EULA update and losing players

MJallday · November 14

Gabriel_H wrote: »

MJallday wrote: »

there is no such "law" to monitor chat systems in a game - either in the UK or EU. please stop making things up.

What companies are obliged to do is keep "appropriate" records/logs of activity which can be requested by law enforcement . this doesnt just include chat, but also in game activities. these records must be kept in line with the GDPR (amongst other DP laws)

they (ZOS) can use appropriate means (should they choose to do so) to monitor things - this includes AI, but is not prohibitive to this method - they are also morally obligated to act upon reports and escalate where appropriate. thats what the EULA and TOS are about

companies can deem whatever records are approrpriate. including chat logs. eg it would look pretty daft if they didnt keep chat logs and the police were to ask for them - for example real life threats

so are they required by law to monitor chat? no
do they chose to? yes , using appropriate means

im not sure this entire thread is going anywhere tbh

I have already posted multiple links regarding the OSA:

Content moderation: All in-scope platforms must actively monitor and remove illegal content, which may include human, manual or automated content moderation tools.
Text or voice chat functionality (team chat in team-based games, or chat in large open servers which bring player avatars together). There is an exemption for services that only enable user-generated content in the form of SMS, email or MMS messages and/or one-to-one live aural communications.
All in-scope services will need to comply with a range of obligations, including risk assessment and mitigation, protecting users from illegal content and child users from certain harmful content, operating complaints processes, reporting and record-keeping. Most businesses will also need to make changes to their terms of service (or EULAs). Larger services that pose risks of several different types of harm are subject to the most onerous obligations.

and.... the OSA is not a law. Its a regulatory framework by the communications watchdog (OFCOM)

regulatory frameworks are NOT LAW - they are guidance (at best) . In addition, they cant be enforced outside the UK

so ill repeat.. the OSA is irrelevant in legal terms.

Syldras · November 14

Gabriel_H wrote: »

*sigh* the wording is children and young people because in some EU countries being 16, for example, does not make you a child - however the DSA specifically regards anyone under 18 as being in the same class as children. Hence me saying it "in effect" regards anyone under 18 as a child for the purposes of online safety.

It's preferable to read the actual law text (which you find in the CELEX database of the EU website) instead of a manual written for absolute laypeople (at first glance I thought it was for children and teenagers, looking at the illustrations, to be honest; to tell the people it concerns about how the law affects them). If you would read the whole law text, you would see that age-appropriateness for different age groups, comparable to the current movie and game rating system, is mentioned - so it's absolutely not "under 18 = child = all to be treated the same". But anyway, if you want to talk about this manual you linked, the most interesting point there is actually this:

So, as I already wrote in my latest post (in the paragraphs you unfortunately never commented on, although they would have been more interesting to discuss), indeed they consider minors to be able to report inappropriate content.

You know, the whole discussion is somehow weirdly funny, especially since you brought in "but in Germany, children age 16 and 17 can play ESO, so strict child protection measures are neccessary". A culture where this age group is basically considered "adults lite" (which also shows in a speech shift from being adressed as children to be adressed as adults at just that age, including changing from using their first name to "Mrs/Mr" and last name in conversations), where they are free to make most decisions for themselves, but people are still a little more lenient with them, and parents basically have a veto right for some decisions...

To imagine that the 17-year-old who drove home to his own appartment after his job and then sits down in front of his computer to play ESO while drinking a glass of wine is an innocent and helpless child who has to be protected from seeing consensual chat messages that include evil words (maybe even just said in jest by his buddies of the same age) for body parts that he might have just seen on his partner 5 minutes ago...!

And not only protected, but protected by an automatized censorship filter because a young man who is seen as capable of voting, working, paying taxes and marrying obviously is too helpless to put a user on the spam list and send in a TOS violation report in case he gets an actually unwanted inappropriate message.

Seriously.

I absolutely see the need for the protection of actual children and young teens from themes that are not suitable for their age, but to justify a censorship filter because of 16- and 17-year-olds who are even deemed mature enough to play ESO in their culture (otherwise the game wouldn't have been rated that way in their countries)...?! Could we maybe focus on actual dangers like extremism, hate speech, stalking or bullying, all of which are an issue for every age group, and discuss how ZOS could handle these reasonably?

I think, btw, that users would be less adverse to this whole thing if it would just be about an automatic filter that flags words related to terrorism and severe slurs, with a reliable human reviewer to sort out false positives (for example if a word that looks like a slur in English turns out to be used as a normal word in a non-English conversation), plus a report function, so people who get unwanted lewd, insulting or otherwise bothering messages may report them (of course, mods should take them seriously and actually do something about the people who bother others with this).

Alinhbo_Tyaka · November 14

Syldras wrote: »

RandomKodiak wrote: »

I never use racial slurs etc.. so I am not worried

Wait until you tell a friend in chat that you've visited a German restaurant and ate Nuremberg sausages with

and the last word gets you banned. It gets blurred out by the profanity filter already now, btw Although I've never met any German yet who even felt insulted by this word (nowadays it's seen as colloquial or as teasing banter, no one really finds it offensive), and I've been born in Germany and live here for almost 40 years now.

I prefer my great grandmother's which she fermented and kept in a large crock near the cook stove in the winter. Nothing from a can or jar tastes the same. My great grandfather fermented beer, or bier if you prefer, in the basement which is where the sauer***** went during the summer.

While growing up, too long ago to count, those last five letters could be considered a slur or a joking endearment. It was based on how well you knew the person saying it and the tone in taken in its use. The same went for terms used for folks used for folks from other European countries.

Syldras · November 14

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

While growing up, too long ago to count, those last five letters could be considered a slur or a joking endearment. It was based on how well you knew the person saying it and the tone in taken in its use. The same went for terms used for folks used for folks from other European countries.

I know it had been used as an insult, but nowadays, almost 80 years since the war ended, I really know no one who takes it seriously anymore. Although it always depends on the tone, of course. If a condescending tone is used, everything could be an insult, from "human" to "Zenimax"

But to return to the topic, if someone would get banned for using the word mentioned above in chat, that would be absolutely exaggerated. Even more so of course if the word was used in its original meaning - and the most absurd thing is that Germans (the exact people who are thought to be protected from being insulted by filtering this word) are most likely to be affected by this, because the word just means "herb" in German. The whole issue caught my eye when talking about alchemy ingredients in chat with a German friend and these got blurred out by the filter:

Alinhbo_Tyaka · November 14

Syldras wrote: »

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

While growing up, too long ago to count, those last five letters could be considered a slur or a joking endearment. It was based on how well you knew the person saying it and the tone in taken in its use. The same went for terms used for folks used for folks from other European countries.

I know it had been used as an insult, but nowadays, almost 80 years since the war ended, I really know no one who takes it seriously anymore. Although it always depends on the tone, of course. If a condescending tone is used, everything could be an insult, from "human" to "Zenimax"

But to return to the topic, if someone would get banned for using the word mentioned above in chat, that would be absolutely exaggerated. Even more so of course if the word was used in its original meaning - and the most absurd thing is that Germans (the exact people who are thought to be protected from being insulted by filtering this word) are most likely to be affected by this, because the word just means "herb" in German. The whole issue caught my eye when talking about alchemy ingredients in chat with a German friend and these got blurred out by the filter:

I guess I didn't come across as intended. My intent was to infer that context and the situation a word is used in is important. Something AI doesn't handle well nor for that matter many humans.

Determining context was one of the hardest parts I had when I moderated a professional forum. Much like here we also had members whose native language was not English. As a result we had to decide if our perceived context was the same as the poster's intended context. Frequently it was not and the only way we learned this was from interacting with the poster. Again something AI is not very good at.

And I don't know. I'd be pretty upset if you went around calling me "Herb". My name isn't Herbert.

ZOS_GregoryV · November 14

Greetings all,

Upon review, it would seem that this thread has run its course, and derailed from the initial topic. As this is the case, we have decided to close this thread. Additionally, when posting, we ask that all members of the community keep the Community Rules in mind.

Thank you for your understanding,
-Greg-