Minecraft Java Edition 1.19.1 is out now and it comes with some controversial changes, that many players are not particularly happy about.
The first major change is the addition of player reporting, if they send abusive message in the game chat. The system allows you to report specific people on servers and select multiple messages to include, plus add some comments. From there, Mojang / Microsoft moderators will look over reports and deal with them. It applies to everyone, even private servers. Linking together with that is another change to the text chat. With their new secure chat system, it will put a note by the chat for each message that was not sent through it or if the server somehow tampered with it.
Mojang say people won't be banned for swearing but it's more aimed at "hate speech, bullying, harassment, sexual solicitation, or making true threats to others". If you get banned it won't affect playing single-player.
Naturally, there's already mods to get around this like the No Chat Reports mod that claims to strip out the signatures attached to chat messages, making them "impossible to track and associate your chat messages with your Minecraft and, by extension, Microsoft account".
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In case you missed it, Mojang also recently said no to NFTs and blockchain in Minecraft.
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Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
"Hatespeech" aka "someone was mean to me on the internet" aka "please protect me from different opinions voiced strongly" aka "I'm sure this will never be abused" aka "whatever those in power deem to be unacceptable at this point in time, to be changed later, this is totally not a slippery slope, trust us".
Anyway, Minecraft really isn't the platform to insist on being some kind of free speech platform, given the target audience.
In fact, I'm all in favor of moderating chat there.
However, that should be up to the server you're on, not globally managed by Mojang.
Mojang should only provide the tools to do so (including a common database of known offenders), should the admins desire it.
Of course, I don't know if I ever used chat in Minecraft (usually when playing I will be in some voice session). And if I did, certainly not to just randomly swear and insult people
I just do find it funny how "hatespeech" has become this sledgehammer argument "I don't agree with this and feel offended, therefore this is hatespeech" thing and can't help but laugh about it.
Quoting: dpanterAlternative: https://www.minetest.net/
Minetest is more of a ham sandwich where minecraft is a fullblown buffet. It doesn't come even remotely close enough yet. Which I find extremely sad, I've been wanting to play mc again for years but I'm not gonna link a ms account.
Quoting: TheSHEEEP"Hatespeech" aka "someone was mean to me on the internet" aka "please protect me from different opinions voiced strongly" aka "I'm sure this will never be abused" aka "whatever those in power deem to be unacceptable at this point in time, to be changed later, this is totally not a slippery slope, trust us".Mmm definitely don't agree there. Huge difference between mean text and hate speech and I think anyone with a bit of common sense can generally tell the difference. There's really no place for hate speech.
Quoting: cere4lMinetest is more of a ham sandwich where minecraft is a fullblown buffet.To be honest - Minetest is more like a tool to create games (and not only games), than a game itself.
And even their page says: "An open source voxel game engine".
If you read deeper it says: "Minetest is not a game itself, but instead provides a Lua API which is used to create games and mods. This makes creation and customisation super easy. "
Last edited by Avikarr on 1 August 2022 at 12:15 pm UTC
Quoting: TheSHEEEP(including a common database of known offenders)This never gone wrong, specially in (semi-)automated system. It will be abused to hilarious levels.
Quoting: Liam DaweHuge difference between mean text and hate speech and I think anyone with a bit of common sense can generally tell the difference. There's really no place for hate speech.Going by Mojang's description, I presume that the update concerned is intended to address the long-running issue of extremist recruiting in video games, which has affected Minecraft for years.
Last edited by Pengling on 1 August 2022 at 12:25 pm UTC
Quoting: Liam DaweHuge difference between mean text and hate speech and I think anyone with a bit of common sense can generally tell the difference.This sentence alone should tell you where the problem lies.
There is no waterproof definition of "hate speech", even official ones used by some countries are nothing but useless vagueness. And that's in legalese territory, where that's even worse!
And any definition so vague as to what does or does not qualify in the end has to rely entirely on whoever is responsible for enforcing it, entirely on a case-by-case basis.
And as such, places both too much work and too much power in that person's (or collection of persons) hands, which will with almost absolute certainty lead to abuse.
It can work fine within limited-in-size communities such as this, but on a broad scale such as a societal level? Hell no.
Whatever is "common sense" to you, I guarantee will be at least somewhat different from what it is to me or to any other person in this or any community.
Quoting: mindedieThis never gone wrong, specially in (semi-)automated system. It will be abused to hilarious levels.That's why you should be able to opt out of it if you run a server.
But it should still be there for those who just want the "easiest to deal with" solution.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 1 August 2022 at 12:44 pm UTC
Quoting: natis1Apparently it can be exploited by letting you add fake messages to make the other person look worse. Here's a proof of concept: github.com/nodusclient/gaslightI thought this was game dev 101 to not trust the client? What has microsoft done to mojangs dev team to allow for such flaws
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