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IMPress Polly
06-15-2015, 12:17 PM
Yep, it's true, Reddit has finally banned GamerGate (http://digg.com/2015/the-misfits-of-reddit-arent-leaving?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email) under its new policy of cracking down on hate groups, which went into effect last Wednesday. The GamerGate scene's subreddit was among several shut down on day one of the new policy, as evidently the company felt that they were among the most obvious hate groups there. The significance of this development is that Reddit has been the main hub of operations for the movement since last August. Even though it's a decentralized movement, they still need central hubs through which to coordinate their intimidation campaigns, and with this development, together with 4Chan also banning them recently, options are running out. Naturally they've created replacement subreddits (which are themselves banned on sight) and new accounts on obscure Reddit clones like Voat that are not equipped to host groups of their size and thus now experience constant page crashes and load times of like 5 minutes between the pages that do load, making it all very inconvenient. All told, the largest of these replacement communities (the ones that are still surviving, that is) is less than 4,000 members strong; a far cry from the original subreddit's 150,000. They seem to be getting worn down by the process of having to find new locations every few hours.

4Chan and Reddit are not the easiest places to get banned from, but, under these sorts of new policies anyway, it happens when some of your group's common activities include the issuing of rape and death threats, hacking into other people's accounts to get their personal information and posting it online, flooding other people's accounts with depictions of them being sexually assaulted, and all manner of other illegal activities. They've driven quite a large number of women out of the gaming business at this point and I get very, VERY tired of dealing with them in the game communities that I frequent. They know me and treat me as you might expect. I couldn't be happier to see them finally face some consequences! They've well-earned the stigma and appear to be at long last fading into the background as a result of these new developments. My only hope going forward is the finishing blow: I hope (but don't at all expect) that the game industry will publicly denounce these people at E3 in the coming days. They won't. They're too dependent on these people's money. But it would be nice. In any event, I think this is the beginning of the end of their reactionary movement.

Captain Obvious
06-15-2015, 12:21 PM
I'm so disconnected but that's not a bad thing.

I know Reddit has a cool dirty section, that's about it.

Peter1469
06-15-2015, 04:17 PM
I don't know what Reddit is. Or GamerGate for that matter.

GrassrootsConservative
06-15-2015, 04:27 PM
I don't know what Reddit is. Or GamerGate for that matter.

A quick google search reveals they appear to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from Polly. They're not interested in games being made by women or being based on women, and since there's only a select handful of games with that specific qualification I've enjoyed, I'm inclined to agree with them.

/Edit: But I'm also not a nerdgin and I don't pretend to be one on the internet, so maybe I'm not the best person to ask.

Green Arrow
06-15-2015, 04:29 PM
A quick google search reveals they appear to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from Polly. They're not interested in games being made by women or being based on women, and since there's only a select handful of games with that specific qualification I've enjoyed, I'm inclined to agree with them.

/Edit: But I'm also not a nerdgin and I don't pretend to be one on the internet, so maybe I'm not the best person to ask.

It's more than that, they actually are trying to keep women from making games for and about women at all. It's not just, "Meh, I don't care for that game." They are flat-out trying to completely remove women from the gaming universe to the point where they are actually sending death threats and rape threats to women gamers and game developers.

GrassrootsConservative
06-15-2015, 04:32 PM
It's more than that, they actually are trying to keep women from making games for and about women at all. It's not just, "Meh, I don't care for that game." They are flat-out trying to completely remove women from the gaming universe to the point where they are actually sending death threats and rape threats to women gamers and game developers.

Yeah, I'm getting to that now. :shocked:

There's a whole wikipedia page just on their controversy.

But I don't think speech should be silenced or banned just because I disagree with it.

I consider this a loss of liberties. If those threats turn into violence obviously my opinion will change.

Green Arrow
06-15-2015, 04:33 PM
Yeah, I'm getting to that now. :shocked:

There's a whole wikipedia page just on their controversy.

But I don't think speech should be silenced or banned just because I disagree with it.

I consider this a loss of liberties. If those threats turn into violence obviously my opinion will change.

Reddit is a private company. They have the right to silence any speech on their private property that they deem counter to their policies. It's not a loss of liberty.

GrassrootsConservative
06-15-2015, 04:35 PM
Reddit is a private company. They have the right to silence any speech on their private property that they deem counter to their policies. It's not a loss of liberty.

I didn't say otherwise. I know they're a private company and yes they have a right to silence any speech on their private property. Blah blah blah. Nothing I don't already know.

They shouldn't silence speech just because they disagree with it. That's what I'm saying. And it is a loss of liberty. Just because it's not the government doesn't make it bad. Natural rights are natural rights.

Green Arrow
06-15-2015, 04:37 PM
I didn't say otherwise. I know they're a private company and yes they have a right to silence any speech on their private property. Blah blah blah. Nothing I don't already know.

They shouldn't silence speech just because they disagree with it. That's what I'm saying. And it is a loss of liberty. Just because it's not the government doesn't make it bad. Natural rights are natural rights.

It's not a loss of liberty because they aren't being prevented from giving their opinion. They are just having to give their opinion somewhere else.

Just like it's not a loss of liberty if you come into my house and insult my wife, and I kick your ass out the door. You have the right to freedom of speech, but you do not have the right to use that freedom anywhere you please. It's the whole thing of your freedom to swing your arms around in circles stops at my nose.

GrassrootsConservative
06-15-2015, 04:40 PM
They were not insulting reddit's wife.

Green Arrow
06-15-2015, 04:41 PM
They were not insulting reddit's wife.

No, they were issuing death threats and rape threats against other redditors, and that's illegal. And immoral. And it bothered reddit, so reddit solved the problem.

Which they have every right to do.

GrassrootsConservative
06-15-2015, 04:46 PM
Nvm dude.

IMPress Polly
06-16-2015, 12:14 PM
Peter wrote:
I don't know what Reddit is. Or GamerGate for that matter.

Reddit's a social media service. (Well I guess you could've figured that much out through context clues though, so I guess I prolly wasn't very helpful just there, was I? :wink:)

GamerGate is a movement within the game-o-sphere that advocates for the preservation of, and I quote, "traditional gamer culture", which seems to mean driving women out of the gaming business systematically through large-scale online intimidation campaigns threatening violence and hacking into their target's accounts and posting their personal information online, that sort of thing. Through these sorts of techniques, these people and their ideological ancestors have managed to get online game magazines to fire female writers over things like scoring a favorite game of their's too low (perhaps a mere 9 out of 10 for example), to get games cancelled mid-development over the developer's decision to include a playable female co-star (e.g. a certain Mega Man game that I was really looking forward to!), to get several female developers to quit making video games for fear of their lives, and to force a notable culture critic (a much-cited favorite of mine, Anita Sarkeesian) to flee her home amid credible threats to kill her and her entire family. They claim to be fighting corruption in the gaming business. Judge for yourself based on this list of accomplishments.

kilgram
06-24-2015, 04:27 PM
I don't know what Reddit is. Or GamerGate for that matter.
Seriously you don't know Reddit :) O.o

kilgram
06-24-2015, 04:29 PM
Yeah, I'm getting to that now. :shocked:

There's a whole wikipedia page just on their controversy.

But I don't think speech should be silenced or banned just because I disagree with it.

I consider this a loss of liberties. If those threats turn into violence obviously my opinion will change.
Threats are violence.

IMPress Polly
06-25-2015, 06:20 PM
Wow, did you see this year's E3?! This will go down as the gaming world's Year of the Woman without a doubt! For the first time ever, among other things, the majority of games previewed at E3 will, at minimum, allow players to use female avatars. Nothing even close to that has ever happened before! While we're still a long way from parity, I think that, combined with the recent developments on 4Chan and Reddit, the GamerGate people have now been relegated to the margins of the game-O-sphere (finally!) and we've taken nothing less than a radical leap toward parity. I'll speak more on this in a separate thread on Saturday.

PattyHill
06-25-2015, 09:38 PM
I didn't say otherwise. I know they're a private company and yes they have a right to silence any speech on their private property. Blah blah blah. Nothing I don't already know.

They shouldn't silence speech just because they disagree with it. That's what I'm saying. And it is a loss of liberty. Just because it's not the government doesn't make it bad. Natural rights are natural rights.


But if you preached that kind of shit on this board, you'd be banned. I wouldn't feel bad about that. Lots of other places to spread hate.

iustitia
06-25-2015, 09:44 PM
Anita Sarkeesian is a lying whore. Just saying. The fact that John Oliver included her in his online harassment segment made me lose respect for him.

Ethereal
06-25-2015, 10:04 PM
You have to keep in mind the penchant of some feminists to misrepresent their opponent's views and to resort to grossly authoritarian measures whenever they sense disagreement.

iustitia
06-25-2015, 10:05 PM
You have to keep in mind the penchant of some feminists to misrepresent their opponent's views and to resort to grossly authoritarian measures whenever they sense disagreement.

lol So always?

Ethereal
06-25-2015, 10:09 PM
lol So always?

No, not always. It's usually the Marxist subset of feminists who resort to such. If you disagree with them, then they have no problem labeling you a rape apologist or something along those lines. So I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the majority of gamer-gate people are not engaging in the types of behavior that Polly has accused them of.