Google’s Phil Harrison, the general manager over Stadia, revealed in a recent interview that the Stadia team will be addressing “toxic” gamer behavior by “insulating” it away from the rest of the platform. What does that mean exactly? I’m not entirely sure but they will be tackling it just like Blizzard and Twitch have set about tackling “toxicity” in their communities, and we all know how that turned out.
In an interview with CNET that was published on March 21st, 2019, Harrison was asked how Google would address “abuse” and “toxic behavior”, saying…
“We’re going to work as hard as we can on that. I wish we could make some grand proclamation that it’s going to go away. I don’t think that is true. I think we can marginalize it to a large degree. And there are certain gamers who enjoy that type of communication. But that’s not what we want to associate with as a platform. And we will do everything we can to find it and insulated from the rest of what our platform is.
“There’s clearly some things that we can lean on from the rest of Google that will help us. We are investing in robust parental controls that will help at a more kind of account level mean that the right content is matched with the right age, you play with the right people, and you play with the content at the right time.”
The news definitely didn’t go down well with most gamers because most people all know exactly what this will mean in terms of censoring behavior, with game developer Mark Kern responding with a less than enthused outlook on how Google will handle their moderation of interactivity between gamers and behavior that people deem “toxic” and “abusive”.
Oofff….Looks like Google’s Stadia is going to be watching for toxic behavior and chat. I’m fine with moderation in chat, but this gets abused way too often now: https://t.co/6Qi7GWncL6
— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 22, 2019
Now before you assume that Google’s interpretation of “toxic” and “abusive” will be lenient or fair, take note that Google is a full-on SJW company, and that’s not hyperbole or an exaggeration.
Dr. Jordan Peterson tweeted out a document from one of Google’s diversity training sessions that took place back in February of 2018.
Google goes full social justice. You can’t imbibe just a little of the doctrine, without being infected by the entire https://t.co/vt1iiH5HiI. Here’s document one, for the “diversity training” as of Feb 2018, Allyship 101: pic.twitter.com/WEOlr2HP2L
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) March 22, 2019
Here’s a larger image of the text.
If you’re unable to read it, one section of the diversity training material reads…
“Whiteness is “a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justified by their not being white.” -Kivel, 1996, p. 19. Whiteness is a term to capture all of the dynamics that go into (1) being defined and/or perceived as white and (2) that create and reinforce white people as inherently superior through norms, systems, and institutions. Whiteness includes white dominant culture: values and ways of doing that are valued above all others. All people are socialized to see and value white dominant culture, and all can perform it. Whiteness grants material and psychological advantages that are often invisible and taken for granted. -Adapted from Robin DiAngelo, What it Means to Be White”
As you can see, Google won’t be applying the punishments fairly based on their own “diversity” training, which is inherently anti-white.
Given that their staff are encouraged to apply the principles laid out in the session, you can expect the same sort of overbearing and hamfisted censorship that we’ve come to expect from most other Left-standing platforms. Heck, in the document Google even advocates for “Social Justice”, with one section reading…
“Social Justice is a concern for equity, fairness, respect, and self-determination for all people. It is “social” in that (1) the skills it requires are those of inspiring, working with, and organizing others to accomplish together a civil society in which free citizens exercise self-government by doing for themselves what needs to be done, and that (2) it aims at the good of the community, not at the good of one agent only; its object, as well as its form, primarily involves the good of others. In the context of a community impacted by systematic oppression, social justice work is anti-oppression work. -adapted from Oxford Dictionaries and Defining Social Justice, by Michael Novak.”
So yeah, this is likely going to be one of those scenarios where someone says something “mean” to an easily triggered Liberal snowflake and the person will get banned or sanctioned, just like what Blizzard was doing to Overwatch players who had pepe memes on their Twitter profile or who kept only playing one character who was a straight, white male, or were being “toxic” outside of the game.
The real danger here isn’t just that you can get banned for offending an SJW, the real trouble is that any kind of progress, achievements, or investments you put into Stadia could be at risk if you get permanently banned from the platform or sanctioned in some way that restricts your access to the service.
Since you don’t own anything when it comes to Stadia, you’re completely eligible to lose everything at the whim of a trigger-happy Google employee eager to apply their diversity training against anyone who isn’t indoctrinated into the Social Justice mindset. And as revealed in the leaked screenshots from the James Damore lawsuit, Google is rife with SJW-laden employees.
It’s a scary thing putting any kind of industry control in the hands of what’s essentially ideological dictators.
(Thanks for the news tip ThyBonesConsumed and Mugen Tenshin)
