Recently the server staff received an e-mail telling them to moderate the Discord server and the server chat on what they deem to be “appropriate.”
Below is a message from owner of the server.
Free Speech Under Attack
Dear friends, I don’t often post announcements of this sort, but I feel it’s very important for you all to know what’s currently going on.
From the very start, over 15 years ago, one of the key founding principles of MinecraftOnline has been free speech. What started out as an uncontroversal, common sense policy, has proved to be a cornerstone of this increasingly unique community. As time has passed and Western society has wavered back and forth in its political leanings, free speech has repeatedly come under attack for political reasons. It has now become common to see arrests for posts on social media in countries such as Britain and Germany, in the name of political control, which have overtaken the numbers even of traditionally totalitarian countries such as China and Russia - a truly dystopian nightmare for freedom of expression and personal liberty.
Throughout this decade and a half of change, MinecraftOnline has held steadfast to its libertarian principles, and remained an oasis of freedom and openness in an increasingly closed and controlled internet. That is, until now.
Microsoft, through their subsidiary Mojang, have issued an ultimatum to MinecraftOnline. We have been told to do away with our free speech policy (which long pre-dates Microsoft’s acquisition of Mojang), within 7 days, or face a a permanent block. If that happens, nobody will be able to play on MinecraftOnline again, and the 15-year history of this beloved server will come to a sudden and bitter end. The full email we have received today, signed facelessly only as “Mojang Enforcement”, is included below.
The email makes extremely vague claims about “harmful interactions” and “harmful comments”, and we are asking Microsoft to clarify what specific interactions and comments they consider harmful. In the meantime, please spread the word, share this info on social media. Defend free speech.
-SlowRiot
(Severe sarcasm warning. Look away if you’re allergic.)
I like that they effectively compared themselves getting an email to people getting arrested for totally innocent social media posts about nothing in particular, which we can all assume is the case without looking into at all. I also like that they’re asking for widespread outrage against this, and want a person’s name to
attackconverse sincerely with in the Free Marketplace of Ideas™. Such a good, honest person we can definitely trust implicitly, trying to protect Freeze Peach™ from Woke™ Left-Wing™ tyrants like Microsoft.Maybe “like” is the wrong word. Hmmm.
[Not sarcasm] Right, we know what’s going on here. Gross, cruel, hateful people just wanna have endless “rights” over everyone else and I’m so sick of their games I can hardly even type a non-sarcastic sentence. Ugh. Bleh. Et cetera. 🙄
Self-hosted private server, just like a lemmy instance, one joins out of their own will. Imagine mega corporations being able to decide what is acceptable on your lemmy instance and take it down if they don’t like it?
If you were in violation of lemmy’s terms of use, yeah…
They aren’t using their own software here.
"if you were in violation of lemmy’s terms of use, yeah…” wait, is there a central lemmy that can nuke other instances? I thought the whole point of the Fediverse was that if you don’t like an instance, you just defederate from it, and that there was no central power.
Yeah, we used to own the software we bought and could do whatever we wanted with it on our private storage, but now capitalism has realized it’s more lucrative to only sell licenses. Imagine Microsoft/Apple/Google erasing your privately stored documents tomorrow because they contained stuff against their policies. Very dangerous when you have governments banning abortion, trans rights, and even labeling antifascism as terrorism.
I can’t believe the number of people thinking trillion dollar mega corporations overreach is good just because it’s happening to others. Tomorrow, it’s you - that’s why we need more consumer rights and privacy protection, but the thing about rights is that they are for everyone and not just for the people you pick.
There is a legal process. Violating the AGPL that Lemmy is released under, for example.
Edited to add “Not letting me use slurs is a slippery slope to blocking positive lgbtqia statements” is an insane take, BTW.
The answer is simple - dont use their shit or abide by their terms. No, the intolerant do not gain any advantage with me by trying to cover with “freedom of speech” or “but what if they do it to trans folks?!?”
These are the people denigrating others, and while using a licensed piece of software too. Guess what - its under their licensing, thats their mistake. They can also stop being cool with having a Nazi bar.
I don’t think AGPLv3 license would prevent someone from opening a nazi bar lemmy though…
It would not.
I don’t believe it said it would not either.
I said if it was in violation of the established terms.
What Microsoft is doing with Minecraft should be illegal. After they purchased Minecraft from Mojang, they started changing the rules so instead of being a game you have purchased and you play with your friends how you want to play it, it’s a game that you have a temporary license to use in a way that Microsoft thinks is appropriate for small children, even if you are hosting your own private server like these people are doing. Microsoft doesn’t like the way that these people are playing the game and talking outside the game, so they are taking the game away. You may not like these people because they sound like the kind of people that use “free speech” as an excuse for hate speech, but would it be the same if Microsoft were taking away the game from servers that allowed people to specify their pronouns or use different color combinations associated with LGBTQ representation, which they may soon be pressured to do by the government of the country they are headquartered in?
While I would normally agree with this argument, this also comes right after they announced that they will stop obfuscating the code to make the game easier to mod. Most other software? Sure, changing the terms after the sale and all is shit. This? Write a mod. It doesn’t take that long if you know some Java. Or play on an earlier version I guess, or put the server in offline mode, etc.