Recently the server staff received an e-mail telling them to moderate the Discord server and the server chat on what they deem to be “appropriate.”
Below is a message from owner of the server.
Free Speech Under Attack
Dear friends, I don’t often post announcements of this sort, but I feel it’s very important for you all to know what’s currently going on.
From the very start, over 15 years ago, one of the key founding principles of MinecraftOnline has been free speech. What started out as an uncontroversal, common sense policy, has proved to be a cornerstone of this increasingly unique community. As time has passed and Western society has wavered back and forth in its political leanings, free speech has repeatedly come under attack for political reasons. It has now become common to see arrests for posts on social media in countries such as Britain and Germany, in the name of political control, which have overtaken the numbers even of traditionally totalitarian countries such as China and Russia - a truly dystopian nightmare for freedom of expression and personal liberty.
Throughout this decade and a half of change, MinecraftOnline has held steadfast to its libertarian principles, and remained an oasis of freedom and openness in an increasingly closed and controlled internet. That is, until now.
Microsoft, through their subsidiary Mojang, have issued an ultimatum to MinecraftOnline. We have been told to do away with our free speech policy (which long pre-dates Microsoft’s acquisition of Mojang), within 7 days, or face a a permanent block. If that happens, nobody will be able to play on MinecraftOnline again, and the 15-year history of this beloved server will come to a sudden and bitter end. The full email we have received today, signed facelessly only as “Mojang Enforcement”, is included below.
The email makes extremely vague claims about “harmful interactions” and “harmful comments”, and we are asking Microsoft to clarify what specific interactions and comments they consider harmful. In the meantime, please spread the word, share this info on social media. Defend free speech.
-SlowRiot
This has right-wing snowflakes getting upset over Charlie Kirk comments all over it.
There are currently 3 things you cannot bring up or speak negatively about or it will end up being penalized and censored
You cannot :
- criticizeTrump
- bring up Epstein
- speak about up Charlie Kirk’s factual history
Everything else is free speech.
- reveal the names of ICE agents
- denounce the Confederacy
- support Palestine
Ngl, whenever “libertarians” get their hackles up about needing a right to “free speech”, I always suspect they mean bigotry and slurs.
Yup, seems like they want to run a nazi bar. From their wiki (archive):
nothing that a player can type in public chat (aside from the exceptions given below) can result in a ban or any form of official reprimand. You will not be banned for anything you say, aside from spamming. This includes but is not limited to:
- Swearing;
- Personal attacks;
- Racial or cultural insults;
- Asking to be banned.
It’s worded a little confusingly, but there is a list of exceptions further down the page. The server is hosted in Germany so the expected symbols are removed if built in-game, but most of the other exceptions are to keep the game playable.
Made almost the same comment in the cross post that was made of this.
Definitely comes across like an excuse to be racist AF.
From another comment it sounds like there is pushback from users when someone behaves poorly, which is good, but I don’t see why anyone would want that experience to be the norm. Just libertarian things I guess
Everyone is entitled to their opinion about bigotry and slurs, but having soulless American mega-corporations enforcing the current lowest common denominator about what is acceptable is not the win some people might think it is. Sure, they might seem like they’re on your side, and thus the right side, now, but this can change quickly and radically.
I don’t agree. I think shutting down places that promote bigotry and slurs is good.
If they just want to run a minecraft server, they easily can. They just can’t also use that as a place to promote hatred and bigotry.
What you’re making is a slippery slope argument that doesn’t really hold water.
I’ve seen peaceful protestors in the USA, UK and Germany get charged as rioters and terrorists for opposing the Israeli genocide against Palestinians. Also, the media lost its shit at criticism of Charlie Kirk. cronenthal’s argument absolutely holds water.
What you’re making is a slippery slope argument that doesn’t really hold water.
Is it though? Like, really, is it? In the US the government is possibly doing shit like labeling transgender people as nihilistic violent extremists. The Project 2025 shit is coming fast. I really don’t like people using racial slurs either. But the idea that it could be very soon that things like speaking about some LGBTQ topics gets policed more and corporations go along with it is not as far fetched as it seems. A year ago I’d probably have a different opinion.
And I wanna be clear, I’m not defending people using slurs. I think it’s fine for Microsoft to not host that server on a public list of servers, I guess. I’m really just saying the slope is more slippery than previously thanks to the MAGA crowd. I’m not really sure how I feel about it all, I’m still in the cognitive dissonance phase as my mind works out where I really stand. I’ve been lucky enough that speech I consider acceptable has been what speech others considered acceptable for my whole life, but the idea that queer topics come under fire isn’t crazy.
Fuck MinecraftOnline for making fucking Microsoft look like the good guys here.
I hate Microsoft but I also hate self-described “Libertarians” complaining about free speech because it usually means they want to spam slurs and white supremacist bullshit without pushback.
I replied to a comment like this somewhere else, so I’ll just paste this here
Take this with a grain of salt, as I’m a commoner on the server.
While freedom of speech means you can yell whatever racial slurs you want, it doesn’t mean you are free from consequences. When you start saying bigoted stuff on the chat, you will be targeted by players and get /ignore’d.
I would advise you to make your own judgement by reading the chat logs on Discord or IRC, but not everybody has that amount of time. Some people said vile stuff here, but every time someone says some weird stuff, it always gets backlash, and it definitely isn’t a nazi breeding ground.
Also I’ll add this, Most of the server staff and community are queer and from different backgrounds, slurs aren’t taken kindly here.
While freedom of speech means you can yell whatever racial slurs you want, it doesn’t mean you are free from consequences.
This seems to be the MS stance as well, and they seem unwilling to associate with that kind of speech, so they want to cut that connection off as a consequence.
MS isn’t telling them not to speak. MS is telling them to take their speech somewhere else.
Microsoft is also cool with their IPs being used to promote ICE. So I don’t know how much water your argument holds…
Mojang as well? Because MS employs hundreds of thousands of employees making their own decisions and owning their own work. I don’t see how Minecraft has anything to do with the poor decisions made on Azure.
The fuck does Azure have to do with Microsoft letting ICE use Halo for recruiting?
ICE is using Halo to recruit?
That aside, the fuck does Halo have to do with Mojang? Unless you’re saying it’s the Xbox people as a whole I guess, which makes a lot more sense to me. I saw a bunch of people talking about Palestine and assumed you were just talking about that somehow.
Anyway, none of this really explains to me why they should not be allowed to limit speech on their own platform, regardless of what speech is limited. People can always pack up and go somewhere else. This isn’t the government coming in and arresting some people for having an opinion they don’t like. This is a company coming in and saying they want that speech somewhere else.
Edit: found the Halo reference, had no idea this was a thing honestly with the dumpster fire that is the US government going on.
While using their resources to support an ACTUAL racist message. Are you being dense on purpose?
(Severe sarcasm warning. Look away if you’re allergic.)
I like that they effectively compared themselves getting an email to people getting arrested for totally innocent social media posts about nothing in particular, which we can all assume is the case without looking into at all. I also like that they’re asking for widespread outrage against this, and want a person’s name to
attackconverse sincerely with in the Free Marketplace of Ideas™. Such a good, honest person we can definitely trust implicitly, trying to protect Freeze Peach™ from Woke™ Left-Wing™ tyrants like Microsoft.Maybe “like” is the wrong word. Hmmm.
[Not sarcasm] Right, we know what’s going on here. Gross, cruel, hateful people just wanna have endless “rights” over everyone else and I’m so sick of their games I can hardly even type a non-sarcastic sentence. Ugh. Bleh. Et cetera. 🙄
Self-hosted private server, just like a lemmy instance, one joins out of their own will. Imagine mega corporations being able to decide what is acceptable on your lemmy instance and take it down if they don’t like it?
Microsoft can’t take down their server. What they can do is ban it from connecting to their services. You do not need to connect to Microsoft to play on or host a private Minecraft server.
If you were in violation of lemmy’s terms of use, yeah…
They aren’t using their own software here.
"if you were in violation of lemmy’s terms of use, yeah…” wait, is there a central lemmy that can nuke other instances? I thought the whole point of the Fediverse was that if you don’t like an instance, you just defederate from it, and that there was no central power.
Yeah, we used to own the software we bought and could do whatever we wanted with it on our private storage, but now capitalism has realized it’s more lucrative to only sell licenses. Imagine Microsoft/Apple/Google erasing your privately stored documents tomorrow because they contained stuff against their policies. Very dangerous when you have governments banning abortion, trans rights, and even labeling antifascism as terrorism.
I can’t believe the number of people thinking trillion dollar mega corporations overreach is good just because it’s happening to others. Tomorrow, it’s you - that’s why we need more consumer rights and privacy protection, but the thing about rights is that they are for everyone and not just for the people you pick.
is there a central lemmy that can nuke other instances?
There is a legal process. Violating the AGPL that Lemmy is released under, for example.
Edited to add “Not letting me use slurs is a slippery slope to blocking positive lgbtqia statements” is an insane take, BTW.
The answer is simple - dont use their shit or abide by their terms. No, the intolerant do not gain any advantage with me by trying to cover with “freedom of speech” or “but what if they do it to trans folks?!?”
These are the people denigrating others, and while using a licensed piece of software too. Guess what - its under their licensing, thats their mistake. They can also stop being cool with having a Nazi bar.
