BAN THE DISCORD TEMPEST RISING MODS FOR ABSUIVE POWER

[JuDgEpowr]

i can't say anything or freedom speech in your tempest rising discord. you cancers, didin't even give me a warning worst discord ever un-banned me you cancers I HOPE YOUR LOOKING AT THIS . Anyone else experience this put it here.

[space]

there's no freedom of speech on discord or on steam forums

[Zaxx]

Welcome to the 3D Realms Discord experience. 🤣

[Magpie]

Yeah I wouldn't even bother it's just going to be an echo-chamber of noobs circle-jerking leading up to release. Any critical thought or negative feedback will be labelled as 'trolling' and they will collectively fill their diapers until mods intervene and ban you.

I don't even have to join to know that's how it is. A hugbox like that is not worth your time.

[ЯΛZIΣL]

discord is a cancer and trash your info can be hacked along with your passwords and logins for anything on your computer its s h eet

[𝚔𝚁𝚊𝚣𝚢𝚢𝚘𝙽.]

welcome to the "modern" world where only positive garbage is allowed and your own opinion is not.

[Deathstroke72]

Why do you think Discord is so popular? It's suitable for creating bubbles where only one opinion is allowed.

[Gunschlinger]

You used your freedom of speech and now you need to life with the consequences and looking at op's post i think this ban is more then deserved lmao

[Saber Eric]

Originally posted by JuDgEpowr:

i can't say anything or freedom speech in your tempest rising discord. you cancers, didin't even give me a warning worst discord ever un-banned me you cancers I HOPE YOUR LOOKING AT THIS . Anyone else experience this put it here.

I can chime in here on this. We have a zero-tolerance policy for harassing people within our community. Your behavior has been very aggressive and toxic over the course of years in multiple places surrounding the Tempest Rising community. Since you did not stop this behavior, you have been banned.

This will now carry over to this forum. I hope that you enjoy playing the game and learn to look at yourself before blaming others. Enjoy Tempest Rising.

[Blackmage]

Originally posted by JuDgEpowr:

i can't say anything or freedom speech in your tempest rising discord. you cancers, didin't even give me a warning worst discord ever un-banned me you cancers I HOPE YOUR LOOKING AT THIS . Anyone else experience this put it here.

When you act this rudely to rejection, I don't blame them for kicking you out. I would too.

[Zaxx]

Originally posted by Blackmage:

When you act this rudely to rejection, I don't blame them for kicking you out. I would too.

Eh, that's a bit of a slippery slope though considering the dev response which might signify a few issues with their moderation too.

The thing is that I always take accusations like "harassing people" with a grain of salt because I also happened to find myself in situations where something like a somewhat heated discussion turned into mods suddenly accusing me of harassing the person. It was very obviously not true and nothing more than the exchanging of perspectives. Stuff like that just happens if you like discussing all kinds of topic on the internet.

On top of that it's not ideal for a company to antagonize the paying customer, period. The person has a mouse icon next to his nickname so they pre-ordered the game so uh... yeah that should be avoided.

There is also the notion that this is a person who "has been very aggressive and toxic over the course of years in multiple places surrounding the Tempest Rising community". Looking at the post history on Steam he has exactly 2 comments, those being this OP and there's also a joke about masturbation. So when it comes to the Steam community we can safely say that that couldn't be what the moderator was referring to. What else then? Reddit? I don't know of any more official social media spaces surrounding Tempest Rising and the notion that they might have been keeping tabs on an individual to the point that they know of his post history in unofficial spaces related to TR (that could be anything) sounds troubling.

Also: when it comes to "zero-tolerance policies" and company owned Discord servers that usually means "yeah we sometimes just ban you for marketing reasons and we have very loose interpretations to words like harassment or trolling" As in it's a bad look to have frequent negativity in a community that is being maintained purely for promotional purposes. Having that approach is usually misguided and by doing that publishers and developers tend to lose sales and valuable avenues of player feedback. And then they lash out at an imaginary portion of gamers and act shocked when nobody bought a product and it's flopping. Doing pre-launch "cleanup ban waves" is also fairly common.

All that being said sure, the OP here is very rude and it's hard to take seriously but it also looks like a post written in anger and eh, anyone can have a bad day. And of course we don't have receipts from either side so no real argument here, I was just really hoping for some juicy toxicity in the OPs post history after the moderator post and was deeply disappointed. :D

[Cat]

I don't like discords but Your attitude here shows why you were kicked out.

[startrekmike]

Originally posted by Zaxx:

Originally posted by Blackmage:

When you act this rudely to rejection, I don't blame them for kicking you out. I would too.

Eh, that's a bit of a slippery slope though considering the dev response which might signify a few issues with their moderation too.

The thing is that I always take accusations like "harassing people" with a grain of salt because I also happened to find myself in situations where something like a somewhat heated discussion turned into mods suddenly accusing me of harassing the person. It was very obviously not true and nothing more than the exchanging of perspectives. Stuff like that just happens if you like discussing all kinds of topic on the internet.

On top of that it's not ideal for a company to antagonize the paying customer, period. The person has a mouse icon next to his nickname so they pre-ordered the game so uh... yeah that should be avoided.

There is also the notion that this is a person who "has been very aggressive and toxic over the course of years in multiple places surrounding the Tempest Rising community". Looking at the post history on Steam he has exactly 2 comments, those being this OP and there's also a joke about masturbation. So when it comes to the Steam community we can safely say that that couldn't be what the moderator was referring to. What else then? Reddit? I don't know of any more official social media spaces surrounding Tempest Rising and the notion that they might have been keeping tabs on an individual to the point that they know of his post history in unofficial spaces related to TR (that could be anything) sounds troubling.

Also: when it comes to "zero-tolerance policies" and company owned Discord servers that usually means "yeah we sometimes just ban you for marketing reasons and we have very loose interpretations to words like harassment or trolling" As in it's a bad look to have frequent negativity in a community that is being maintained purely for promotional purposes. Having that approach is usually misguided and by doing that publishers and developers tend to lose sales and valuable avenues of player feedback. And then they lash out at an imaginary portion of gamers and act shocked when nobody bought a product and it's flopping. Doing pre-launch "cleanup ban waves" is also fairly common.

All that being said sure, the OP here is very rude and it's hard to take seriously but it also looks like a post written in anger and eh, anyone can have a bad day. And of course we don't have receipts from either side so no real argument here, I was just really hoping for some juicy toxicity in the OPs post history after the moderator post and was deeply disappointed. :D

In my experience, Discord servers share a lot in common with the forums of the 90's and very early 2000's. They are spaces where moderation is a lot more hands-on and when a company is running the server, that moderation is usually much broader and much more proactive than many are used to. This is perhaps the core problem. A lot of people have been conditioned to accept very, very poor behavior online as "normal". You often see people come to one community complaining about how they were banned from another even though they "didn't do anything bad". When you go check what they actually said, it isn't unusual to find that they did indeed break clearly marked rules (sometimes over and over despite warnings).

People who have a lot of problems with online moderation usually are the ones who lack the self-awareness to understand when they are acting out and breaking the rules that prompt moderation. They will come up with some conspiracy theories and rant about their gross misunderstanding of "free speech" but it usually just comes down to them thinking that acting out with insults and hostility is "normal" and that everyone else is the problem.

[Zaxx]

Originally posted by startrekmike:

In my experience, Discord servers share a lot in common with the forums of the 90's and very early 2000's. They are spaces where moderation is a lot more hands-on and when a company is running the server, that moderation is usually much broader and much more proactive than many are used to. This is perhaps the core problem. A lot of people have been conditioned to accept very, very poor behavior online as "normal". You often see people come to one community complaining about how they were banned from another even though they "didn't do anything bad". When you go check what they actually said, it isn't unusual to find that they did indeed break clearly marked rules (sometimes over and over despite warnings).

People who have a lot of problems with online moderation usually are the ones who lack the self-awareness to understand when they are acting out and breaking the rules that prompt moderation. They will come up with some conspiracy theories and rant about their gross misunderstanding of "free speech" but it usually just comes down to them thinking that acting out with insults and hostility is "normal" and that everyone else is the problem.

Yeah there is some truth in that but really when it comes to "free speech" arguments I think that a lot of that misunderstanding has to do with a lack of proper wording instead of actual antisocial behavior. Usually it's easy to point out if a person doesn't understand that freedom of speech has boundaries in a corporate environment but that's just the thing: these spaces are not supposed to be corporate environments, they just get moderated as such in that context.

And these places are generally very overpoliced, for example the reason why I don't frequent them is because you get the sense that the moderation is just constantly bugging people, that removes all chill and creates these weirdly frustrated spaces where I generally don't feel comfortable.

Especially when you're discussing a game and its issues it's easy to use shorthand expressions that are absolutely normal in a gaming discussion but can be misinterpreted as personal attacks if a developer happens to read it. Like let's say that you say that some part of a game feels lazy, that usually means that some aspect of it feel unpolished or underdeveloped but you use the term "lazy" because it's way shorter to write in chat and everyone knows how you mean it. Well, not if you're a developer who's been reading negative comments and reviews for the last 8 hours and starts going crazy over it. That's how "harassment" is created on those servers.

The personal attack argument for a corporate owned Discord server is another slippery slope. For example let's say that 10 years ago I hop on an Activision-Blizzard owned Discord server and say that Bobby Kotick, the CEO of the company is an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I can get banned for that because I personally attacked Bobby Kotick even though it's absolutely legal to voice opinions like that about public figures because it's obvious that you're not attacking his person but rather his company and his leadership skills.

Now I'm not saying that all of it is bad and that it is all misguided, I do have moderation rights on a corporate owned gaming Discord community and I believe that we're doing a good job there at not harassing the paying customer. But I'm also a mod on the fan maintained side of the same community and know that the corporate side has more rules that limit expression so that's not the place where real, more meaningful discussions tend to happen. Most companies know that though so they lurk those spaces for feedback instead of the ones that they have a tight grip on.

And of course trolls exist, people with bad manners exist and people have bad days too so it's not a black and white argument. But let's just say that I think that we must have very different forum goer experiences from the 90s. :D Like to me an ideal gaming community is one that resembles a pub where people can discuss their hobby and pubs usually don't have the speech police in them.

[startrekmike]

Originally posted by Zaxx:

Originally posted by startrekmike:

In my experience, Discord servers share a lot in common with the forums of the 90's and very early 2000's. They are spaces where moderation is a lot more hands-on and when a company is running the server, that moderation is usually much broader and much more proactive than many are used to. This is perhaps the core problem. A lot of people have been conditioned to accept very, very poor behavior online as "normal". You often see people come to one community complaining about how they were banned from another even though they "didn't do anything bad". When you go check what they actually said, it isn't unusual to find that they did indeed break clearly marked rules (sometimes over and over despite warnings).

People who have a lot of problems with online moderation usually are the ones who lack the self-awareness to understand when they are acting out and breaking the rules that prompt moderation. They will come up with some conspiracy theories and rant about their gross misunderstanding of "free speech" but it usually just comes down to them thinking that acting out with insults and hostility is "normal" and that everyone else is the problem.

Yeah there is some truth in that but really when it comes to "free speech" arguments I think that a lot of that misunderstanding has to do with a lack of proper wording instead of actual antisocial behavior. Usually it's easy to point out if a person doesn't understand that freedom of speech has boundaries in a corporate environment but that's just the thing: these spaces are not supposed to be corporate environments, they just get moderated as such in that context.

And these places are generally very overpoliced, for example the reason why I don't frequent them is because you get the sense that the moderation is just constantly bugging people, that removes all chill and creates these weirdly frustrated spaces where I generally don't feel comfortable.

Especially when you're discussing a game and its issues it's easy to use shorthand expressions that are absolutely normal in a gaming discussion but can be misinterpreted as personal attacks if a developer happens to read it. Like let's say that you say that some part of a game feels lazy, that usually means that some aspect of it feel unpolished or underdeveloped but you use the term "lazy" because it's way shorter to write in chat and everyone knows how you mean it. Well, not if you're a developer who's been reading negative comments and reviews for the last 8 hours and starts going crazy over it. That's how "harassment" is created on those servers.

The personal attack argument for a corporate owned Discord server is another slippery slope. For example let's say that 10 years ago I hop on an Activision-Blizzard owned Discord server and say that Bobby Kotick, the CEO of the company is an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I can get banned for that because I personally attacked Bobby Kotick even though it's absolutely legal to voice opinions like that about public figures because it's obvious that you're not attacking his person but rather his company and his leadership skills.

Now I'm not saying that all of it is bad and that it is all misguided, I do have moderation rights on a corporate owned gaming Discord community and I believe that we're doing a good job there at not harassing the paying customer. But I'm also a mod on the fan maintained side of the same community and know that the corporate side has more rules that limit expression so that's not the place where real, more meaningful discussions tend to happen. Most companies know that though so they lurk those spaces for feedback instead of the ones that they have a tight grip on.

And of course trolls exist, people with bad manners exist and people have bad days too so it's not a black and white argument. But let's just say that I think that we must have very different forum goer experiences from the 90s. :D Like to me an ideal gaming community is one that resembles a pub where people can discuss their hobby and pubs usually don't have the speech police in them.

I think it is pretty fair to say that when you are on a Discord server, forum, or other community platform that is being run/moderated by a company (be it a developer, publisher, etc), you should assume that the rules are going to be more strict than what you might find on a fan-run community platform. This makes sense. A company/publisher/developer is only maintaining that community platform as part of a game's marketing and customer support. In effect, it is their house. They have to run it on the assumption that anyone and everyone will visit and it needs to be a place that doesn't turn people off because of poor behavior.

This gets back to that core issue. There is no "free speech" in these contexts. When you go to a place of business and start ranting about how the boss is lazy and the employees are out to get you, they will politely ask you to leave. If you don't, they will call security or the police and have you legally removed. It isn't a public space. You would not be stating "objective facts" or "just mild critique" or whatever. You would be disrupting a place of business and for all intents and purposes, a Discord server, forum or whatever can function the same way (and sometimes has to).

This gets us into the larger issue. You mention that you like a sort of "pub atmosphere" and that makes sense. We all want a sort of "third place" where we can talk freely among our peers. Even then, there are going to be limits. There are going to be topics that people learn not to bring up because it will escalate from banter to fistfights. There are things you don't say to the person at the bar next to you because you might end up getting a pitcher of beer or a cocktail thrown in your face. At a pub, you are really socializing with people who are right in front of you. There is none of the "bravery of being out of range" that one enjoys online. There may not be rules above the door to that pub but there are rules that are followed because of the kind of social contracts that naturally evolve in such contexts.

Things are different online. Behaviors that would never, ever be tolerated in person are aggressively normalized. Communities that would have been raided by Federal authorities in real life are able to intentionally spread via the social media threads that connect us all (even if we don't participate in social media ourselves). Back in the 90's this wasn't as much of an issue because communities were more isolated. You could have cesspools and sewers like 'Something Awful' or the earlier Chan boards but they didn't have the reach they have now. They were still the exception rather than the rule.

All that is different now. Entire generations have been raised online and largely in environments where 'Something Awful' and Chan board style interactions have been so normalized that people act surprised when they go into an online space where there are normal, reasonable rules in place. They cry about "censorship" just because they might not be allowed to call someone a bigoted slur or threaten someone with violence.

The days of the innocent "wild west of the internet" are over. The internet is now the mainstream. It is a part of normal people's lives and we would be breathtakingly stupid to believe that we can act however we like and not face any consequences.

[Dr.]

you can say what you want, that is freedom of speech, however freedom of speech doesnt include that other people need to listen to you or give you the platform to say what you want. your freedom of speech in those places ends if you start being abusive towards people.