There are a lot of posts where I say playershit. In point of fact, I haven’t called anyone I disagree with a pedophile, based on simple disagreement. What I have done is point out where people post justification of practices which may be described by that terminology.
So. Izzys? We skipping that slur? Zios? Zioshits? “Zionist” being used as a veiled way to reference Israelis or Jews? Many other social platforms have handled business with this stuff. I’ve sent you guys the link to Meta’s well researched policy on this.
I took the opportunity to sit back and look at the state of P&L recently. I realized that it isn’t as much toxic people, because every poster, no matter how polarized, has moments of understanding, humanity, and kindness. Frankly most of them are entirely different and nice people when you talk to them privately. I will more than readily acknowledge my own role in the toxicity. The tendency for people to say things online that they wouldn’t otherwise say is always there, but it can be tempered and stay vaguely within the guidelines of the platform.
The root problem with P&L is the lack of community management (not subjective punishment). It would be entirely different place today if the community manager had proactively popped in last October and said “hey. We aren’t going to talk about this. It’s a global game, and some of the people you are broadly hating on for their race, religion, or nationality are our co-players and we like them. We aren’t going to call Muslims terrorists. We aren’t going to call Jews, the Jewish state, etc “Nazis” because that is hate speech. We aren’t going to allow veiled slurs. If you’re going to talk about highly charged stuff, you’re going to have to use appropriate words to describe whatever feelings you have, not denigrate the other side.” A little guidance beyond “just don’t call them the K-word or post greedy merchant memes” would have gone a long way.
I wouldn’t be a P&L regular if I hadn’t gotten dragged in defending my in-game and IRL friends from the hate speech that erupted on October 8, 2023 from my ex-friends. I used to have a policy of avoiding the forums except for the occasional suggestion, bug report, or other innocuous content. It’s a policy I plan to return to at some point.
I realize this is worded pretty harshly, but please take it under advisement for the future. It’s a positive suggestion.
Last word is yours. Make sure it’s a trademark snarky zinger.
edit - snarky zinger was already edited/posted while I typed this post.