How many of you have read GGG's terms of service?

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VomitChrist wrote:

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Exile009 wrote:

I had critiqued this. It was disappeared. And not cos I'd attacked you btw. Nor because it violated any NZ law either. Just so you know. They're practically making the OP's case for them.

TBH, politics of any kind are pretty much a no go as there are many different people who play who hold many different political and religious beliefs and tho some things will slide, political talk doesn't as this can get extremely toxic really quick regardless of "sides"

ALL talk of politics, left or right get equal removal. It stops flame wars and spam.

This ain't Facebook or Twitter, do you really need to express your affiliations that badly?

You know what the say at Family gatherings when there is drink involved?
"NO POLITICS"
It keeps the peace.

They don't say that where I'm from. Politics is fair game. But also, I don't think you appreciate quite how far-reaching their 'no politics' rule goes.

For instance, that comment they deleted in this thread. It didn't mention any country's politics, parties or politicians. It didn't argue for the left or the right anywhere. It mentioned one word that refers to a certain social philosophy. And it mentioned that as part of a critique of this forums' moderation approach. By silencing politics in even such general terms, they're effectively making it harder to critique their own forum rules.

Another example - try searching for Covid threads on Off-Topic. There were over half a dozen of them made last year, which were highly active. All of them were shut down. Why? Politics. They interpreted politics so broadly that it became impossible to discuss the virus because of it. They even tried establishing their own 'official' Covid thread - which was prompty shut down as well. You couldn't mention countries. You couldn't even discuss economics, since apparently that's now part of politics. They widened the ambit of what was prohibited so much - and this was without any change in the actual rule found in the CoC itself mind - that essentially all discussion of the virus was stifled.

To make matters worse, their approach to enforcing that rule, as with their approach to everything else in the CoC, is completely arbitrary and inconsistent. Essentially these forums aren't governed by the Code of Conduct - they're governed by however the mod who sees your post feels about it.

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VomitChrist wrote:

Are you telling me that a private company wants the ability to control what is and is not on their own forums and wants the ability to ban those who may practice in speech that in some countries is not even legal? Hold me back while I clutch my pearls!

Telling a company what they can and cannot allow on their own platform is also a form of censorship and a knock on their own freedoms.

Freedom of Speech is only applies to the government (if in the US) and they cannot step in and take that from you. Private companies have their own freedoms. How would you feel if some rando came into your business and tried to tell you what you should and should not allow to print in your own place?

You see the above^? That's more political than what was said earlier here, which was removed. Maybe yours will be removed too, maybe it won't. If it is, then you're starting to get an idea of just how loose their interpretation of the CoC rule is. If it isn't, then you have an idea of just how inconsistent it is.

And btw, private companies are told what they can and cannot do on their premises all the time. We're even now negotiating new restrictions on what they can and cannot do as part of their own business in regards to ... certain controversial sociopolitical topics (see how this gets difficult?). Companies have never been free to do as they wish, only as society allows them to.

Rule number 1 in life: Don't be a dick.

If you treat people with respect and communicate appropriately then you'll enjoy the privilege of the forums. It's GGG's property and they don't have to share it with anyone they don't want to.

From my observation and experience in a variety of forums over the years, GGG are generally pretty lenient with the scope of discussion. A lot of other companies (most in fact) would not tolerate some of the topics or input provided by users to anywhere near the degree that GGG have.

If in doubt, refer to rule number 1.

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V3n05 wrote:

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V3n05 wrote:

If you bother to read ANY of my comments on this thread properly, you're going to realize that any company or organization or citizen has to abide by the rules set forth by the government of NZ, which the ADA1992 prevents slanderous acts.

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Exile009 wrote:

There is nothing in ADA1992 or indeed any other NZ law that mandates that they restrict discussions of politics or religion

Ummm, what?

What indeed? You're going on about NZ law and slander, I'm pointing out how that has nothing to do with their change to the CoC rules. That's why I said you're avoiding the subject. Their old CoC was already in alignment with NZ law. The old forums were already in alignment with NZ law.

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Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

Rule number 1 in life: Don't be a dick.

If in doubt, refer to rule number 1.

Ironically, rule number 1 is a terrible rule. It's vague, subjective, abstract and ambiguous. Which, unsurprisingly, matches the moderation of these forums perfectly. But still, even their inadequate CoC is better than this rule.

Are you OK dude? I can't tell if you're being cleverly ironic or just so angry and frustrated that you're deliberately setting yourself up for a forum holiday?

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Gulch wrote:

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Kopogero wrote:

What you're reading on these forums it's only what GGG mods have allowed.

So?
It's their forum. If they want to only allow threads about coffee cups they have every right to do just that.

Nothing is stopping you from making your own forum with your own ruleset.

This is actually false because companies will try-hard to shut you down once you become bad for the brand.

People said "just make your own twitter if u dislike twitter censorship"

So one was actually made, and it was smashed off the face of internet in just few months after getting popular. (parler)

several companies denied it their services.[40] Apple and Google removed Parler's mobile app from their app stores, and Parler went offline on January 10, 2021, when Amazon Web Services canceled its hosting services.[41][42][43] Before it went offline in January 2021, according to Parler, the service had about 15 million total users.[44]

Parler at least had the resources to resume its activity, but some dude with 50000 poe users would just never be able to relaunch if big corps decided that the forum does not follow woke rules or that it is bad for some big brand.

I've seen many pages with less than 500k users to get blacklisted by providers for allowing free speech. Then they were renamed, hosted under different names etc but it was eventually found out and shut down again.
Even after magically getting server AND provider, you can get shut down by single troll with DDOS, DDOS protection actually works for most pages today thru amazon, alphabet Inc. cloud services so if they denny u service for any random reason u are screwed. From one of their pages"Cloudflare’s 90 Tbps network blocks an average of 87 billion threats per day"
so saying "nothing is stopping you or nobody is stopping you" is just not how the real world works
It is pretty much like saying"do not like 'merica? Make your own country" yeah gl with that.

All it takes is single dedicated troll to shut down any page with under 1m users. Just make up stuff about the page not being woke enough and then ddos it=job done.

People just do not have botomless pit of resources and contacts to keep their pages alive.

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Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

Are you OK dude? I can't tell if you're being cleverly ironic or just so angry and frustrated that you're deliberately setting yourself up for a forum holiday?

The secret police will do what they will. There's no point trying to avoid it. Since, as I also pointed out to you about your 'rule', it's arbitrary. Which you can also see in others' experiences with them that've been shared here (such as that of Shagsbeard). Anyway, I notice you haven't answered the critique...

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3163284/page/3#p24255451

Oh, and some forum 'holidays' can be permanent. There is no justice in any of it - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2882810

Rule number 1 in life: Don't be a dick.

Personally I think it's all encompassing and quite clear. If a user is outright being a dick to others, abusive, belittling, trolling then it's pretty clear they know they're being a dick.

If a user has to question whether their forum post might be bit dickish, then they're definitely being a dick. For example, trying to be 'clever' and skirt around the rules such as pseudo posting about religion, politics or moderation decisions. Being snide, a smart-arse or adopting the "two wrongs make a right" approach.

We've all seen dick behaviour on all those police traffic shows. You know, where the guy pulled over spouts the old "My taxes pay your wages" or "The two guys in front of me were speeding too, you're discriminating against me!".

People can discuss differing perspectives on game aspects and even fail to reach consensus but still remain polite and considerate. GGG are even very generous in permitting quite harsh criticism of their game on their forums, something that doesn't always happen for other game developers. There are limits to this but I find that quite reasonable.

If people don't like speeding tickets, they just need to not speed.

If forums users don't like being on probation, they just need to not be dicks.

Or to look at it from the opposite perspective and learn from the great and wise Dalton: Be nice.

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Exile009 wrote:

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V3n05 wrote:

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V3n05 wrote:

If you bother to read ANY of my comments on this thread properly, you're going to realize that any company or organization or citizen has to abide by the rules set forth by the government of NZ, which the ADA1992 prevents slanderous acts.

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Exile009 wrote:

There is nothing in ADA1992 or indeed any other NZ law that mandates that they restrict discussions of politics or religion

Ummm, what?

What indeed? You're going on about NZ law and slander, I'm pointing out how that has nothing to do with their change to the CoC rules. That's why I said you're avoiding the subject. Their old CoC was already in alignment with NZ law. The old forums were already in alignment with NZ law.

So if I talk about the health of eating apples, you're gonna bring up how sharks can be dangerous. You need to understand the difference between topics. I not once made any claim that NZ law regarding slander was related to the topic of the changes in GGG's CoC. You're trying to make a connection because you think it'll affect my argument, but I'm making two different claims, and the original conversation was regarding NZ slander law, not politics or the changes in the CoC in 2019. The point you originally responded to was what I mentioned towards OP regarding NZ slander law. Your comment attacking me that got deleted was responding to the original topic of, you guessed it, NZ slander law.

Stop changing the topic to politics when nothing I mentioned about NZ law is related to the other topic at hand with the changes to the CoC. So yes, WHAT?!