An open letter to Microsoft (*)
Inspired by a recent Penny Arcade video, which proposes the idea that the problem of the current culture of harassment and hate in online gaming communities can be fixed, I sent the following to Microsoft.
If you care about the environment in which our young people gaming, and want to do something like it, here's the link: https://help.xbox.com/default.aspx?productkey=xbox360live&mkt=en-us&st=1&wfxredirect=1
Please do something about online harassment on XBoxLive (tm).
Before reading this, please note: I'm not subject to harassment. I'm white, male, straight, and completely uncaring what driveling 14-year-olds think. But their hate speech cannot be tolerated by any thinking person.
And it shouldn't be tolerated by a corporation, either: it drives away a large percentage of female users.
Please consider adding any or all of the following:
1) The right to address the world (voice or chat to people not on your friends list) must be earned somehow. This limits the creation of new ghost accounts to circumvent whatever else you do. It doesn't block this, but it does limit it, and makes it more expensive.
2) Be more proactive about complaints and people who get muted significantly more often than other players. Be cautious about setting this limit: it's subject to being manipulated like anything else in gaming. But pay attention to it.
3) Make clans, guilds, whatever responsible for the actions of their members, by creating a group decency reputation metric. I'm not talking about how effective they are: I'm talking about their human decency.
And give the metric teeth: Negative values should decrease the effectiveness of all members of the group.
In order to do this, you need to provide a method by which people are limited in their ability to proclaim membership in guilds/clans/whatever.
Thanks for reading this. Please listen: I'm right in both a moral and a financial sense.
Hate speech is bad for business.
(*) Please read the post: I'm not actually thinking that an "open letter" will reach them. Hit the link.
If you care about the environment in which our young people gaming, and want to do something like it, here's the link: https://help.xbox.com/default.aspx?productkey=xbox360live&mkt=en-us&st=1&wfxredirect=1
Please do something about online harassment on XBoxLive (tm).
Before reading this, please note: I'm not subject to harassment. I'm white, male, straight, and completely uncaring what driveling 14-year-olds think. But their hate speech cannot be tolerated by any thinking person.
And it shouldn't be tolerated by a corporation, either: it drives away a large percentage of female users.
Please consider adding any or all of the following:
1) The right to address the world (voice or chat to people not on your friends list) must be earned somehow. This limits the creation of new ghost accounts to circumvent whatever else you do. It doesn't block this, but it does limit it, and makes it more expensive.
2) Be more proactive about complaints and people who get muted significantly more often than other players. Be cautious about setting this limit: it's subject to being manipulated like anything else in gaming. But pay attention to it.
3) Make clans, guilds, whatever responsible for the actions of their members, by creating a group decency reputation metric. I'm not talking about how effective they are: I'm talking about their human decency.
And give the metric teeth: Negative values should decrease the effectiveness of all members of the group.
In order to do this, you need to provide a method by which people are limited in their ability to proclaim membership in guilds/clans/whatever.
Thanks for reading this. Please listen: I'm right in both a moral and a financial sense.
Hate speech is bad for business.
(*) Please read the post: I'm not actually thinking that an "open letter" will reach them. Hit the link.