Microsoft Goes Full Totalitarian

The perspective on censorship as the great evil of our times involves a nostalgic notion that freedom of speech was in some past golden age equal between all social groups, which on the contrary it was the privileged social domain of a wealthy white man to speak freely. It also involves an idea that freedom of speech (or any other type of freedom) can occur automatically or organically without complex organisation, by say an impossibly simplistic legal declaration like "you are free to speak however you choose". This is of course, just not the case! The organisation of society for fairness is very complex and complicated. At our current historical location, speech is more equally free for more individuals and groups in society than at any previous time in history.

The significant social problem of our times is wealth inequality and the access to basic social services that it prevents, which in turn prevents wealth mobility in society. As a problem, censorship does not compare meaningfully to the scale of this problem. People in the US drink water that is contaminated by sewage and lead, 11 year old girls are getting raped 20 times a day in brothels in Bangladesh. Restrictions on hate speech and pornography sharing on a commercially provided service platform does not compare to the reasons for this problem of wealth distribution. Separate problems can mutually coexist in significance, but all this concern about censorship is blown so vastly out of proportion, I just really struggle to think about it clearly.

From an academic perspective, I think that the genuine problem with this is not the censorship, but the data security and user privacy to entities outside Microsoft.

I also think you all need to be reminded that this supposedly totalitarian code of conduct is practically no different to that which is enforced at infjs.com.

SMH.
 
I am curious to see how Microsoft actually enforces this. It could be highly problematic. I do not really care if they want to promote their content over their competitor's content (as utterly ridiculous as that would be), but I worry about how this might be used against certain people or groups.

This is not unusual either. Microsoft has always been like this- ever since back in the old days when they made sure their word processor would only work with their operating system in order to kill their competitors.
 
invisible said:
The perspective on censorship as the great evil of our times involves a nostalgic notion that freedom of speech was in some past golden age equal between all social groups, which on the contrary it was the privileged social domain of a wealthy white man to speak freely. It also involves an idea that freedom of speech (or any other type of freedom) can occur automatically or organically without complex organisation, by say an impossibly simplistic legal declaration like "you are free to speak however you choose". This is of course, just not the case! The organisation of society for fairness is very complex and complicated. At our current historical location, speech is more equally free for more individuals and groups in society than at any previous time in history.

The significant social problem of our times is wealth inequality and the access to basic social services that it prevents, which in turn prevents wealth mobility in society. As a problem, censorship does not compare meaningfully to the scale of this problem. People in the US drink water that is contaminated by sewage and lead, 11 year old girls are getting raped 20 times a day in brothels in Bangladesh. Restrictions on hate speech and pornography sharing on a commercially provided service platform does not compare to the reasons for this problem of wealth distribution. Separate problems can mutually coexist in significance, but all this concern about censorship is blown so vastly out of proportion, I just really struggle to think about it clearly.

From an academic perspective, I think that the genuine problem with this is not the censorship, but the data security and user privacy to entities outside Microsoft.

I also think you all need to be reminded that this supposedly totalitarian code of conduct is practically no different to that which is enforced at infjs.com.

SMH.
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If this forum was truly thought policing I probably would've been banned the second I questioned all of this postmodernist schlock. The INFJ forum doesn't read my word documents and arbitrarily decide to revoke purchases I've made. The problems you listed can be addressed alongside free speech so I don't know why you're acting like pursuing a solution to all these problems simultaneously is impossible. We can in fact, walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.

Interestingly enough though, in some people's eyes you just committed hate speech. Girls raped 20 times a day in Bangladesh? How could you judge their culture you islamophobic bigot. Good thing Microsoft read what you wrote into word and revoked your subscription. I'm glad your hate has been stopped.

Now I don't actually hold that point of view, but there are some people who would absolutely say something like that and some of them may very well work at Microsoft. I can't believe i'm actually having to explain why this is so dangerous but at the end of the day the best fix is to just stop using Microsoft services if you have a problem with this sort of thing. I do, and i'm taking my spending dollars elsewhere. If you want to stay that's up to you to decide, but I don't like being told what opinions I can and can't have.
 
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invisible said:
The perspective on censorship as the great evil of our times involves a nostalgic notion that freedom of speech was in some past golden age equal between all social groups, which on the contrary it was the privileged social domain of a wealthy white man to speak freely.
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And also non-wealthy non-white non-men (At various points). But good straw man.
 
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Reason With Logic Filling said:
If this forum was truly thought policing I probably would've been banned the second I questioned all of this postmodernist schlock. The INFJ forum doesn't read my word documents and arbitrarily decide to revoke purchases I've made. The problems you listed can be addressed alongside free speech so I don't know why you're acting like pursuing a solution to all these problems simultaneously is impossible. We can in fact, walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.

Interestingly enough though, in some people's eyes you just committed hate speech. Girls raped 20 times a day in Bangladesh? How could you judge their culture you islamophobic bigot. Good thing Microsoft read what you wrote into word and revoked your subscription. I'm glad your hate has been stopped.

Now I don't actually hold that point of view, but there are some people who would absolutely say something like that and some of them may very well work at Microsoft. I can't believe i'm actually having to explain why this is so dangerous but at the end of the day the best fix is to just stop using Microsoft services if you have a problem with this sort of thing. I do, and i'm taking my spending dollars elsewhere. If you want to stay that's up to you to decide, but I don't like being told what opinions I can and can't have.
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I didn't suggest that the forum was "thought policing". I mentioned that the forum has a code of conduct that is no different than what was posted in the OP about Microsoft. Why don't you try making posts on this forum that conflict with the terms of service suggested in the OP for Microsoft, and see whether you get banned or not? Post pictures of your penis or racist jokes. Free speech right? Go ahead and try it, and see what happens. I can't help wondering why you haven't already defended your right to free speech on the forum in this way so far, since you are so intensely invested in it. I breathlessly await your hate speech and pornography.

I already covered your point that we can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. This stuff about free speech is a phantom enemy. There really is no problem with free speech. This supposed issue about free speech is put forward constantly as the thing to worry about now. In fact, the only people who are worried about it are the people who already have the complete power and control to speak as freely as they like, because they suddenly realise that free speech means that they might have to listen to something that someone who disagrees with them has to say. Do you think that when someone says "boong" or "coon" that they aren't silencing another person's speech? No one else is worried about free speech apart from people who are determined to silence others. In reality, these others are more worried about things like drinking water and getting raped. Oh gosh, look at me, aren't I silly, silly crazy invisible, typical psychiatric patient, I'm repeating myself because I am so silly and deluded and ignorant.

Microsoft is not a government. It's a corporate entity, an organisation. Therefore, it's impossible for it to be totalitarian. As a commercial service provider, it's doing just what it's designed to do, which is to sell itself according to market forces. It's making itself saleable. Shockingly, the market is suddenly answering to people who are expressing dissatisfaction with racist hate speech, and who may demand that service providers are legally accountable for making space for people who use the service to disseminate such speech. You don't like it? Well who cares whether you do or not? The market isn't meant to be a party for you, the individual consumer. The market is meant to be a party for those who can compete. Why such surprise at this?

You are taking your spending dollars elsewhere! To some service where protecting speech of those who get called "kikes" and "fags" is not important. Of course you are, because you believe in freedom of speech! Good for you!

Postmodernism is a facet of modernist philosophical approach that to the best of my awareness (which is now a decade out of date) is considered by the scholarly establishment to be historically completed. For some reason, the word "postmodernist" has been appropriated as a sort of carry-all vilifying buzzword by some sort of youtube sensational celebrities, who have obtained no scholarly education in the disciplines in which the term "postmodernist" has actual application, and also besides that in their general talking, display zero working knowledge of postmodernist art or scholarship, apart from their willingness to repeat the word "postmodernist". I don't know why they're so enthusiastic about it, because it is effectively completed as a historical movement.

In "some people's eyes" I have committed hate speech - who ever do you mean? Ah I see, the indefinite "some people". The real enemy. "Some people" who are absent and who can't speak for themselves, who you have fearlessly nominated yourself as competent to speak for. I get it. We are all so lucky that you are so well prepared to speak for "some people" and what happens in their perspectives. We should be grateful to you. There's obviously something wrong with me because I can't be grateful to you.

Reason With Logic Filling said:
And also non-wealthy non-white non-men (At various points). But good straw man.
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Of course, I remember, like Jane Austen, Aphra Behn, and Frida Kahlo. These figures are definitely published in the historical record and are totally outstanding exceptions to the overwhelming representation of wealthy white male voices in intellectual and public cultural history. No one could doubt your comprehension of Woolf.

And BTW thank you so much for being here to explain it all to me. People like me are all so lucky that we have people like you to explain all these complicated things to us. It's really wonderful. I'm in awe of your ability to explain shit. Not.
 
invisible said:
Shockingly, the market is suddenly answering to people who are expressing dissatisfaction with racist hate speech, and who may demand that service providers are legally accountable for making space for people who use the service to disseminate such speech.
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invisible said:
I breathlessly await your hate speech and pornography.
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lolol
 
The main problem is the overlap of large companies and the conduct of our every day lives.
Yea it's a service and we make a choice to use that service. But the internet is becoming an essential extension of our being.
If there aren't alternatives that allow people to use the internet in a free way, it becomes a tool of oppression.
Still since its usage is technically a choice, and the companies you choose to engage with online are technically a choice, there's not much for a viable complaint.
You just have to hope and pray that the desires of the consumer will lead companies down a good path. People are dumb though.
 
@invisible your post is so cluttered with nonsense and non-sequiturs and I actually don't even know how to respond to it because it is so irrational. Here's the only point I could scavenge out of that tangled ball of shlock and respond to.

invisible said:
Microsoft is not a government. It's a corporate entity, an organisation. Therefore, it's impossible for it to be totalitarian.
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I don't think you understand intentional hyperbole

EDIT: I'll just reiterate, the problem with this new policy is not that it excludes certain behavior, its that it fails to define that behavior clearly giving Microsoft a free-fire zone. The point of the islamophobia example which was lost on you is that people have definitions of what hatespeech is which makes defining it crucial. Here's just a few brainteasers for you:

-If you have naked phone sex on Skype, do you get punished the same as if you sent a dick pick to someone you've known for 30 seconds on Skype

-If you're a gay activist composing a Microsoft Word document where you say "I am a proud queer activist" do you get banned just for using the word or is it considered within context?

-If you're writing a novel using Microsoft word and you have a character who uses racial slurs and Microsoft reads your document (before its finished mind you) will they revoke your office subscription.

-By "offensive language" do they mean just racial or ethnic slurs or simply the word "fuck"

And here are some very pertinent questions to ask:

Who is doing the censoring? What political and ideological beliefs do they hold? In what condition is their mental health?

Won't Microsoft be incentivized to judge harshly since forcing people to buy their products twice obviously means increased revenue?

If you violate the new policy are you told specifically how you did so that you can avoid doing so in the future?

Is there an appeal process?

Isn't giving Microsoft permission to read my private documents kind of a risky proposition?

Considering recent news about Facebook, should I be concerned that Microsoft might abuse the right to read my private documents?

Microsoft should have just wrote "We will revoke your purchases if you do things we don't like" it would have been just as fucking helpful.

Oh, and under the old terms of service there was already a way to report bullying/harassment on Xbox Live; as well as block functions on both Skype and Xbox live.
 
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sprinkles said:
Who here would think it's ok if keyboard manufacturers added a remote kill switch to their keyboards to stop you from typing hate speech?
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Marketed as a safety measure for kids or employees, consumers may buy it. Then it becomes normalized, then it becomes standard.

Buy yours today! :wyotethumb:
 
Wyote said:
Marketed as a safety measure for kids or employees, consumers may buy it. Then it becomes normalized, then it becomes standard.

Buy yours today! :wyotethumb:
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Unironically it's actually feasible, which is the scary part.

People usually apply this concept to services, but why are services special? Because they are public? Ethics should apply both publicly and privately. If a service that faces the public has an ethical imperative, why isn't it ok for anybody else to have that same imperative? Pencil manufacturers for example? Monitors that detect porn and shut off?

Is it just ok to let people do stuff just because nobody knows your product is involved? What's stopping those kinds of companies from taking the same stance?
 
I am still reading on the details but this does sound like another 1984-style move by them. And it reminded me of one they silently slipped into their current OSes going back to (and including) Windows 7, known as the Asimov data collector which logs a bunch of things the user does and sends it to the mothership at regular intervals. I so abhorred this that I went ahead and created a tool to disable it (see here) - with an honest apology for plugging my own creation. For those who won't trust it I still recommend another tool such as ShutUp10 which accomplishes something similar.

My major gripe with all this is that they officially adopted the stance that it's collect to collect uniquely-identifiable data on the user with or without their permission and in some cases without their knowledge. Public outcry has generated some publicity about this as of late but as far as I know the collection is still enabled by default.

/rant
 
invisible said:
The significant social problem of our times is wealth inequality and the access to basic social services that it prevents, which in turn prevents wealth mobility in society.
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Same as it ever was, same as it will ever be. The war of the rich on the poor never ends, and it is the biggest issue of all. Everything else is merely battles and purposeful misdirection and distraction.

Cheers,
Ian
 
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