RealID Saga Part One: Silencing Voices
When I first heard of the latest news from Blizzard, that our Real Names will be visible when we post on the new forum system (this change will not be retroactively implemented) I spent about 40 minutes typing out an impassioned rant talking about privilege and how many people are oblivious to the concerns of others. Then I had to raid, and then the internet and twitter exploded and I figured it would be better to sleep on it. This news is definitely not surprising (and quick on it’s heels was the reveal of a security flaw in the current in-game implementation of Real ID.)For every person putting their real name out there, there are hundreds more that are horrified at this change. Personally I suspect I will post on the forums with my real name, but with no connection to this blog or my characters visible. The reason I will do so I will go into later in this post. Warning, this post is going to be a long one as it is going to cover analysis of additional new forum features.
First I shall start out by linking to the ‘official’ threads – a 49 page thread at battle.net, a 1000+ page thread on the US forums, and another 140 page thread on the EU forums. Chastity over at Righteous Orbs perfectly encapsulates my visceral reaction to everyone who has answered the outcry against RealID with “‘lol i can share my name it’s totes not a problem stalkers aren’t real” or even “All the people objecting are probably trolls anyways.” My blogroll is full of folk objecting to this change, with only a few coming out in agreement with Activision (or at least calling everyone who objects paranoid.)
Trolls won’t stop
Lack of anonymity does not remove trolling. People are quite willing to put their real names to misogynistic, racist speech and harassment all over Facebook. ‘Real Names’ is not some magic pill that is going to make everyone act politely. Physical proximity to a person doesn’t do that – going to a club I can see a person’s FACE and that doesn’t prevent them from groping me without my consent. Walking down the street I can be subjected to sexual harassment by strangers (who I can clearly identify). The idea that a real name (which can still be false, as it appears that some folk can register fake names to their Real ID. I am unable to change the name on mine.) will increase accountability is false.
It will stop the ‘level 1 troll alt’ culture of course, but instead we will see a wave of fake Real ID accounts. To stop trolling they need to invest more money into enriching the moderation infrastructure. They need to invest in the individual forum communities, and stop treating them as one monolithic entity. On a day to day basis the only official forum I touch down on is the Realm Forum, and even on our tiny server it is under moderated. More moderators and better tools for dealing with infractions, more transparency of moderation – this is what it takes to build a useful, thriving community.
Opt-in and Opt-out
‘Well don’t post then’. You opt-in to the new realid forums by posting. Currently many a Blizzard support email will simply tell you to participate on the forums. One of the ‘defences’ of the new system is that you don’t have to post. Blizzard will be legally obliged to inform posters what information will be made public if you chose to post, otherwise they really would be opening themselves up to lawsuits and the like. As it is, by reading the forum terms and being informed of the fact that your real name will be made publically available, Blizzard are likely to have covered their asses legally.
A problem with this is that Blizzard Technical Support is notorious for redirecting people to use the Technical Support forums. While I am not a fan of the current forum system (I have 8 years experience in managing large communities) I actually feel their public technical support is very good for what it is. While there are a lot of annoying bugs that don’t get solved, the CMs are generally on the balls and the stickies are brilliant resources. Having to opt out of this because Activision decided that Real Names are worth losing the voices of Marginalised Groups for is extremely disheartening.
Silencing Marginalised Voices
Now, in order to not share your name, you can no longer participate in any community discussions. If you have a concern (tinfoil or legitimate) about your privacy, you can no longer make your voice known without revealing personal information. Part of Blizzard’s Mission Statement is “Every Voice Matters” : Mine apparently no longer does. So much for “Lead Responsibly”.
Are Real Names really worth losing and alienating these marginalised gamers? Blizzard isn’t giving out your name without your permission if you post, but the net-effect of this change will just mean a lot of constructive voices not posting. Another white 20 something male posting his real name and saying ‘go on google men’ is just displaying his privilege, he is not convincing anyone that using a real name is a safe thing to do on-line, especially after 15 years of Government warnings about looking after your personal information.
The standard response to those of us saying we are worried about harassment is to not post. Way to go with being inclusive.
The New Comment System Will Be Abused
There has been remarkably little commentary on the new posting system. Not only will they bring back threaded comments (really? really? All the major forum software coders now provide flat listings as standard.) but they will also use wow.com style voting up and down. While it gives us as users the power to vote down horrible comments, it also gives arseholes the ability to silence people on the basis of their gender, or a name that reveals a particular ethnicity.
We also plan to add a number of other features designed to make reading the forums more enjoyable and to empower players with tools to improve the quality of forum discussions. Players will have the ability to rate up or rate down posts so that great topics and replies stand out from the not-so-great; low-rated posts will appear dimmer to show that the community feels that they don’t contribute effectively to the conversation, and Blizzard’s community team will be able to quickly and easily locate highly rated posts to participate in or to highlight discussions that players find worthwhile.
In addition, individual topics will be threaded by context, meaning replies to specific posts will be grouped together, making it easier for players to keep track of multiple conversations within a thread. We’re also adding a way for Blizzard posters to “broadcast” important messages forums-wide , to help communicate breaking news to the community in a clear and timely fashion. Beyond that, we’re improving our forum search function to make locating interesting topics easier and help lower the number of redundant threads, and we have more planned as well.
I can see the ‘vote down’ simply being used BY trolls (even with their real names) to silence the voices of others. This makes it even easier for the majority to silence and dismiss dissenting voices that don’t fit into ‘mainstream gamer culture’. Currently it is possible to participate without revealing your gender, or to share a story about issues of gender, sexuality, ableism and even racism without attaching your toon or real name to it. That won’t be possible any more.
The Dangers of Online Stalking are REAL
I am fed up of seeing stalking dismissed by so many people. It may never have happened to you, but it can and does happen to a lot of people worldwide. We’ve all heard the extreme stories where people get murdered, or a Minor has been saved from a pedophile. However there are millions of women (and men, and non-heteronormative people) worldwide who experience daily harassment, both cultural and personal, and shouldn’t have to. This is a good link on how sexism is still wildly rampant when it comes to the tech and gaming communities (not to mention the prejudices faced by those with non-binary gender, sexuality, or people with disabilities.)
It is a legitimately dangerous and scary thing, even if it never progresses beyond anonymous comments on a blog, or anonymous email. It can escalate even further and impact on your career, your mental health, and your family. And often there is nothing you can do about it. Dealing with harassment is not something that can be simplified into ‘oh well, report him to the police then’ because the Police are not there to protect you 24/7 and they do have limited resources.
Context of information is important
“But all of your information is on facebook/the phonebook/the electoral roll!”
Hah. Right. Okay. I may end up getting harassed while I walk down the street, but my real name isn’t stamped across my forehead so I don’t have to worry about that harassment once I have left the area or gone home. Information is power, but without context it can be fairly meaningless. Unattached to anything on the internet, it floats. Once you attach it to things, then it starts becoming dangerous, a tool for harassers. A convenience for them, even.
I think this is especially true for roleplayers, who are taking the steps of immersion even further. While no one should have to be ashamed of a hobby, it doesn’t change the stigma attached to MMOs or to more old-fashioned roleplaying. The name on the WoW forums is a problem because it identifies you in a gaming context, specifically a very hostile and public one, and opens your name up to use by folk who will harass you via other mediums.
Part Two coming soon!
Not to sidetrack your discussion but I wish we could leave terms like “white privilege” or “male privilege” out. They’re overused terms that may or may not have value in their technical context but are meaningless bull-baiting flags in general discourse.
Perhaps “point of view” would be better; it doesn’t carry value-judgment overtones.
My concerns are much more for what happens in real life when your game identity is known; yeah the creepy stalker factor is worrisome to me (been there done that like most women on the internet) but the potential employer/security clearance/privacy issues are worse.
I’m trying to firm down a contract to do technical work remotely for a company I’ve worked with before. They’re a great firm, but they don’t have many people working for them from hundreds of miles away so they get nervous. All I need is for them to see I play WoW and decide I can’t be trusted to be available when they need me. Gaming is, rightly or not, viewed negatively by society.
My husband has a security clearance for his job. He doesn’t even want to think about what sort of risks he’d take with that if he posted publicly on ANY internet forum. Heck he’s dialed back what forums he posts on pseudonymously! His company recently had to have a big sit-down meeting with people to determine whether their new security policies banned Facebook – not at work, but at all! (They didn’t but it was a concern… yay weird military-industrial system work!)
Every one of your points are good and solid. I wish someone at Activision had thought of these first.
The “call the police” thing is the funniest. I’m happy for people who live in countries where the police would actually do something, but around here I doubt they could find the PC “on” button with a map, let alone a cyberstalker. When my house was broken into, the police came, took fingerprints and a statement… and I never heard from them again. Yeah, they’ll protect me.
Jen´s last blog ..A happy story with a noob
Context is so important! People are arguing, “when you meet someone in real life, you say ‘my name is’ and give your real name.” This is true. However, let’s say you’re at a bar, and you meet someone. You probably only give your first name, and only to the person who is directly talking to you. The guy across the room doesn’t get your first name just by virtue of being present. And you control access to your last name, and probably don’t give it out! When you give out both names, such as in a business context, it is reciprocal. You know the other person’s real name as well, and there is some sort of accountability if the other person decides to focus on you inappropriately.
Most of our names are “out there” in some way or another, but we do not live in the public eye. Public officials and celebrities do, and they have to live in a very different way than the rest of us. I don’t think the rest of us are willing to start living “in the public eye” just to participate in a forum.
zelmaru´s last blog ..Young Lady- you will not use that Newfangled “Real Eye Dee”
What else are we supposed to call it if that is what it is? The overwhelming majority of women* do not like this change, and the majority of people who feel that it doesn’t matter to them are male. How is this not straight male privilege, the feminist discourse sense of the phrase? Will attempt to address your point in Part Two, so thank you for commenting.
*of course, there are exceptions, but the posts on the wow_ladies livejournal community have generated over 1000 comments and solidarity on the front that they do not want this and feel very strongly about this.
Hell, I’m a male who doesn’t want this to go live. I’ve done what I think is a fairly good job of creating a clean-cut dichotomy between Rilgon the WoW Persona and my professional image.
I should not have to damage that dichotomy just to get some damned tech support on the forums. Period, end of story.
Rilgon Arcsinh´s last blog ..The State of the Scope
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25626350309&sid=1&pageNo=1
i posted my own (real) stalking story here.
and i did ‘call the police’ as you can see on pg2 i addressed what people were flaming (call the police! blah blah) can’t get anything done when you live in a small town.
Yes, I certainly don’t think a reluctance to give up a certain level of privacy is limited only to women, I know my language is parsed from the female POV , but men who do not like Real ID have completely legitimate reasons as well. But the decision definitely feels as though it has been taken without considering it’s silencing effect on a huge percentage of the population. OR it is taken because it will do that, in order to shut the forums up (in which case Blizzard is choosing deliberately to silence marginalised groups.)
There’s plenty of men who don’t want this either; basically any man who has a professional job should be concerned, as well as any man with an “ethnic” surname (and I’m talking Ukranian or Polish as much as Indian or Swahili)
So basically we should call it “stupid privilege” or “has no clue how the world actually works privilege” or “poor, undereducated, young Anglo-Saxon-but-not-so-Anglo-Saxon-to-have-funny-name male privilege”…
Anyway I just think the topic is complex enough without adding in metaphysical debates about what is or is not “privilege”.
I view this as a call to arms for all forum hosts and bloggers. Time for the Blogosphere/Twittascope etc to really be the voice of the community.
Derevka´s last blog ..Halion Heroic 10 Man Guide
Thank you so much for commenting on the idea of information and context. That’s what’s been really making me mad about people who are okay with this. They laugh because “your name is already everywhere”. But what they don’t understand is that your name is a dot. It tells nothing until it is connected to something. It’s 1-dimensional. It isn’t until you start adding additional information that you can gain real information, such as the context of where that name is found, such as posting on forums.
If I apply for a job, I’ll give them my name. They have my name. They don’t need that. What they want to know when they google is where else my name has been. And if I don’t get a job because my name shows up as a gamer? Well…. I liked the comment on w_l’s: do we need the supreme court to state that it’s illegal to discriminate against gamers now?
And that’s just one issue, but it comes to the idea of making connections. The data doesn’t have any purpose until you connect it to something. A stalker may have your character name. Or they may have your picture/visual appearance. Or they may have your facebook/name. But they shouldn’t be allowed to get all of that, because that’s when they get dangerous.
Jennifer´s last blog ..Boredom- how I hate thee
“While no one should have to be ashamed of a hobby, it doesn’t change the stigma attached to MMOs or to more old-fashioned roleplaying. The name on the WoW forums is a problem because it identifies you in a gaming context”
I’m not so worried about being stalked myself (I am that white, twenty-something with a fairly common name, sorry!) although I’ve certainly witnessed more than enough creepiness directed at others to understand where concerns come from, but I feel a little uncomfortable being associated strongly with WoW.
The fact that I play, sure, whatever, but I don’t think all of my real life contacts would quite understand that I also spend several hours a week on a blog or on gaming forums.
What’s more, as Tobold (I think) has posted before, for those of us with “professional” jobs (one more nail in my white middle-class coffin
we would much prefer that a Google search on our name returned work-related hits, if anything, rather than posts on a forum or blog.
Malevica´s last blog ..Healing Halion
Ouch, that sounds scary. As I posted above, there are a lot of places where calling the police wouldn’t do shit – be it a small town in the US (you) or an Eastern European country (me) or any other place where people don’t understand the internet.
Jen´s last blog ..A happy story with a noob
Unfortunately I disagree, and yes there are a lot of men objecting to it – many reasonable people objecting to it in fact. As it stand as far as fear of sexual harassment, it is a very straight, male privilege to not have the same level of worry about it. That is what I am talking about with privilege. The upshot of that is that it makes men even less able to talk about sexual abuse. This isn’t a metaphysical debate, but it is a feminist blog and will regularly use feminist discourse in approaching topics. I do my best to be as inclusive as possible.
It isn’t just about white straight male privilege, it is a lot more complex than that I agree (and I tried to reference some other groups – gender, sexuality, race – that will be affected by it), but the mainstream voice of gaming is male, straight and white. There is privilege in many different things, and discussing it is a good thing in my opinion.
When I go to Sears to get an appliance serviced, or to return some merchandise, I give my name. However, it is not then included in the next Sears Fall Catalogue, or even the next Sunday’s newspaper ad.
But going forward if I want to use Blizzard Customer Service, I need to give my name, not only to the Blizzard employee who is going to help me, but to every single customer of Blizzard in the US. Why?
I think “has no clue” privilege is the best way to say it. I’ve seen a lot of males disagreeing with it, so it’s not just a female-afraid-of-stalking thing.
(I’m a female and I’m not afraid of stalking, it’s not why I am against the feature.)
Jen´s last blog ..A happy story with a noob
And Europe. And Asia. And so on. We use the US forums too, especially the tech support ones (even if it’s in read-only mode).
Jen´s last blog ..A happy story with a noob
Indeed. I’m going to be compling a list of blog posts on this topic to mail to wow.com (possibly, I’ll probably just post them here.)
No I meant with the Forums being ‘silenced’. It gives the Bloggers/Non-WOW Forums etc the chance to be better communities than they are today. People will need a place to turn.
Derevka´s last blog ..Halion Heroic 10 Man Guide
From what I’ve seen on the web the past day or two, the uproar is widespread and, in my mind, perfectly justified. I’ve seen a lot of women speak out (men too of course, but it seems as if many women feel the need to state that a woman is making the comment), I think this is great! My wife tells me that I am the only man that she can trust in the world, and it’s true. Men can understand the dangers that women live with from an intellectual standpoint, but we’ll never truly understand what it means for a women to walk from her college class to her car at night.
Revealing our real names has SO MANY MORE negative implications than positive, I find it repulsive how ignorant Activision has been on the issue. Yes, I’m a white male but my name, I am fairly sure, is one of the most unique in my country and I have no intention of anybody knowing who I really am. I feel it incumbent on me to further the dissentions already made regarding the issue. It’s a subject that we shouldn’t treat for a few days and then capitulate to in the end. This blog, as with many, many others I hope continue to speak out on this more than just this week. There could be a chance that our voices still can be heard and policies changed.
Yeah. There is a lot of furor over this right now, so while part 2/3 are nearly finish I’m going to sit on them for a couple of days (or 24 hours at least) to keep the conversation going.
Thanks for dropping by
I’ve been very lucky in my guild, the few who started out going ‘it doesn’t matter here is my real name’ came around quite quickly. I am looking forward to getting home and sending some emails out to some UK feminist groups.
Facebook comes with a whole load of granular controls, and you can actually change your name if you need to. But it is a free service. Blizzard is silencing the voice of it’s customer base with this move, not removing trolls.
I’m so irritated about the RealID bullshit that I have yet to come up with a coherent response to everything wrong with it. Thank you for linking to this on W_L and I will be reading the rest of the saga with interest.
Yeah, I just took everyone’s advice and threw my lot in on the official forums. I’m going to post it all on my blog, but here’s the except about context (which is a great way of putting it, so I’m stealing it from you.
:
Then there’s the argument that your name is already readily available… my argument is the same as that which many people have made already. Yes, it is true. Your name is already readily available. But it’s like a number. It’s like saying that your house is 3. 3 what? 3 bedrooms? 3 doors down? 3 hundred square feet? You have to give the name context before it is valuable. And context-by-association is one very good example. Context-by-relationship, if you will. Because we are a species that thrives on relationships. If someone walked up to me and said, “Jane Trivey died yesterday.” I’d go “….who?” A name doesn’t mean anything to me. If, however, they replied, “You know, so-and-so’s mother?” Or “She was a childhood actress in (insert movie here).” Or even “She works on the 5fh floor with so-and-so.” Then her name has context for me. I can create a mental map of my relationship with her, this woman that I had never met. She is no longer a name to me, she is someone. The same thing happens here. It isn’t my name that is valuable. It is the fact that my name would now be attached in relationship to a gaming site to the entire world – without me having any say in the matter if I choose to post on the forums.
Jennifer´s last blog ..Boredom- how I hate thee
Thanks for this post. It’s brilliantly written.
Just posting to say, I’ve been following this furor from the beginning but the “Silencing of marginalized voices” aspect hadn’t really occurred to me. Of course I knew that the “just don’t post” replies pissed me off, but I didn’t really stop to think about why.
Here’s the different, Analogue. Most men are worried about the RealID change affecting their ability to get and hold down a job. Women are worried about being harassed, stalked, and perhaps even raped or killed. I have yet to hear a male worry about sexual harassment as a result of the RealID change.
That difference is huge, and that’s where privilege comes in — men have the privilege, or if you prefer, the luxury, of not worrying about that because it happens so very rarely. It just doesn’t come up on the radar. Whereas for women, it’s a factor of concern in our daily lives.
Hope this helps explain!
The whole Real ID thing flies in the face of all logic when it comes to information security. The intent of Real ID is noble; to link gamers from all servers/factions and eventually across different games. The concept could work, but not in this proposed manner. Charles and I both agreed on some ideas that could make Project WoWbook work, and he’s been collecting some ideas from other blogs on it.
We can only hope that a light bulb will go off above someone in Irvine and they’ll think twice about how this is currently shaping up.
Edit: Apparently I fail at HTML when linking to Charles’ page: wowhats.wordpress.com
He and I both have posts up regarding Real ID.
Kazgrel´s last blog ..WoWbook- Do Not Want RealID needs major refinement and a dose of common sense
Egad — all this time I’ve been missing out on an intersectional WoW blog!
This situation is fascinating to me in many ways. (Not the least of which is figuring out what I’ll do if this goes through — my life is caught up in WoW in so many ways right now. But I can’t let this stand.)
One of the big ones, though, is watching how this situation is nudging some players closer to understanding the notions of othering and privilege (even if they are not familiar with that terminology).
A lot of posters are struggling to explain to themselves and others why they aren’t entirely happy to be publicly known as a person with a feminine-sounding first name, or a Russian last name, or a name that sounds Muslim, or a male name when they self-identify as female. And they are struggling to explain why, even if you don’t have any of these concerns, maybe you should spend some time thinking about them anyway.
These aren’t the types of considerations that come up in the official WoW forums all that often. regardless of what happens with RealID, I don’t expect these conversations to have much effect on forum discussions … but I do hope that they start some people thinking about social justice (again, even if they are not familiar with that terminology).
Mania´s last blog ..Cataclysm Screenshots- Fox -amp Monkey
Thank you for this post, it summed up perfectly why the ‘just don’t post!’ line pisses me off so much. I just can’t understand how Blizzard could be so blind to the potential problems this move will create.
I also don’t like the attitude that any woman,working professional,minority,etc. is expected to STFU and not post if they have (legitimate!) worries about their RL identities leaking out to the WoW community at large (which everyone who plays the game knows has a generous share of antisocial bigoted thugs of all types). That’s just so insulting I can’t begin to be coherent about how mad it makes me.
Pai´s last blog ..Blizzards RealID
It’s sort of proto-intersectional? I try my best and this blog is really helping me to learn as I write
I’m having trouble figuring out what I will do, because I am wondering if I am strong enough to be able to cope with having my name out there.
The replies Blizz are giving just convince me that they really don’t get it. I suspect some of the CMs do, but until the CEOs make a decision one way or another they have to keep towing the party line, no matter how offensive and dismissive it is.
Yes. I think there is a big difference between participating on a gender neutral website like facebook which allows you to opt out of things while still allowing you to use facebook to connect with you friends, and requiring people to provide their real names first to participate in a culture with such a bad history.
AND THEN allowing people to troll anonymously using a downrank feature.
I am 100% convinced they do get it and they just don’t give a fuck. Someone posted some numbers on the US forums – less than 1% of the player base has written (on the forums) about this. That percentage was actually around 0.15%. Out of those who complained, only a percentage will cancel their subscriptions. A couple thousand people is nothing for a company like Blizzard… not when there’s a fat contract with Facebook in the middle.
Jen´s last blog ..A happy story with a noob
Yeah, that is my fear. There is complete rejection of the idea in my guild, and it appears to be generally unpopular on my server, but some interesting stats posted over at WoW ladies showed that high proportions of the folk objecting were from RP realms, and from Proudmoore, which makes me feel that a lot of WoW gamer haven’t even noticed yet and probably won’t notice until the change is already made
My guild is half and half – some are all WTFBLIZZ!, some just don’t care. And the opinions didn’t have anything to do with gender or anything else, fwiw. The other girl didn’t know about it, the gay guy didn’t seem disturbed, one guy said we were overreacting, and one guy was just as pissed off as me.
Jen´s last blog ..A happy story with a noob
Trying to snipe someone with a catapult kind of kills the element of surprise. WoW is escapism and most of the people that play don’t abuse the forums or have ever visited them… however, those of us that do are having choices made for us.
I think curving trolling would better just linking all toons in an account together, but then again it brings up the same concerns that RP (or guild masters that have toons they hide on) have of people being able to link them to alts.
Better policing is an answer but not an easy to implement because any kind of tool given to the community can be abused.
As a straight male I have been stalked a couple of times in my life and it sucked, even though I was not in fear of being sexually or physically abused, it was not a good situation. As a guild leader I have been harassed by players in the past, and the ignore button has helped out… not sure if those same people would escalate it if they got a hold of my real name but it is a true possibility.
I think unless the community itself is asking for change with this real ID thing, they should stay as they are.
The more I learn about Activision and Bob Kotick, the more frightened I’m getting. I think Blizzard, the Cms and the Devs are in a horrible position right now, Activision’s diktat is going to kill Blizz’s reputation for “Every Voice Matters” in the name of trying to be a Gaming Facebook.
So blizz has apparently let us win on the forum-real id thing. I would like to post something here that I’ve posted elsewhere. I don’t want people to forget about the REAL ID – IN GAME issue, as it is still much bigger even than the forum issue was!!!
It seems to me that – now that blizzard has rescinded, and ‘let us win’ the FORUM-real id fight…
It was nothing but a smokescreen. They knew there would be outcry about real ID IN GAME… so knowing media tactics, they distracted us with the announcement that they would have it in the forums… and then let us rage over that; but threw us a bone, and let us think we won.
Please, don’t give up and forget. People are so easily manipulated by the media these days, so wanting to just ‘go back in the game’ into blissful oblivion that they are likely to also let this real ID crap in game, slide.
People need to start REMEMBERIng and stop forgetting so easily, being so ADHD about issues… and stop being so gullible. This not only has ruined games for us consumers, it’s fattened the pockets of the greedy, and allowed them to attack our privacy, freedoms, and REAL LIFE rights more and more. When is this going to stop?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kenny Chan. Kenny Chan said: RT @mentalshaman: Part one is up: Real ID Saga Part One: Silencing Voices: http://tinyurl.com/35vxwvm #realid #blizzard @warcraft #feminist [...]
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