Not Okay. Line Crossed.
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I logged in today to the forum to post an issue with FAF game client login and immediately after logging in, I was plastered with one of those typical "We want your data" schick that tries to justify itself as being benign.
This is not acceptable and I never thought I would see this type of behavior from a gaming community. I neither want to be inundated with spam email from FAF nor do I want my personal information being collected. We know that big tech companies do this to sell our information to third parties but at least they give us the option to disable that data collection.
With FAF? I couldn't even get into the forum without accepting and submitting to "consenting" to this personal data collection.
This crossed a line.
Then there's the issue with the new "Rules of Conduct" which on paper seems benign, but that's where it begins. What is seemingly innocent and benign, becomes something malicious as admins get a little happy trigger with the ban hammer for people who don't agree or have "wrong think". I read your "Diversity Statement" which is an all familiar trend of enforcing an IP with politically charged rules of conduct on its player base. Said IP belongs and is owned by a company (Square Enix) that does not belong to you and it concerns me that FAF which started out with people having fun playing an old but classic strategy game and goofing around, is now enforcing a politically charged directive on people. It also concerns me that you suggest people report directly to the admin Brutus5000/ brutus5000 should anyone use the wrong "pronouns" which is a very slippery slope.
One has to wonder if someone makes a crack at my expense about being a white cis male and is insulated or immune from penalizing but if it were the other way around; would said admins with politically charged opinions be biased in their "decisions" enforcing these rules of conduct?
That being said, players are here to play a game; they are not here to be policed by your personal beliefs and opinion of "Empathy" forced on them. I certainly didn't come to play FAF to engage in politics. I get enough of that from watching the news on television, newspapers, and social media. I came to FAF to play a game and have fun with friends. Never thought this would happen to FAF.
What a tragedy.
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Don't bother people based on their gender, don't ban people from lobbies based on their gender, don't use FAF resources to discuss politics.
There is nothing left-wing about having empathy for EVERYONE. Modern left-wing politics is very selective about who you're supposed to have empathy for. Look at how they mock "white woman tears" and that sort of thing. If you show empathy to the wrong people, you're unpersonned.
The "empathy" standard in FAF provides a formal basis for refusing the demands of wokesters for imposing permanent bans on people for violating racism rules once or twice. It is required to treat violators with empathy. The wokesters were basically saying "racism is against the rules and anyone who writes anything racist online after 2013 is garbage so just permanently ban everyone who offends us, if you won't do that, it means you're pro-racism."
Also, this portion of the FAF code of conduct is not exactly left-wing: "assume good intentions"
When is the last time you saw a left-winger assume good intentions on the part of anyone who disagreed with them about anything?
There's no reason to use the wrong pronouns for someone. If it bothers you, don't communicate with them. No one is required to use anyone's preferred pronouns. You are simply forbidden from using the wrong ones. There is a big difference. You're not required to be nice to trans people or affirm their identities or whatever. You're not required to join any lobby.
As a practical matter, FAF has to prohibit racism and other forms of bigotry, or it risks being punished by tech companies, governments, and activists. FAF is taking what is essentially a maximalist position on inclusion, which is that no one is banned for wrongthink, no one is banned for political activity unrelated to FAF, you just have to follow certain rules of behavior when you are here. Which is, IMO, as it should be.
The rules have NOT always been applied fairly or evenly. My ban from the Discord was unjust. But in general the FAF admins are not trying to force politics on people. It is the opposite.
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The request for consent to collect certain information is just GDPR compliance, it's unavoidable. There is nothing sinister about it, we don't even have analytics on the website.
FAF is also quite apolitical and not very heavily moderated.
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@gamb1t with all due respect I think you may have misinterpreted the intent behind the code of conduct. I think that in order to grow this community there has to be an established code of conduct and personally feel that the wording and intent behind it are positive and neutral in ensuring everyone can enjoy this community and have a level of protection from certain types of negative behavior.
I'm an industrial construction worker and there aren't many filters day to day on the job site so I'm not overly sensitive but I feel strongly that there needs to be minimum standard for the FAF community because I really care about it and want it to grow and thrive long term and not shrink to a niche community. I feel the FAF admin have done a great job with this and in no way are abusing it. A code of conduct is something every respectable organisation on the planet has in place and most are far more restrictive and hard line than ours here.
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The code of conduct is pretty bad. I want to be able to dislike and discriminate against whoever I want for any reason I want.
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The FAF privacy statement still applies: https://faforever.com/privacy
The consent request from the forum is part of the software we use because the law has gone crazy worldwide. NodeBB can send you summaries and reminders and stuff via email for which it needs this consent. By default setting it does not. We can't disable the consent screen.
The CoC is a broader guideline on the behaviour we want to pursue especially among contributors - this was not really covered by the moderation rules. If you didn't have conflict with moderation so far and you're just playing this shouldn't impose any new rules on you.
We did not introduce it to impose political correctness. We introduced it due to internal conflicts in FAF where the previous rules just did not work out and we needed something more general.
Eventually I don't care if you're a white male cis, a transsexual dolphin, or an asexual black Nazi. As long as you don't force your political agenda on other users and respect general etiquette we'll be fine. -
Adding to the GDPR thing. You are posting in this forum using a username chosen by you.
This is personally identifying data.
There is no legal way for FAF to show your post to other people on the internet without collecting your permission. (send your complaints to the the european parliament)Unless you randomize usernames and prohibit people from using free text fields, you can basically not not collect personal data, for which you need people's permission.
This ks actually quite tricky, even my small scripts that present users with a website that remembers them based on IP have to get their consent for GDPR.
In the case of FAF, FAF doesn't collect your data, it doesn't use third party analytics, it doesn't track you or ship advertisements. It actually tells you what exactly is collected in the consent form (see also FAF privacy policy, email for spam prevention, pw reset and contact, username for, well, that should be obvious).
So be happy that you have that control over your data, and if you desire, not to share your username with FAF, then that's your right and you can simply not post here.
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@gamb1t said in Not Okay. Line Crossed.:
"We want your data" schick that tries to justify itself as being benign.
https://postimg.cc/JtzhpmmbYou did read through that image right?
It’s basically telling you: “hey we need to store your email and your username for the forum to function”
You’re now saying “THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE” like you’ve just seen a duckduckgo advertisement for the first time.
About the CoC, I was one of the people who originally pushed for it to exist. I’m definitely no left winger by any means. I asked for it to happen to keep an unknown, inexperienced FAF Association board from potentially abusing the system to do harm. FtX and I saw countless loopholes and tried endlessly to fix it.
It’s cool to call out abuse or other shit that appears tyrannical. But you look like you watched a single video critic on YouTube and decided to emulate his entire personality. Simmer down.
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@gamb1t said in Not Okay. Line Crossed.:
logged in today to the forum to post an issue with FAF game client login and immediately after logging in, I was plastered with one of those typical "We want your data" schick that tries to justify itself as being benign.
https://postimg.cc/Jtzhpmmb
This is not acceptable and I never thought I would see this type of behavior from a gaming community. I neither want to be inundated with spam email from FAF nor do I want my personal information being collected. We know that big tech companies do this to sell our information to third parties but at least they give us the option to disable that data collection.
With FAF? I couldn't even get into the forum without accepting and submitting to "consenting" to this personal data collection.
This crossed a line.FAF is going to sell your data to the Silicon Valley Big Tech Cabal because you need an email address to make an account
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Bye Gambit.
To everyone else, looks like the new improved code of conduct has already removed one toxic player, nice work !
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Not really sure what you are expecting when this lobby is heading more corporate by the day. As the long term aims is to turn this community into a commercial product. Why do you think there have been so many attempts to buy the IP from Square Enix?
Life was better under ZeP at leas then it was still 100% a passion project.
Besides the moderation team politics probably reflect your local student union. Just look at Gorton's reddit.
This game enforces a zero tolerance policy for "insert generic lefty term such as racist, bigot, transphobe here". Unless, possibly if you are Russian and talking in Russian, because the russian community is insulated. Or if you are friends of certain people.
If you wanna go to someone's how you gotta follow the houses' rulse. Don't complain when the house kicks you out for disobeying them.
@arma473 Requiring positive action from another party is innately political no matter how great the motivation is. I could give you innumerable examples.
Anyway, that form is just general data compliance. Its poorly written, but it is clear enought o explain it just wants to store and process whatever information you provide. Maybe from a user standpoint it'd be better if it had an explicit statement saying it will not be processed by third parties or sold or what not.
Nice bait though.
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The overall work in this project from all collaborators goes into the 50.000 hours plus and not a single person has personally benefitted from it from FAF money. Some people make money from casting, but that is not affiliated with FAF.
But yeah just relax, consume and don't value other peoples work. That makes life easier indeed.
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@Broken "Requiring positive action from another party is innately political no matter how great the motivation is"
What positive action is being required? How has the empathy requirement been operationalized to require any positive action from you?
"the long term aims is to turn this community into a commercial product. Why do you think there have been so many attempts to buy the IP from Square Enix?"
Who is dumb enough to think they could make a profit by buying this IP? What would the business plan be? Everyone who already owns FA already has a copy and FAF is open-source, if the FAF admins tried to force people to buy a new copy of the game, anyone could fork the FAF project and make their own free server. Current FAF users wouldn't have to buy the game again. Even if you could sell 30,000 new copies at $30 each, that's only $900k. And that's extremely optimistic about the number of copies that could be sold and the sale price for a game that's around 15 years old. Just to buy the IP probably costs at least 1 million, probably more (if squenix was even open to selling) and you'd need to spend money to improve the game before you could get away with selling it for more than $10.
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i guess whoever wanted to meme has done their job,locking that nonsense.
