Facepunch and Gaming Communities; what level of involvement is too far

green county health dept

Active Member
Legacy
Back in May, Facepunch updated their "server operator rules" to seemingly allow for the single dev to have a little more control about what types of content his platform hosts.

Most of early of early actions taken against communities seemed rational and within the guidelines of the document; forcing servers to remove the "rapist" dark rp role and SWEPs, forcing moat to stop being a little baby, and including some pretty broad but sensible doxxing rules. However, as of recent, the dev seems to be getting really nitty gritty about a few things he/the team don't like. The best and most recent example is the whole IP fiasco; the thing that most likely spurred to publicization of said information is

"Releasing private information about a player to the public (IP addresses, real names, pictures, etc)"

The wording, at least to my skilled vomit paragraph writing brain, makes it sound like the action needs to be through an intentional or semi intentional means. Having vulnerabilities in your code have been an issue in the past in these communities of volunteer passion and labor. A few good examples are moat being a fuck up with his code, and the whole pixel/temar sister kissing computer thing. For the threat to be credible enough that the dev can even threaten the mean sounding word blacklist is wild for a simple mistake. You would think he would be more focused on helping the community fix it and keep them on his platform rather than threatening with his 16 oz dick of justice. It'd be nice to flesh this out and make it apparent whether or not my boys gonna get spanked for an accidental code exploit.

It seems this trend of slowly grabbing for more and more control will continue into Sbox. They've already outlawed some pretty memey gamemodes from the past in the name of racial justice and some other quick things. If this course stays charted, you can expect big brother dev to step up and say "nah nah nah, kids can't moderate nudity images/explicit conversations/my fan art of dinkleberg's wife" or something next. Just a matter of time before they piss in my cereal again and I scream at the sky

what are you thoughts? It's their platform, so they should be able to control the content to some degree. But what's overstepping?
 

Ainoyu Yunomi

✘o ✘o
VIP
Legacy
Honestly, it’s their platform so they have the freedom to choose how they want to enforce things. Now, it may cost some of the creativity from users in attempt to remove some of more negative game modes. But that is up to them to figure out what is the right balance between moderation and creativity and all that shit. The reason why I’m saying this is because it will affect the level of success they will have. Too much enforcement, people will not play on their platforms as it may stifle their creativity in terms of game modes. Too much freedom may lead to people going around, throwing slurs and doing shit like raping people, gasing people, etc., which does not look good for them as it is happening on their platform.
 

Nathan776

Administrator
Moderator
VIP
Supporter
Legacy
Overstepping hasn't really been an issue with regards to Facepunch & Garry's Mod. When such little action is taken consistently - it becomes obscure to start policing things. A lot of what is done is very much the bare minimum and enables users who wish to utilize "tactics" such as ip spoofing to thrive before any action is taken. I know that some of the communities in GSU helped to create some of the guidelines in the server operator rules. I am curious however how much them releasing s&box plays into them listening to such communities in the first place. I would be shocked if the list doesn't grow rapidly during release of s&box from the fear of bad publicity.

One of the things I'm most interested in is: what action is taken against users that host servers which are non-compliant and if these punishments will transition to other facepunch games. Surely a blacklist isn't all they can do.
 

Grumble

Active Member
Legacy
Back in May, Facepunch updated their "server operator rules" to seemingly allow for the single dev to have a little more control about what types of content his platform hosts.

Most of early of early actions taken against communities seemed rational and within the guidelines of the document; forcing servers to remove the "rapist" dark rp role and SWEPs, forcing moat to stop being a little baby, and including some pretty broad but sensible doxxing rules. However, as of recent, the dev seems to be getting really nitty gritty about a few things he/the team don't like. The best and most recent example is the whole IP fiasco; the thing that most likely spurred to publicization of said information is

"Releasing private information about a player to the public (IP addresses, real names, pictures, etc)"

The wording, at least to my skilled vomit paragraph writing brain, makes it sound like the action needs to be through an intentional or semi intentional means. Having vulnerabilities in your code have been an issue in the past in these communities of volunteer passion and labor. A few good examples are moat being a fuck up with his code, and the whole pixel/temar sister kissing computer thing. For the threat to be credible enough that the dev can even threaten the mean sounding word blacklist is wild for a simple mistake. You would think he would be more focused on helping the community fix it and keep them on his platform rather than threatening with his 16 oz dick of justice. It'd be nice to flesh this out and make it apparent whether or not my boys gonna get spanked for an accidental code exploit.

It seems this trend of slowly grabbing for more and more control will continue into Sbox. They've already outlawed some pretty memey gamemodes from the past in the name of racial justice and some other quick things. If this course stays charted, you can expect big brother dev to step up and say "nah nah nah, kids can't moderate nudity images/explicit conversations/my fan art of dinkleberg's wife" or something next. Just a matter of time before they piss in my cereal again and I scream at the sky

what are you thoughts? It's their platform, so they should be able to control the content to some degree. But what's overstepping?
lol dying game put into hospice
 

Max

Active Member
Supporter
"It's their platform, so they should be able to control the content..."

You answered the question: You might not like it, you might not like it when it comes to places like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, but at the end of the day these are private platforms, not public even though they are free to the public. They can do anything they want with them as long as it is within regulations that have been set.
 

green county health dept

Active Member
Legacy
You answered the question: You might not like it, you might not like it when it comes to places like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, but at the end of the day these are private platforms, not public even though they are free to the public. They can do anything they want with them as long as it is within regulations that have been set.
I guess it’s a balance of how far they should step and what battles they pick. It’s one thing to go make moat cry over IP spoofing, it’s another thing (at least to me) to start getting involved in the “yes to this content, no to that content” type of level”.

A fun little thought experiment: Say the 2b skin or the pinball machine on bowling were still a thing with their depiction of female anatomy and it was on the server. Since said things exists on the server and I could point them out to the single dev and say “hey man, there’s some female anatomy available for kids on here. Can you enforce your server rules and make them put a content maturity disclaimer?”

Should the dev send me packing with a slapped ass and not do anything? Or should the dev say hey, those are low res tiddies on a pinball machine get the children the fuck out of there or remove them

Mature content moderation is another fun battle too, but this example was easier to show how far might be too far to some.
 

Max

Active Member
Supporter
I guess it’s a balance of how far they should step and what battles they pick. It’s one thing to go make moat cry over IP spoofing, it’s another thing (at least to me) to start getting involved in the “yes to this content, no to that content” type of level”.

A fun little thought experiment: Say the 2b skin or the pinball machine on bowling were still a thing with their depiction of female anatomy and it was on the server. Since said things exists on the server and I could point them out to the single dev and say “hey man, there’s some female anatomy available for kids on here. Can you enforce your server rules and make them put a content maturity disclaimer?”

Should the dev send me packing with a slapped ass and not do anything? Or should the dev say hey, those are low res tiddies on a pinball machine get the children the fuck out of there or remove them

Mature content moderation is another fun battle too, but this example was easier to show how far might be too far to some.

As long as companies don't get in trouble with local/state/federal laws (and sometimes, they still break this and don't get in trouble), they can literally do anything they want. If they don't want a bunch of "mature content" on their servers/platform, it is within their right to restrict/punish such things. If they don't want "obscene language" they can whitelist/blacklist/censor words all they want.

You got banned in Club Penguin for saying expletives, didn't matter which one, but if you said any of the words on the blacklist, you were instantly banned, no exceptions. The ability to do that on any modern platform is probably super simple, but it would hurt the bottom line.

These companies have 100% right to "virtue signal" or be "degenerates" within the confines of law and where they are operating, regardless of notions of morality or ethics, so long as they follow the law.
 

Lordyhgm

Awoo?
Prestigious
Legacy
Back in May, Facepunch updated their "server operator rules" to seemingly allow for the single dev to have a little more control about what types of content his platform hosts.

Most of early of early actions taken against communities seemed rational and within the guidelines of the document; forcing servers to remove the "rapist" dark rp role and SWEPs, forcing moat to stop being a little baby, and including some pretty broad but sensible doxxing rules. However, as of recent, the dev seems to be getting really nitty gritty about a few things he/the team don't like. The best and most recent example is the whole IP fiasco; the thing that most likely spurred to publicization of said information is

"Releasing private information about a player to the public (IP addresses, real names, pictures, etc)"

The wording, at least to my skilled vomit paragraph writing brain, makes it sound like the action needs to be through an intentional or semi intentional means. Having vulnerabilities in your code have been an issue in the past in these communities of volunteer passion and labor. A few good examples are moat being a fuck up with his code, and the whole pixel/temar sister kissing computer thing. For the threat to be credible enough that the dev can even threaten the mean sounding word blacklist is wild for a simple mistake. You would think he would be more focused on helping the community fix it and keep them on his platform rather than threatening with his 16 oz dick of justice. It'd be nice to flesh this out and make it apparent whether or not my boys gonna get spanked for an accidental code exploit.

It seems this trend of slowly grabbing for more and more control will continue into Sbox. They've already outlawed some pretty memey gamemodes from the past in the name of racial justice and some other quick things. If this course stays charted, you can expect big brother dev to step up and say "nah nah nah, kids can't moderate nudity images/explicit conversations/my fan art of dinkleberg's wife" or something next. Just a matter of time before they piss in my cereal again and I scream at the sky

what are you thoughts? It's their platform, so they should be able to control the content to some degree. But what's overstepping?
They listened to a particular Coomer Canadian COI for a while, I wouldn't have too much faith
 

green county health dept

Active Member
Legacy
As long as companies don't get in trouble with local/state/federal laws (and sometimes, they still break this and don't get in trouble), they can literally do anything they want. If they don't want a bunch of "mature content" on their servers/platform, it is within their right to restrict/punish such things. If they don't want "obscene language" they can whitelist/blacklist/censor words all they want.

You got banned in Club Penguin for saying expletives, didn't matter which one, but if you said any of the words on the blacklist, you were instantly banned, no exceptions. The ability to do that on any modern platform is probably super simple, but it would hurt the bottom line.

These companies have 100% right to "virtue signal" or be "degenerates" within the confines of law and where they are operating, regardless of notions of morality or ethics, so long as they follow the law.
Oh, I fully understand they have the ability to blacklist and cancel content in the name of virtue signaling and do whatever they want with their platform.

I’m just throwing out the quick little thought experiment of how far they should take the legal side of things based on their definitions and guidelines for the server operator rules.

As it stands, if I had a list of every server that had the bowling map and sent it to the dev via the crisis tiddy hotline email, the current wording/actions he has taken make it sound like he’ll go out of his way to force the offending content removal or have each server do the “I’m over 18” age verification.
 
Top