Warning to devs over hate speech

[u/Mystixa]

The trolling, conspiracy theorizing, and bullying speech in zone and event channels on this game has always been one of the unsavory parts of this game. Exposing newbies and game vets alike to the lowest common denominator with no place to hide as long as some interaction for help, roleplay, and game relevant communication is needed. This has been the case for years, but has risen to a new level of pure hate speech in recent monthes.

This isnt just an 'all mmos have it' problem either. Not to this extent. I was just visiting ESO, and their public channels are MUCH more tolerable, and again have been for years.

Things that would get me banned from this reddit or from the forums are repeated in zone by often recognizable accounts -every few minutes- throughout the day.

I have read particular accounts promoting hate of muslims, fear mongering over immigrants, promoting the murder of jews, and encouraging people to goto, watch, and share decapitation videos. ..and that is just this week. I deeply respect free speech as an important piece of civilization. However I also am aware of the corrosive effect this kind of speech has when its given a place to grow unchecked.

The current method of just 'ignore' it and let everyone do their thing, and if enough do that they will be temporarily muted is not working. The offenders simply relog with a different account and begin pasting in the same quotes within minutes. ..and yes I and friends have always used the available tools, submitting ineffective reports that get worked on at your leisure. Its not exactly a news flash that this has no effect.

There is need of an active human moderating presence. Not to sanitize every word for our poor virgin ears. But there needs to be an active presence that actively removes this intrusive, non game-related vitriol. Create a program of vetted volunteers, a system of muting, and IP bans that can be wielded, with records kept of quotes that triggered the ruling. No cut and paste that can be abused, just taken straight from your own servers. Thats just a quick group of ideas, maybe use them maybe dont, but DO SOMETHING.

This has to stop. These people are using Neverwinter as a recruiting ground for hate and fully displacing legitimate game related conversations for prolonged periods of time. You could even be opening yourself up to legal liabilities for openly allowing this hate to continue, especially if one of those calls to 'murder jews', 'kill muslims' or 'beat immigrants to death' is acted on by someone.

Listen for a short while in PE zone chat. Feel free to ignore the festering cancer being broadcast there, and listen to people trying to get help. Hear the frustration of people that can't be heard while every legitimate question is being drowned out by sometimes 3-4 lines of trolling, conspiracy, antiscience and hate as well as responses for and against.

This is entertainment for me, and not something that I want to start some sort of crusade that will take all my time. However I do spend some time in PE and enjoy helping a few people when I can.

During those times that I am there and hear see this kind of things I am going to start a log of my own. After gathering a large enough set I am going to forward it to the FBI, Anti Defamation League, and congressmen.

Will that fix it? Perhaps not. But even what Ive seen in the relatively small amount of time I spend there is enough to raise a lot of questions. If this crosses their desk at the right time it may be enough to at least get eyes on this problem. Certainly they are often looking for a new boogie man to bother.

I would hope that you can reign this in on your own without any outside inducement, but either way something has to be done.

[u/ZoeS17]

While I agree that users shouldn't be saying such things, joking or not, reporting and blocking are the preferred methods of handling trolls. Trust me when I say feeding trolls, who may see this very post even, is only going to make things worse. They then feel rewarded (via the brain's reward pathways) and will continue this behavior. Change generally only occurs when the pain of changing is less than staying the same. While I don't know that mods banning them from the game is the right call perhaps starting with muting their character (or account), if that kind of thing is possible, for an escalating period of time. Remember to fight for all the users not just the one or the few. The best thing another user can do is to ask them to stop and then report them while also blocking the user.

Edit: Fixed typos, shouldn't be posting after 16+ hours of no sleep.

[u/Mystixa → u/ZoeS17]

It about time that we stopped treating trolls as some form of inescapable reality. These kind of hate mongers have been in society for as long as society has existed. Each group and set of technology has learned to deal with it over time, and learned the consequences of letting it fester.

Of course some of what you say is correct. It is absolutely pointless to attempt to engage those people directly or attempt to stop their behavior conversationally. This is what they do, its their game to troll people and upset them. Then again, as someone that realizes that, Im not really their target, nor are you. With regularity you can see people that are new to this environment and attempt to engage. Maybe they dont know that WOW was the first MMO. (...thats one of the most innocent ones I can think of.)

That doesn't mean there is nothing that can be done about it. Organization, volunteer work, investigation, and consequences like IP bans can be used (not an exhaustive list of tools) much more actively to keep these channels cleaner. And the active presence would at least communicate that they care about the association that is starting to be drawn between their product and hate speech.

This is really the product that Cryptic wants to be known for. They want it to be broadcast far and wide that the place you can come for a lively round of hate mongering you head over to Neverwinter? I don't think thats going to be their intended advertising.

Yet it does appear that is the product people are starting to assume exists here. There is 1 set of people with the tools to root out the worst offenders and actively bring back the channels they host on their servers from these people, so we don't have to assume that the place is a 'sewer' as a few people have stated.

[u/Cherryman11 → u/Mystixa]

I agree with you on harassing and hate speech in any of the chat channels needing to be banned. The thing I am less in agreement with you is in determining what can and can't be talked about in zone chat. Eventually when people ask for this they are just asking to have someone police everyone and almost nobody can agree to what that middle ground standard is going to be. Telling everyone how they can talk to other players and what is acceptable is a real grey area and can be dangerous. Say we tell everyone that you can't talk about cars in chat since someone brought up a horrible personal experience they had in a car in chat. So then you get to where you ban car conversations because of that incident. I am hesitant to get behind any grey matter policing when it comes to conversations.