worked to solve conflicts in a way that affirmed the positie human dignity of all involved.
Now think of all the recent movies where you had a “strong” male protagonist who had all the EQ of a lobotomized skunk and solved all his problems by beating the shit out of everyone on the other side.
Too much Neo, too little Atticus Finch.
I sense some Keanu Reeves jokes coming, but Neo is not the “I’ll beat the shit out of everything” kind of protagonist. He is much more intelligent and, in fact, accomplishes the most when he does not fight.
Hmm. For the kids I’ve spoken with, it seems less about breaking the social norms for the sake of breaking them and more about a competitive element. Who can come up with the funniest/harshest slams?
It ties into the aggressive competition that takes place in a match of MW2 – the challenge to come up with the most egregiously offensive insult or taunt ties right in with the challenge of defeating one’s opponents.
It’s like a sub-game – one that most of us have no interest in, but like it or not, we start playing the moment we turn on our headset.
People do this kind of crap in online games simply because they can get away with it by hiding behind a screename. If you take a look at the comments section of a major news site you’ll see almost the same thing minus the profanity.
Independent dedicated servers for PC online games (at least the ones I usually play on) tend to be far less tolerant of this stuff than large services such as Xbox Live. There are fewer people to police and there is often a complete no-tolerance policy.
Granted, there are plenty of servers that allow and sometimes even encourage this behavior, but for the most part my PC experience has seen waayyyy less crap than my time on Live or any other large centralized service.
An issue with this idea is that society’s norms and what is considered “acceptable” is already marginalising, hateful, and offensive to LGBT folks, women, people of colour, disabled folks, and others who have less or no institutional power amongst their straight, white, male peers. Even leaving out online games and the whole business of online communities, everyday acceptable speech is already uncomfortable for those who don’t fit what those in power (straight, white males) see as “the norm”. How else to explain just how acceptable it is in everyday conversations to ridiculed folks who are disabled, folks who are gay, women, folks who are of colour? And I’m not talking about overtly hateful stuff, but the more subtle language and stereotyping (“That’s so gay!”, “You play like a girl!”, “Black people are good at sports!”) that makes it more acceptable for the hateful stuff to get a pass (“You’re a f*****!”, “You stupid b****!”, “F***ing n*****!”)
What about something along the lines of IRC? Channels are moderated by volunteers who decide what is and is not acceptable, people can join in to different channels and such. Games could have alliances/guilds/whatnot where you only play with those who agree about what is appropriate, either through a series of checkboxes or through joining a channel, again using IRC as a model here.
The thing I’ve seen with most IRC chat rooms is that it’s up to the mod to decide what is bad and good. Often times the mod of the day allows for all the hate even when it’s against the rules.
Hi, Brinstar. You rock.
What you point out is absolutely true – I guess I was interested in the idea in a more short-term, “that’d be nice” kind of way. There is certainly the bigger picture, that slowly rising line beneath which language finally becomes socially unacceptable.
I must admit to not having fully-formed thoughts on it all – it’s such a complex problem that it’s hard for me to look at it from too great a distance. The only solution I can come up with that actually feels personally doable is to talk to kids more about this stuff. (Any of your or anyone else’s thoughts on how best to approach that will be highly valued.)
So, right, I’ve been meeting with a bunch of students about gaming, and one of the things that has struck me most is how little thought some of them give to online hate speech, or to the language they use online in general. For any of a number of reasons, it’s like some of them haven’t been properly socialized to modern technology, they’ve never learned how to be mindful online. They’re also not finished socializing in general, so I guess that makes sense.
I think they would benefit from having someone talk to them about online interaction, since there’s a good chance their parents don’t know what to say. I also think that PSAs and internet ad campaigns can be surprisingly effective – over the past few years, I’ve noticed a sharp downturn in the use of “that’s so gay” at school. In fact, the most common stance among the students has become to actually speak out and say they’re resolutely against using the word.
I remember all the PSAs I was seeing a year or so ago about that, the ads online and the celebrities saying how they never used the word that way… I bet they had some effect. Ditto the awareness campaigns about cyberbullying – some awful stuff goes down between students online, and we’re only now finding the language to talk to them about it.
So yeah, talking with kids face-to-face about language and online interaction seems like it can only help, and I think it’s something that we’re not doing enough of. And to some degree, getting them to think about what they say online will help them think more about what they say in general.
This conclusion bothers me as i don’t really understand how it comes to such situation. Sure language in general use has the mentioned issues with sterotypes and its obvious notmative character, but what we see on the interent and online gaming doesnt really looks like strenghten version of the previous, but something that is deliberatly agressive,offensive,venomus and hurtful as possible. In my opinion it qualify as norm breaking and taking advantage of weaker social control then anything else. So for me question is: what drives people to breaking norms so eagerly when they feel fred from social control and what in society is responsible for such imo conflicting situation that is created within individuals.
…I won’t play xbox live because of all the bigoted stuff that comes out people’s mouths.
In online computer games, say in City of Heroes, I find it easier to dish it back and possible school people. But not over a microphone.
One thing that struck as I was reading. The idea that the people being abused need to adapt. That hate speech is the normal and they need to conform and freedom of speech triumphs..etc.
Why can’t the hateful people learn to conform to the people that don’t use hate speech? Why is hating people and insulting the “normal”?
all the reasons in the world can be given. But as long as you can say these things in total secrecy and not have too see the person you’re saying this too it will con tinue. even in internet cafes no one gets totally abusive because threr are people around you will be answering too. me I’D LOVE TO SEE THE JOKERS AND SEE IF THEYED SAY THI TOO THE VARIOUS VICTIMS FACES.
This makes me wonder if there’s a more positive way to enforce modes of behavior. It seems incredibly negative to simply restrict language rather than reward positive behavior (then we get the teachers pet / class clown syndrome, however).
I think it stems from the fact that gamer communities pride themselves on being politically incorrect. Fostering communities where people don’t feel this need may be a way to go.
One of the main challenges with rewarding positive behaviour is that it is more time-intensive and time-consuming to do this than more automated methods like restricting language. For companies that have the resources to enforce positive methods of reinforcement, it is probably a better way at encouraging whatever community atmosphere a company strives for, but it costs more money and takes more time to do this. Unfortunately, not a lot of executives understand the importance of communities and encouraging good behavioural standards because all of this “touchy-feely” stuff isn’t easy to translate into terms that business executives do understand–numbers, metrics, ROI, revenue generation, and dollars. This is why, when there are budget cuts, you often see the first lay-offs in community management, customer support (and of course, QA), but the irony is that these departments do the most to help retain customers for a company.