• 0 Posts
  • 2.02K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 15th, 2023

help-circle


  • Look, I am a community moderator here on Lemmy, and I agree with OP. There are a lot of moderators, whether they are on Reddit, Lemmy, or anywhere else, that should simply not be moderators.

    I moderate the cars community (not the disney movie, like the main automotive community) on my home instance. Just me and one other moderator, its a pretty low traffic community. There was a third moderator who was dormant. Suddenly, that dormant account becomes active, reposts what the other active moderator had posted, then deleted the other moderators posts as “duplicates.” They then proceeded to remove both me and the other moderator so that they were the only community moderator. I don’t really mind; being a moderator isn’t really something I want and my home instance admins had to ask me like, 4 times to be a moderator for that community. Anyway, I messaged the admins saying like, “hey, this other account suddenly became active after like a year of inactivity and while what they are posting isn’t against the rules or anything, I don’t know if this was from you guys or if you guys know about it.” Needless to say, the admins took some actions including removing that moderator and reinstating me and the other moderator.





  • My problem is about wrongful censorship.

    This is certainly the problem. How do you define “wrongful censorship?” Is it the same as how I define it, or how Jimmy Downthestreet defines it? If those definitions are all different, whose definition is the correct one? Who objectively defines what censorship is good or bad? How far is too far? Does that apply to all cultures and societies around the world, or just yours?

    Also, Lemmy is exactly like Reddit. You’ll get banned for exactly the same thing, just a different flavor.





  • That’s basically the point of a tariff; to discourage people from buying foreign goods and to encourage production and sale of domestic goods instead.

    The only times it doesn’t work correctly is when too much of the general populace refuses to do the work necessary to create production, domestic regulations make production locally too prohibitively expensive, and/or when domestic product manufacturers raise their prices to match the new higher tariffed prices, effectively cancelling the intended benefits of a tariff.

    The USA right now is kinda seeing the effects of all 3. It has been so reliant on imports for such a long time that trying to cut that off all at once is having a more pronounced effect than if its import reliance was curtailed more slowly and started a while ago. And since there is no regulation (AFAIK) saying that domestic good prices cannot raise to match imported good prices when tariffed, that doesn’t help either. Businesses want the most money, and if all the other options for a product are $150 and their domestic one is only $50, without law saying they can’t match those other prices businesses feel like they are leaving $100 on the table.






  • I mean, any person that tries to learn history from video games or movies alone is pretty dumb. In order for it to be entertaining, artistic liberties often need to be taken which usuaally means the final product is not historically accurate. The thing with Assassin’s Creed games is that where history was involved, in the past they tried to be as accurate to real life as possible. The layouts of cities, the appearance and roles of real historic characters, etc. In more recent years they have tossed that out the window, but historic accuracy on elements not related to the assassin storyline was something Assassin’s Creed prided itself on.

    Even still, most only have a single text screen at the very beginning that just says “this is a work of fiction.” I don’t know that I would call that emphasis, but it is present. I also haven’t tried this mod myself, but I don’t see that it would be portraying itself as real events unless it says “this is based on real events.” I have always assumed that video games are a work of fiction, even if they are based on real events. If I wanted to learn more about the real events, I would do research on my own.

    I suppose at the end of the day more context is needed. Did Valve contact the mod author prior to takedown to request a change in the mod description to add a “work of fiction” tag and the author refused? If Valve just straight up removed it without even contacting the author, I think that is not good.

    I am concerned that censorship might become greater with this action. What other governments will say to Valve “remove X or Y game/mod because it is offensive or portrays real life characters or events improperly?” Ideally none, but still. I don’t exactly agree with the context of this mod and entirely understand why it would be offensive, but at the same time I think that a mod author or game developer should be free to create whatever they want, without fear of censorship removing their work.


  • EDIT:

    Valve has denied reports its pulled a controversial mod from Steam around the world at the request of the South Korean government, saying the mod was only blocked in South Korea and only because it broke local laws. The mod’s author is said to be behind its global removal.

    EDIT: This was important information I was not privy to when I originally made this comment. This makes more sense and is completely understandable.

    Original comment below:


    I feel like this opens the door to banning any “alternative history” setting for a game or mod on Steam.

    For example, if someone wanted to make a mod about WWII but aliens invaded Earth and the Allies and Axis decided to make an agreement to become allies to repel the alien invasion, how would that be different from this? That would effectively make Nazis “good guys” in that alternative historical setting. Obviously, that is something that never happened in real history, but if someone is interested in real historical events, it should be on them to do their research, not a video game developer or a mod author.

    Unless there is specific context where a government is pointing to this mod saying that’s “how it really happened,” would not a disclaimer saying that the events in the game are not based on reality and set in an alternative timeline be sufficient?