User:Fako Berkers/freedomtoignore

Rape in cyberspace and the freedom to ignore

I think that the problems addressed at last theory session are very important which urges me to say a little more about it.

Changed opinion

First of all I would like to declare that I changed my opinion! In class I argued that the Voodoo program should be banned from the game, because no good can come from it. I still think the Voodoo program is very problematic, because it allows for trust violation. Once trust is violated it is very hard to get it back and this is a shame because a lack of trust will limit the joy of people using the system and in the long run that will limit the system itself.

Technical vs Social

However I’m not convinced anymore that banning the tools used to do harm is the right solution. The problem lies after all in the social domain, not the technical domain and I think it is not a good idea to solve social problems with technical solutions, because you run the risk of programming till eternity.

Exile command

Then of course the question is what a good social solution would be. I would say it is exile from the community. The MSN block feature (removed from 2010 version) comes nearest to this idea of exile. The gag command in LambdaMoo is slightly different from blocking, because the command does not remember who you gagged, meaning you have to do it every time you play. What I would like to see added to the MSN block is that you can share your block list with your friends. This way, once somebody gets raped, all friends of the victim can disapprove by collectively blocking the offender. The banish command suits a need to ignore people in environments where everything can be said or done (like webcam chat roulette, World of Warcraft etc.)

Censorship?

One might say that the banish command is an extreme form of censorship. The freedom to ignore is in a way in constrain with freedom of speech, but I think the banish command is important because it provides in a social control structure within the system. Often system designers will only think of their system in a technical way. They make sure (for good reasons) that in an object oriented game the config files of the game can’t be deleted, even though the gamers can recreate parts of the game itself, but the designers lack in putting similar essential security in place on a social level. To get the most out of a group (and with that the system itself) we should take group dynamic principles into account in an early stage of development.