2y ago

Discord Now Explicitly Bans Misgendering and Deadnaming Transgender People on the Platform

www.advocate.com

Discord has expanded its Hateful Conduct Policy to explicitly include prohibitions against misgendering and deadnaming in a policy update. Accompanying this policy update, Discord has also implemented a comprehensive warning system to enforce these guidelines effectively.

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Conservatives screeching about being cancelled in three... two...
- Everybody knows that these claims are bullshit. "1st Amendment rights" is the biggest dog whistle for bigots that they claim whenever their disrespectful conduct has consequences. You don't give a flying fuck about other people's "1st Amendment rights" when it isn't your racist, sexist or transphobic friends. Otherwise you'd be up in arms against book bans, but your kind cheers for them and every other effort to silence people you don't like.
  
  There it is.
  1A is irrelevant, it only protects against censorship by the government. Discord is a private entity, they can do whatever the hell they want on the platform they own. They aren't obligated to host your opinions, and neither are conservative outlets obligated to host liberal opinions. Get it right next time.
  
  dont even need to read past the first line, how many times do i have to say this for anyone like you to get it in your head
  THE FIRST AMENDMENT ONLY PROTECTS YOU FROM GOVERNMENT SILENCING
  no, discord, the private chat service, that you must agree to their terms to use is not a government service. they can ban you for whatever they fuck they want, and are not liable.
  
  Just a reminder. What private companies do has nothing to do with your first amendment rights.
  Grow up or shut up.
  
  Please detail to me how discord, a private company, banning people who intentionally misgender or dead name others is a violation or the first amendment right in the United States?
  It doesn't say 'intentionally' as you've pointed out, but the wording is clear and pretty reinforced throughout the article, just below the following quote in the article is another 3 'targeted' explanations:
  "The update explicitly addresses behaviors considered violations of its hate speech policy, including targeted misgendering and deadnaming of transgender individuals."
  You can't say bomb in an airplane. You can't shout fire in a building. You can't shout removed in a Walmart. No one's saying you can't THINK whatever you feel like and SAY whatever you want in your own spaces, but you don't own discord or the plane or the building or the Walmart so you gotta follow other people's rules. Woe is you
  
  There are already protections for bullying on Internet platforms. Intentionally misgendering is a form of bullying.
  The right to life should supercede someone's right to free speech to undermine said life.
  
  what is it with kbin users and having the worst/most transphobic fucking takes?
  
  Discord isn't the government, FYI
  
  Lmao are you governed by discord?
  
  It's crazy calling people unsophisticated when you're this dumb. But crazy kinda fits your style.
  
  Big tech censorship? I mean the police are using pretty big tech to make sure only one side can protest safely. 1st amendment amirite.
  
  Actually cry about it they just enumerated what they meant by harassment and this makes the rules explicitly more clear and not up to interpretation and abuse.
  
  The rights of a business are more important than your own. Isn't that what you guys want?
  
  I won't deny that Big Tech and Media companies do undermine our freedom in many ways (things like weaponizing copyright and anti-repair or anti-circumvention laws), but this isn't an example of that, this is just Discord expanding on rules against hate speech and harassment which they already were against.
  
  Use another platform.
Oh good, so they plan to actually start enforcing their policies? Because I've never seen it happen, and I've reported users who explicity called for violence against LGBT+ people and black people.
- Yeah, I understand your scepticism. At least, they have a system in place for enforcement now. If they have the moderators to actually use it is a different question...
  
  I was a moderator of a gaming server with 2k people. I quit modding and left the server over this.
  I've not once seen Discord enforce their policies. In fact, I can still look back in my DM history and see active users who have made clear and explicit threats with a side of slurs to black and LGBT+ people. No action whatsoever on their part, even though I did my diligence by reporting them.
- Telling diet Nazis to go fuck themselves is an appropriate use of power, but any power can be abused. You have an underlying moral right to free expression. That's the reason behind the first amendment. It is not a gift from the state.
  What makes Discord's choice okay is freedom of association. Most people don't want to deal with diet Nazis. It is fine for most businesses to exclude diet Nazis, whether or not anyone asked them to.
  But nobody would tut 'Discord's not a government' if they'd banned trans-rights advocacy. And that's fine. There's no hypocrisy in it. You understand businesses can do harm, individually and in bulk, through their decisions. Silencing reasonable opinions, expressed politely, is almost always censorship we should fight. There's just nothing reasonable or polite about being a goddamn fascist.
Oh cool! Now, is that with Nitro or so we have to pay extra for it?
- If it’s a Nitro feature, it’s only going to be for new subscribers with new credit cards and emails because existing subscribers shouldn’t ever get free months or upgrades.
Discord never had freedom of speech to begin with, but isn't this extreme? People should be able to say what they want privately in their own servers. Brigading and harassment in DMs is already banned.
- You do not have a right to free speech on the property of a private business. A restaurant can kick you out for being an asshole. A tech company can kick you off their servers for being an asshole.
- It only seems that way because their enforcement is so poor, I'm kind of wondering myself if this is going to change anything or if they're not enforcing anything and just putting this up as a front it doesn't mean a whole lot.
- Discord does not use e2e encryption meaning they can do whatever they want with the content you share not only with your friends but with the company. They can use the guise of safety (eg we found a private server planning terrorism) to extend this access to everything. Since the company can read everything on the platform, they’re carrying a serious set of risks and liability with all of that potentially bad or illegal content. By creating policies like this, they can sidestep litigation (to an extent) when bad content is found by pointing to policies and handwavy enforcement. It might not be illegal to deadname (at least in the US); that does not stop civil litigation.
  Given that fuck all is going to change, I view this primarily as a risk reduction strategy that most people will misconstrue as social good. That’s a really cynical take. I’m pretty cynical about the motives of massive orgs beyond risk management.
I hope that doesn't include Twitter :D
- what does this comment mean
  
  It means we all dead name x
  
  Twtich's rules account for off-site behavior. You can get banned on twitch for the things your say or do on other platforms. Twitter owner elon is a transphobe who allows and encourages deadnaming and misgendering.
  Following the rules or customs of current twitter could very well get you banned from twtich for offsite behavior.
so that's why they added pronouns
Finally justice against people who keep assuming I'm a guy online.

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