<story><title>MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/30/21308677/microsoft-forza-player-ban-confederate-flag-hate-symbols</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>reaperducer</author><text>Why ban the players, and not just the design?&lt;p&gt;I once ran a large online forum and set up a word filter to replace certain phrases with &amp;quot;fluffy bunnies&amp;quot; and other absurdities.  It did a remarkable job of improving discourse once the foul-mouthed types realized their hateful messages were being massaged.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft could use some kind of super-cool AI-drived ML-based image recognition to replace the flag with a rainbow flag or something.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ApolloFortyNine</author><text>&amp;gt;I once ran a large online forum and set up a word filter to replace certain phrases with &amp;quot;fluffy bunnies&amp;quot; and other absurdities. It did a remarkable job of improving discourse once the foul-mouthed types realized their hateful messages were being massaged.&lt;p&gt;Really? When I&amp;#x27;ve seen this done, all that happens is you end up the &amp;#x27;approved&amp;#x27; word. Everyone knows what it means though. So I guess if all you care about is the word itself, and not the meaning of it, it does work great. In reality if every instance of &amp;#x27;shit&amp;#x27; is replaced with &amp;#x27;barnacle&amp;#x27;, if I call you a &amp;#x27;barnacle head&amp;#x27; on said forum, we both know what I&amp;#x27;m saying.</text></comment>
<story><title>MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/30/21308677/microsoft-forza-player-ban-confederate-flag-hate-symbols</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>reaperducer</author><text>Why ban the players, and not just the design?&lt;p&gt;I once ran a large online forum and set up a word filter to replace certain phrases with &amp;quot;fluffy bunnies&amp;quot; and other absurdities.  It did a remarkable job of improving discourse once the foul-mouthed types realized their hateful messages were being massaged.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft could use some kind of super-cool AI-drived ML-based image recognition to replace the flag with a rainbow flag or something.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GuiA</author><text>I played similar games when I ran forums, but really you&amp;#x27;re just shuffling the problem around. Bored trolls&amp;#x2F;extreme ideologues will be delighted to play cat and mouse with your measures, and will feel particularly proud of themselves when they circumvent them creatively.&lt;p&gt;In the end, you have to decide what outcome you want - using half effective measures hoping that the racists will keep it down, or kicking them out and making it clear that they aren&amp;#x27;t welcome? You can&amp;#x27;t have it both ways.</text></comment>