So, message filters. And analyzing this data to derive some kind of social score. Automods will ban you for six months, all because you called someone a crybaby in group chat. There, saved you 6 minutes of reading.

This is how you kill an online service.

Literally none of what you said is what the researchers or Activision said their goal was in the Caltech article.

That's easy... stop selling CoD games.

Misleading, didn’t read the article

I’ll do you one better. Eliminate chat features in games.

Always remember to be on your best behavior while playing our games that desensitize you to violence.

Then take away the scoreboards.

Edit: thought it was obvious, but /s

A repeatedly debunked myth. Violent passive entertainment desensitizes, interactive does not.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34801150/

Bell we have a job to do

Getting down voted because no one on Reddit ever wants to read an article and everyone wants to jump to their own conclusions.

It's a moderation aiding tool. Activision did not say anything about auto banning anyone.

Look if you want to play COD and really avoid anything that could possibly offend you then wrap yourself up in bubble wrap and don’t go in the chat, mute everybody

I don't want online games to turn into fucking reddit, where you get banned if you hurt a mod's feelings. I rarely encounter racism or sexism playing online games, but I'd rather people be able to say anything, even if it allows the occasional racist, than have everything censored away. There's just something exciting about a space where people can say anything. It's more......interesting.

I suppose Activision is a good partner for this in the sense that they have massive troves of toxic user chat content available that they could share with the research team for feature extraction and modeling.

It was a joke clearly, stop being so sensitive and quick to defend things on the internet no-one likes a know it all.

I wish them the best. Short of genetically engineering better humans I don’t see it happening.

Maybe they can team up and stop the "bad behavior" at Activision too.

I believe this builds on some of the Caltech-based research group's prior work on detecting online trolling, e.g. Finding Social Media Trolls: Dynamic Keyword Selection Methods for Rapidly-Evolving Online Debates

>Online harassment is a significant social problem. Prevention of online harassment requires rapid detection of harassing, offensive, and negative social media posts. In this paper, we propose the use of word embedding models to identify offensive and harassing social media messages in two aspects: detecting fast-changing topics for more effective data collection and representing word semantics in different domains. We demonstrate with preliminary results that using the GloVe (Global Vectors for Word Representation) model facilitates the discovery of new and relevant keywords to use for data collection and trolling detection. Our paper concludes with a discussion of a research agenda to further develop and test word embedding models for identification of social media harassment and trolling.

Evolution on a production line. Who would be interested in something like that I wonder?

If you have a well made game that devs put love and effort into it will reflect on the player base. Also don't appeal to lowest common denominator even if it means more sales

Or just better parenting but what the heck, let's do this other thing instead.

Alright cool, let's start by not having item shops on day 1 launches- oh, you mean OUR bad behavior. huh.

Unless you make accounts your real name and face, this is never going to happen

Citation needed.

If you really had to defend yourself or for anyone by saying "it's a joke", then you really should know it's a bad one.

> I rarely encounter racism or sexism playing online games

Why do you think that is?

Maybe they should focus on combating their own behavior first lmao

Because it's not as big of a problem as people claim. And when it happens, it's easy to freeze out.

How do you combat bad behavior online?

Well first you make sure people aren't born to awful parents, in an awful neighborhood, in an awful school district, eating an awful diet, with an awful social circle, living an awful life, feeling awfully lonely, playing an awful game, with other awful people, with awful lives.

Lol, these people want to do the equivalent of giving homeless awareness ribbons to homeless people. Empty heads making empty marketing.

Kind sir, your cranial shot was quite adequate to dispatch my character. May your mother find misfortune in a sexual encounter.

Ironic coming from the company with one of the most toxic work environments in the industry

Because you only hear the vocal minority because all they do is complain all day.

The issue with this is that it will get backlash. A perfect example is Battlefield 2042. Although it had many flaws, I remember people pointing out the lack of a scoreboard at launch.

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Or maybe players can control themselves and not say slurs just because they suck at a video game.

If you get so hurt over people shouting random shit through a screen and somehow derive offense then that is YOUR problem. Yes ofc in a utopian society it wouldn’t even occur but it’s not that deep, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”

It's just a video game bro why do you need to say slurs or defend people saying slurs?

It sounds like it's more the problem of angry gamers who can't control themselves from saying slurs since everyone else has recognized it's not great for gameplay or the community, since they're the ones getting banned.

as if “crybaby” is the nasty thing people are saying in COD

It’s inevitable poeple will act shitty with the anonymity and safety of being behind a screen, getting offended over words said through a microphone is so incredibly soft and you give the trolls screaming it power by being so offended, my 2 cents

You probably shouldn’t play and stay in your safe space.

That's not true at all . If there are actual consequences for actions then you massively reduce the amount of toxicity in your online space. Eg, if your account gets banned completely so that you are locked out of online play. While there are workarounds sometimes you generally at least lose progress.

So like.... why do we need to tolerate that when we can just ban them. They are actively making the gaming experience worse and making the community worse.

What's the point in purposefully allowing toxicity in video games just because some loser gamers can't control their emotions?

Why do the rest of us who just want to have a good time and play the video game have to deal with losers having a tantrum over voice chat?

You don't give them power if you ban them after all.

I think that the world is in a sad state if "not hearing slurs while gaming" is an example of a "utopian society" .

Me: I want to just play a game and have fun, not listen to some loser have a tantrum

You: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Then turn off the volume. Problem solved.

Which actively takes away gameplay tactics when you can't communicate with your team on what's happening inside the game.

Maybe you should consider solo play because, you know, feelings.

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Who's the one who are having issues with feelings? People that just want to play the game or losers who are so bad at the game and can't control their feelings so they have to act out and yell slurs at strangers online?

Maybe losers who can't control their feelings should just play solo, considering game companies have decided they'd rather have a "safe space" than losers having baby tantrums.

Truth is fixing toxicity starts with fixing toxic game design. Like why do I gotta watch someone else play and make mistakes for 30 seconds when I die? It's like the game is asking me to be toxic.

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It’s important to note that the wording is “increases the risk of desensitization,” it doesn’t explicitly desensitize everyone that plays.

I’m not defending it, but often these censoring efforts tend to be extremely intrusive and annoying. Minecraft is a great recent example of this.

But I don’t really care anyways, all the game chats are these days are people just playing music in the background. Anyone that actually wants to talk joins a party.

Does this mean they will be going after the people who expose Activision for paying cheaters to promote their game?

You can censor them yourself, it’s called mute. I played many online games, some of these people were funny to listen to as they had a total meltdown. If they got annoying I just hit the mute button. Problem solved.

There are hundreds more studies if you’re interested in looking them up.

While it’s true it’s inevitable that people will act shitty that doesn’t mean we , as the collective community, have to tolerate the bad behavior.

The only way to truly deter trolls is to simply remove them. Play by the rules you get to play, don’t play by the rules you get banned.

Will they start with battle passes and predatory monetization?

lol where have you been? This has been an ongoing issue for CoD games going back to 2007 when Modern Warfare originally released.

But racism and sexism have been existing issues in the larger gaming community for years. I can testify to that through lived experience.

Friends can go a long way to help insulate you from the toxicity. But if you’re playing solo you’ll seldom get a break from it.

I don't mind them filtering for blatant sexist, racist, and homophobic behavior. Other games already do that including detection in voice chat. But if they think general trash talk is bad behavior, that is way too much coddling and antithetical to enjoyment of a competitive game. Sometimes people should get their feelings hurt. Sometimes kids need to be put in their place.

The responsibility to back up a claim is upon the one making it not the one refuting it with the same authority as the claim.

The responsibility is to use the product as described in the manual, not relying on the marketing name.

Do you think that pop rocks are made of rocks?

Why are you defending people using slurs lol? If you're racist say it with your chest punk.

You should condemn the Nazi white trash behavior, not whine "use your mute button"

This is some weird trend I've noticed in the past year or so, mostly on gaming subreddits. People condemn the "snowflakes with feelings" for not using the mute button instead of condemning blatant racists and homophobes.

If you're a racist piece of shit just say so lol.

It’s because they’re probably the ones yelling slurs at people…

Sounds like a job for the Bully Hunters.

Yeah you're right, just sucks how many of them there are...

Not defending them, but they’re isn’t a need for a whole entire budget needed to silence people when the tools are already in your hands.

No, the problem is the shitty behavior and you know that. You also know the solution is to stop using slurs and just be a decent, mature human being.

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Shut the fuck up

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I do think trash talk should be allowed but it’s hilarious if you think anyone feels “put in their place” if you’d at something rude to them in a video game. It’s just going to make them mute you or be rude back.

People who yell racist/homophobic/etc shit in video games deserve to have their gaming privileges revoked. I mean steam account bans, ip bans, etc. if that’s how you act towards other people you don’t deserve to participate in a community.

Yeah that part is a joke. They should hit back. That's the whole point of trash talk and banter

Put this is any other context and you can see why you’re wrong. Just because you’re behind a screen shouldn’t make you impervious to the consequences.

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Fuck both of them. I’ll continue my bad behavior cause freedom.

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Games are rated M but you better not say bad words

Can’t believe you are pro censoring people just got saying bad words in a game that’s rated M

Watch your mouth! Daddy is gonna ban you for agressive comments!

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Yeah sure because it's real life not just a game, right? Let's include a dress-code as well to putify the community! And gammers should say a prayer before the game starts!

Nice job deleting your comments coward. Back to the shadows with you.

Slippery slope

That was the NRA's Russia outreach program.

Slippery slope to what? In-game chat and even chat apps like discord aren’t public forums, you’re held to the rules set by the company providing the services. If you can’t abide by the rules they set, they reserve the right to remove you and revoke your access. Their goal is to provide an appealing service to the widest audience possible not cater to a bunch of toxic folks who can’t mind their temper.

If you can’t contain yourself, or at the very least mute yourself and you get banned that’s on you.

I don't play CoD. I play everything solo, almost exclusively. Maybe it's because I play mostly older games, but I don't encounter it that often.

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Nope. Russian asset NRA used the funds to push reich wing lunacy https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20NRA%20%20Russia%20-%20How%20a%20Tax-Exempt%20Organization%20Became%20a%20Foreign%20Asset.pdf

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/27/764879242/nra-was-foreign-asset-to-russia-ahead-of-2016-new-senate-report-reveals

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/27/nra-russia-foreign-asset-senate-report-investigation

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I don't get why games take away chat and scoreboards when you could instead just make it an option each user can enable or disable. I enjoy scoreboards because I can see how I am doing and how I can improve. I enjoy chat because I can plan things out with my squad

You do realize that people you play against in multiplayer games are other real humans right?

If there are so many toxic people in a game that these kinds of things kill the game then the game deserves to die.

Ah yes, the ol' pretend you didn't say what you did. So predictable.

Good thing companies are actively investing in technology to help make moderation better then huh, like this article is saying.

Just control yourself and stop saying slurs bro. Stop being such a whinny baby.

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Yeah and they play a game. Are we supposed to watch our language while smashing heads in the game? Is it a game or real life. Make up your mind!

What has this world come too…

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