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Chat-related punishments

The Ecdysiast··2 votes·258 views

######Disclaimer: Based on the threads of people who have been banned and responses from the Support team regarding this matter, the official stance of Riot is that context doesn't save you from punishment. This is merely a breakdown of why that is unfair/incorrect.

There are two important definitions to point out regarding this matter:

  1. Harassment: the act of annoying persistently

  2. Hate Speech: speech expressing hatred of a particular group of people

Harassment requires that the action(s) be repeated continuously. One instance of pointing out a mistake in a game is not harassment, and even multiple instances of calling players out only once each during a game is not harassment.

Hate speech requires that hatred be expressed. Single words alone are not hate speech. Here's a list of mean-spirited words, and I'll show you how each can be used both as hate speech, and devoid of hatred: c.nt, idiot, f.gg.t, n.gg., Jew.

Not hate speech (but can be harassment if used repeatedly to berate another player): "Fizz is a c.nt." "Our Darius is an idiot." "These f.gg.ts don't ward." "Gangplank got 90,000g in one game, what a Jew." "N.gg. that was stupid."

Hate speech: "All women are c.nts." "Men are idiots." "I hate f.gg.ts." "Jews are greedy." "Ekko stole his tech, what a n.gg.r."

11 Comments

zPOOPz3 votes

Not hate speech (but can be harassment if used repeatedly to berate another player): "Fizz is a c.nt." "Our Darius is an idiot." "These f.gg.ts don't ward." "Gangplank got 90,000g in one game, what a Jew." "N.gg. that was stupid."

False. The very usage of the word in any context is hate speech. In each of these examples, you are attaching negative connotations to the word of choice you use... Tell me that's not hate speech.

Imperial Pandaa1 votes

Jew is a difficult one by itself in my opinion. I admit bias because I use it with myself (never refer to others). In comms and someone gives a math/money problem, I answer "Trust me, I'm a jew."

Picking some random place to land in PUBG "There will e good loot there. Trust me, I'm a jew."

Even in LoL. pings gold recalls buys item Ally: "Why buy that first?" Me: "Good investment. My Jew senses were tingling."

Granted I don't always type it in LoL but will usually make jokes in comms (which of course don't matter.), but is it still Hate Speech?

zPOOPz1 votes

You are stereotyping Jews...

Imperial Pandaa1 votes

Then would it make a difference if I said Jewish?

Yes, the game doesn't know I am a Jew, but if I am nit upsetting the audience (whoever hears/sees) is it still hate speech?

I agree that connotation matters and that is where the line is. "I'm a Jew, Happy Chanukah" isn't hate speech to me. "Dirty Jews" would be hate speech though.

zPOOPz1 votes

but if I am nit upsetting the audience (whoever hears/sees) is it still hate speech?

The answer is 100% no because if the audience is not upset = no report = no IFS

The Ecdysiast1 votes

{quoted}

You are stereotyping Jews...

Hatred.

A stereotype is not automatically hatred. To say that black guys are generally athletic or that asians are good at math are stereotypes, but do not imply any hate. Likewise, to say that Jews are generally wealthy also does not imply hate. To say they are greedy would, but that is not the same.

Chermorg1 votes

I agree with you for the most part, but the part I disagree with you on is the most important part. And it's not so much a disagreement, but something you've left out.

There are words (and phrases) that have become so widely accepted as hate speech in society that there is no appropriate use of them. If you're calling Fizz a c.nt, why is that word insulting to Fizz? The word is insulting because its root is as a slang word for a female and/or her privates. Likewise, if you say "These f....ts don't ward", why is that word useful in the sentence? It is only useful because of its negative connotation being used to berate and dehumanize LGBTQ populations for decades.

There are certain words whose only meaning is hateful. The "n word" is never not hateful - no matter how much certain people try to claim it's okay. Coincidentally, these people tend to say it's okay when some people use it, but not okay when others do - which is in and of itself a discriminatory thing to say. The bottom line is that the list of hate speech Riot uses for "zero tolerance" is not large at all, and is limited only to those words whose sole connotation and meaning has inherent hate in them.

On a side, off topic note, I do enjoy reading your posts - you are very good at writing your posts and I commend you on being willing to express what you know is a controversial and/or unpopular opinion.

The Ecdysiast1 votes

{quoted}

I agree with you for the most part, but the part I disagree with you on is the most important part. And it's not so much a disagreement, but something you've left out.

There are words (and phrases) that have become so widely accepted as hate speech in society that there is no appropriate use of them. If you're calling Fizz a c.nt, why is that word insulting to Fizz? The word is insulting because its root is as a slang word for a female and/or her privates. Likewise, if you say "These f....ts don't ward", why is that word useful in the sentence? It is only useful because of its negative connotation being used to berate and dehumanize LGBTQ populations for decades.

There are certain words whose only meaning is hateful. The "n word" is never not hateful - no matter how much certain people try to claim it's okay. Coincidentally, these people tend to say it's okay when some people use it, but not okay when others do - which is in and of itself a discriminatory thing to say. The bottom line is that the list of hate speech Riot uses for "zero tolerance" is not large at all, and is limited only to those words whose sole connotation and meaning has inherent hate in them.

On a side, off topic note, I do enjoy reading your posts - you are very good at writing your posts and I commend you on being willing to express what you know is a controversial and/or unpopular opinion.

Well, I left that out for two reasons: because I'd already written a decent amount about the subject on a recent comment so it slipped my mind to repeat, lol, and because the origins of a word do not mean a direct association with the modern meaning and use of the word. Yes, f....t and c..t are insults because they came from a much harsher use, but that doesn't mean they maintain that harsh connotation in anonymous online chat. On 4chan, everyone refers to themselves and eachother as f.gs whether or not they're on the lgbt board. And c.nt is akin to b.tch in that it's normally used to refer to a woman who is acting rude, annoying, etc. and not to imply she is acting that way because she is a woman. Similar to how the use of n.gg. in rap lyrics is simply a term used to refer to a man, which you claim is hateful regardless of the context and I argue is only hateful if specifically used to speak to someone of African decent as if they were lesser. And -- conversely-- how watermelon evolved from a symbol of pride for freed slaves to a racist stereotype.

I am glad you appreciate my posts. I try to put enough effort into them to be taken seriously whether people agree with me or not.

Chermorg1 votes

I certainly take you seriously. You are, as an analogy that isn't really an analogy, that one poster who is not posting "wow zoe OP" on gameplay, but instead actually posts reasoning :P

I can kinda understand where you're coming from - in which words may have different meanings online, but I cannot say I agree with that. I think one of the reasons 4chan uses that word is precisely because of its hateful meaning and the fact that 4chan is a shock site. I don't think words can have different meanings just because of the manner in which they are written/spoken.

I do agree that in some contexts words may not be hateful. As you say though (rap music and/or possibly black friends - I use the term black as it's the term we use in the medical field, as African American is both a misnomer and could lead to deadly consequences if we mislabel people during treatment, but I digress) - there are some very limited circumstances in which the word may be acceptable. I also do not subscribe to this idea that floats around that "the n word is okay when X people [race, color, gender, area of the city, etc] use it but nobody else" - that is literally antithesis to what they purport to be for (the desensitization of the word). You cannot take a racist word and through racism eliminate the racism. I digress again, I think.

The point I'm trying to make is that while these are great social debates to have, there is no situation in a video game where those words are okay when strangers are involved. If they're okay between friends - then fine - your friends won't report you. Once there's a stranger, they aren't your friend - thus it is no longer okay to use. If the word is okay when certain population use it, that is your opinion - and if you're with 4 people who share that opinion, fine, they won't report you. But when there's a stranger, you do not know their opinion on the word, and they may very well subscribe to what is still the majority view in the NA region that it is hateful.

I can all but guarantee that Riot is constantly reviewing their systems. I sincerely do hope that we can get rid of racism - it's a wish for world peace, but I can hope. We may get rid of these words from the vocabulary entirely, or they may lose their racist connotations. However, we are nowhere near there yet, and for many people, the "n word", "c word", "f word", and especially the "r word" have great potential to reopen wounds that are closed and nowhere near healed. I have my own personal story regarding one of those words and why I absolutely hate seeing it used by a stranger, but that's not what this post is for. The bottom line to me is that a video game is not the place to test words meanings or rewrite them.

The Ecdysiast1 votes

We can agree to disagree on several aspects of the argument. On 4chan, everyone's a "-f.g" because it's just a way to refer to themselves as users of the site. And I think that the very fact it is anonymous, both here and there, means that hatred is entirely reliant on the content of the message. It should be assumed that we are all friends here, especially teammates but including opponents because we all love to play this game. No one knows anything about you besides that unless you let it be known, so calling you a f.gg.t when they can't know you're gay cannot imply hatred of homosexuals. If a player belongs to a particular group for whom common trash talk on video game chat can also be hate speech, then it is their responsibility to make it known that it will be taken as such-- because otherwise it should be assumed we're among friends.

This should be the conditions for something being taken as hate speech specifically because there have been people who were falsely reported as having said hate speech who were punished because they called a friend a slur. The report is false because the enemy could not see that chat, but they got lucky that their false report picked up on the enemy's chat. Sure, that's not everyone, but punishment systems need to have rules in place to protect the innocent, not condemn every slight on a person's feelings.

The biggest disagreement we have is that I firmly believe that we have already reached the point where many words have lost their hateful connotations--- but only in the sphere of the gaming community. No, you can't just call someone these things to their face or in a situation where you both know enough about each other to pick a slur that matches some group they belong to. But in an anonymous setting, you cannot know enough about a person to exhibit hatred of any characteristic of their person unless they tell it to you.

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