bigotry
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Facebook tightens safeguards against hate-driven targeted ads
Facebook was caught more than a little off-guard when ProPublica discovered ads targeted at racists, and today it's taking steps to prevent those hate-filled ads from showing up again. The social network's Sheryl Sandberg has announced plans to tighten control of ads, including more human involvement. There will now be "more manual review" of ad targeting options to prevent promos based on hateful terms. Also, it's developing a program that will encourage you to report abuses directly -- you might not have to wait for a news story for Facebook to take action.
Major advertising firm bans Breitbart for hate speech
The AppNexus advertising network drew a line in the sand today: Breitbart News has been indefinitely barred from using its ad-serving tools for violating hate speech standards. "This blacklist was solely about hate speech violation," AppNexus' Joshua Zeitz told Bloomberg. "We did a human audit of Breitbart and determined there were enough articles and headlines that cross that line." At a glance, the move seems similar to Facebook's pledge to gut advertising for "misleading, illegal and deceptive" fake news websites, but AppNexus says it isn't trying to police content -- it's just upholding its existing content standards.
Web tool measures your Reddit friends' bigotry
Let's face it: while Reddit is a great overall place to visit, some of its users are nicer than others. But how do you discover this without creeping histories or lurking in unsavory subreddits? An unofficial web tool, Free Reddit Check, might just help. The website attempts to quantify the homophobia, racism and sexism of Reddit users based on both what they say as well as the subreddits they frequent. Want to find out if a friend's off-color remark is just an isolated incident or a part of a larger pattern? This might help.
Wings Over Atreia: A rant against xenophobia in Aion
You know one of the great things about a weekly opinion piece? The ability to about-face and change topics when inspiration strikes... or you just can't bite your tongue any longer. And I am going to exercise that right right now: I'm diverging a bit from my intended thoughts about more of Aion's upcoming 3.5 goodies and addressing something that has been gnawing at me for the past few weeks. Actually, address might be too gentle of a word because the more I think about it, the more it is turning into an outright rant. And you know that it takes quite a bit for me to get riled up enough to unleash; with only three rants in over two years, I definitely lag behind in the rant department! What could be getting my goat enough to actually fire up the ol' rant-o-matic? It's not anything that's been done -- or not done -- by NCsoft. The company is in the clear this time. It's actually the players. More specifically, it is the unacceptable attitude of bigotry and intolerance that's being heaved about in Aion against other nationalities and other languages. A great big W. T. F. here folks. Now I am not accusing all players of this, not by a long shot. But the fact that it is cropping up with any frequency is a problem. Something needs to be said. So I am saying it.
Officers' Quarters: When to give up
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.If you were reading WoW Insider over the weekend, you might have noticed a couple of rather depressing posts. Adam talked about when you should make the personal decision to stop raiding. Then Jennie talked about the reasons why raiding guilds break up. I might as well continue the trend, but at least I have the excuse of a reader's e-mail. Last week I addressed the problems that small guilds will face in the coming months. This week, by request, I'm going to look at larger, hardcore guilds. And I'll also examine a nasty stereotype in the community that continues to proliferate.I am in this guild for the past 2 years of my WOW experience. This is my first guild, and my only guild so far. The atmosphere was friendly when I first joined it to join my real life schoolmates, hoping to down boss and experience content together. But a couple of drama and event took place, and my friends all quit the game which they felt was taking too much of their time. The original management when I joined all left the game due to other real life commitments and burnouts from over-WOW-ed. So with a twist of fate I took over the role of Guildmaster. The other veterans in the guild has other reasons that forbid them from taking the helm. And so I begun my quest to reform the dying guild in the dying server. We are a guild with predominantly Asian players, but we welcome western players too. But apparently playing in a US server meant you always have to being abused at for being Asian. Some people just cannot differentiate Chinese Farmer and general normal Asian players. And so I have been working for the past 6 months trying to recruit new blood into the guild and keeping the raiders around. We finally managed to down Rage Winterchill only in the past 2 weeks, after the top end guild in our server's endless poaching of our raiders to warm their bench . . . And a few other core raiders announcing their quitting of the game soon. And now I feel I don't enjoy WOW the same anymore. It's no longer the same for me.
Sessler constructively rants about Xbox Live bigots
In the latest Sessler's Soapbox, a regular video diatribe by G4TV personality Adam Sessler, he expresses his severe distaste for the bigotry and homophobia found on Xbox Live. Having actually spent time at GDC discussing this very issue with Sessler and his wife -- she's a lovely and charming woman by the way -- let's just say that Sessler is actually quite restrained regarding his feelings on the issue in the video we've placed after the break.Although we joke about it in the picture above, Catan is one of the rare Xbox Live games where civility can be found. However, we understand that trash-talking is part of the competitive Xbox Live experience, so might we suggest the Shakespearean Insult Generator for those compelled to disparage others. And parents, please control your children online.
Adam Sessler on Xbox Live Bigots
In his regular video feature, Sessler's Soapbox, G4TV personality Adam Sessler tackles one of the fastest growing and despicable trends in Xbox Live history; bigotry. In short, Sessler challenges Xbox Live users who feel the need to spew racist and homophobic remarks in order to convey their emotions during gaming to actually think about what they're saying. We encountered a similar experience while playing Uno during our last X3F LIVE event, where a kid--who couldn't have been older than 10, thought it was important to express all of the new slurs he had learned (from the schoolyard and probably also from his Xbox Live sessions).The issue is huge and disgusting. Sessler couldn't be more accurate when he says that we fight so hard to remove the negative stigma's attributed to gamers while ignoring the fact that we're becoming one of the biggest, and organized, bigotry groups in the world. Listen up because we're only saying this once. Yelling racial and homophobic remarks doesn't make you cool and it isn't funny to anyone else in the room, so ditch those comments and get more creative.Quit being the reason why we hate the service we pay for, it only makes us all look bad and removes all arguments that gaming is the revolution in connected entertainment. As now former Microsoft marketing exec Jeff Bell once said, "Your contribution to society is ... what?"The video can be found after the jump.
