ToS policy violation examples regarding vulgarity within an FC needs to be discussed

[Ranaku]

While it's true it's their property, it's also a false equivalency. I don't pay them to police my speech. I pay them to facilitate a good game design, that fosters a good community. It's my job to self-regulate my interactions with people in the community. It's my job to disassociate with people I don't like, and when all else fails, it is my job to Blacklist people I cannot tolerate.

People seem to have this false idea that you just get to report anyone you dislike and silence your opposition without consequence.

You pay them to interact with their property under their rules. Same as you would pay a entrance fee to look at art in an art gallery. That doesn't mean you can burst in there and trash the place and draw with a marker over the art they show. You pay them to get access to their service and they made clear if you don't respect the rules of their house they don't need your money, which is really really nice in my opinion.

So yeah, good riddance as i said. Since they have their rules, you in fact pay them to police your speech indeed. You may not like it but it is that way and even as we speak you pay them to do exactly that, if you like it or not. And if you don't, you know where the door is!

[Iscah]

Wrong, it's their house and thus their rules.

While that's definitely true for public interactions in the game, FCs are a different situation and I do think the way they've described the rules needs more scrutiny and, at very least, more clarification.

If you stick with the house analogy, FC chat is like the house owner saying "I don't want to hear anyone swearing in my house – but you can use this room for private conversation and if you swear in there, it's okay. But only as long as everyone in the room is fine with it. If one person comes in and doesn't like what they're hearing, I'm kicking you out."

If that's the rule, why allow swearing at all?

Alternately, if it's fine to swear inside the private room, why put the fault on the people who were okay with it (and were told the owner is okay with it) and not the one person who didn't like it and could have just removed themself from the situation?

In reality the applications of the rules might be more nuanced, not to mention the social implications for anyone trying to report an FC member like that for a minor infraction, but the example isn't clear and does sound like it's set up to allow one person to expect the culture of a group to change to suit them rather than finding another group that suits them better.

[Vahlnir]

While that's definitely true for public interactions in the game, FCs are a different situation and I do think the way they've described the rules needs more scrutiny and, at very least, more clarification.

If you stick with the house analogy, FC chat is like the house owner saying "I don't want to hear anyone swearing in my house – but you can use this room for private conversation and if you swear in there, it's okay. But only as long as everyone in the room is fine with it. If one person comes in and doesn't like what they're hearing, I'm kicking you out."

If that's the rule, why allow swearing at all?

Alternately, if it's fine to swear inside the private room, why put the fault on the people who were okay with it and not the one person who didn't like it and could have just removed themself from the situation?

In reality the applications of the rules might be more nuanced, not to mention the social implications for anyone trying to report an FC member like that for a minor infraction, but the example isn't clear and does sound like it's set up to allow one person to expect the culture of a group to change to suit them rather than finding another group that suits them better.

Yeah, I can see how this might be a bit problematic. Honestly, I didn't look at it this way. Hopefully they provide some clarification on this. If it works exactly as written, FCs are gonna have to be extremely careful who they bring in.

[Ranaku]

While that's definitely true for public interactions in the game, FCs are a different situation and I do think the way they've described the rules needs more scrutiny and, at very least, more clarification.

If you stick with the house analogy, FC chat is like the house owner saying "I don't want to hear anyone swearing in my house – but you can use this room for private conversation and if you swear in there, it's okay. But only as long as everyone in the room is fine with it. If one person comes in and doesn't like what they're hearing, I'm kicking you out."

If that's the rule, why allow swearing at all?

Alternately, if it's fine to swear inside the private room, why put the fault on the people who were okay with it and not the one person who didn't like it and could have just removed themself from the situation?

In reality the applications of the rules might be more nuanced, not to mention the social implications for anyone trying to report an FC member like that for a minor infraction, but the example isn't clear and does sound like it's set up to allow one person to expect the culture of a group to change to suit them rather than finding another group that suits them better.

It's rather a "You can talk in private in this room without any of the guests you don't know." but that doesn't mean you can talk trash about the house owner in that room and if you do and someone tells the owner you might get kicked out. Only cause the owner allows you to have a calm place to talk with a bit more privacy doesn't mean you can use that space, which is still his, to be racist etc. and if he finds out he might kick you out.

So the fact is, "swearing" (in that case) isn't allowed at all. Same as using certain drugs isn't allowed at all but the police can't put you into jail if they don't catch you but that doesn't mean it's alright.

That is basically the same as saying you can do stuff without a persons consent just cause the homeowner said you can use the room to talk. Bad for all the people is just that the room has a camera in it which ingame is called chatlog, lol.

[LittleImp]

This has actually already been a thing; I'm actually familiar with a specific incident that involved a bad-actor purposefully infiltrating someone's Free Company on an alt in order to try to get the members actioned for NSFW things they talked about in FC chat (it ended up working). Was all over some kind of weird FFXIV twitter beef.

Honestly I just wouldn't consider any channel in the game safe when it comes talking about potentially ToS violating stuff.

[LittleImp]

That is not how it works, lol. You are still using their service by their rules. It's their responsibility what happens over their servers.

I mean how about people stop being toxic and just interact with each other in a civilized way? You don't have to be a racist, sexist or whatever to have fun and if you in fact need to express yourself in such ways to have fun i can only say, good riddance when such fellas get banned to oblivion.

So yeah, how about..."If you don't like the rules, change your personality towards something that isn't based on toxicity." or just leave. Easy.

The people I know who were actioned under the FC policy weren’t being toxic at all; They talked about some sexual stuff regarding their fictional OCs. Profanity in any form would also be actionable under this policy.

[Ranaku]

The people I know who were actioned under the FC policy weren’t being toxic at all; They talked about some sexual stuff regarding their fictional OCs. Profanity in any form would also be actionable under this policy.

As alright as i am with all the ERP and such stuff, it's still a 13+ game. Ofc they take action against you if you use their platform for prohibited stuff. It's ofc nasty what that player did! (The rat that is) But sadly a crime is still a crime even if you do it where the police can't see you.

So yeah, just switch to dicsord into a 18+ channel if you need to be lewd. Ratting people out is really sad but that doesn't make the violations alright. Not to mention that such stuff was prohibited even before, they just clarified the rules now that we have a great bunch of new players getting into the game.

[Lunalepsy]

"Furthermore, in a Free Company with 10 members, if 9 of the 10 members tolerate the behavior but one does not, and one member files a report and we confirm that a violation has taken place, a penalty will be issued. You should also be aware that even if 9 of the existing Free Company members tolerate certain behavior, if you are joined by a new member who does not tolerate it, at that point your group is no longer unanimously tolerant of the behavior and may be penalized if a report is made."

I'm sorry but this is a massive oversight. If you look at this and think this is ok then I'll show you how I can abuse and exploit this: all I have to do is FC hop while pretending to be ok with vulgarity and report anything I think is vulgar enough to warrant a violation strike on a person's account and wreak havoc ruining people's accounts. If I pretend to be a super sensitive person who simply didn't know what they were getting into then the GMs have no reason to refuse me even if they think I'm lying. Secondly, this is just illogical to begin with. What is and isn't ok within an FC's culture should be dictated by the owners and officers, no one else. If you don't like how they talk then... just leave? Why even enforce this? I'm sorry, I see zero sense in it. Every other example in the document is fine. But not this, this needs to change.

It feels like people are turning this into a witch hunt.

[Deceptus]

Yeah, the FC example immediately jumped out to me as something that shouldn't be. Free Companies are essentially private groups. What I said in the Main Thread:

What's even more laughable? They used an FC as an example. Like everyone in an FC has a right to be there?

No.

If you're not a fit for the culture that the FC promotes you get booted. You don't get to make everyone else conform to YOUR sensibilities.

You shouldn't be allowed to voluntarily join a private group and then make THEM conform to YOUR standards.

[Bearded]

FC chat was always reportable - they have just clarified instances where it could become "more reportable". It's not really a big issue though as in the example provided if the 1 person out of 10 did not SAY anything in FC chat that they find the tone of the chat unwarranted then I doubt that they can complain to SE. They need to make the FC aware first and if the FC does not take into account their their wishes then they have two options.....

1) Leave the FC (preferable)
2) Report the FC chat (which would not end up well for all parties).