Quote Originally Posted by Semirhage View Post
The argument against parsers is a Motte and Bailey argument. People defending it will swear up and down that it's about harassment, until they come across a stream where nobody is harassing anybody. Then they'll gleefully report, and retreat to the Motte, "because it's against the rules!"

Now, Square is perfectly within their rights to forbid something because they don't support it and don't want to he liable for it. It's an *annoying* position given their refusal to implement a lot of the pretty basic QOL plugins provide, but it's their prerogative.

But that's not the argument the anti-parser Inquisitors trot out every single time. It's because such tools create an atmosphere of harassment you see. So why mass report someone who isn't harassing someone? Shutup, it's against the rules! Round and round we go...

I agree, parsers do evidently cause harassment. Anti-parser zealots harass anyone they suspect of using one, with the full blessing of the TOS. Seems to me like harassment isn't their actual target. It's just the parsers. The objects, not the behavior. They're book burners hiding behind excuses.
We have always known the real reason behind anti parsing is the desire to not want to take accountable for ones play. It has always been that at the core, arguments around harassment have always been cherry picked and based around anecdotal accounts. The thing that differs in this situation, while unfair and messed up at the core a valid rule break can be found, this is also why I fall in the camp that SE should have never changed the ToS or started to enforce such actions using information outside of the game. Many called that this would be the product of such a change. We can be against it, but at the core a rule was broken, and they got punished.

Sure we can be fairly certain that something malicious is going on, but we have no way of proving it objectively unlike the issue with people using 3rd party tools while streaming. That can be proven objectively, so trying to argue the why is moot. What we should be doing is sending feedback to SE requesting certain features to be added. I get I use a 3rd party tool to add some must needed colorblind features. I know the risk, and I accept it.