Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Ban 'Offensive Language' From Skype, Xbox, Office and Other Services (csoonline.com)
According to Microsoft's new Terms of Services agreement, you could get banned for "offensive language," resulting in the termination of your Gold Membership and/or any Microsoft account balances. The changes go into effect on May 1. CSO Online reports: [I]f you and a significant other are getting hot and heavy via Skype, you better watch your language and any nudity because that, too, can get you banned. The ban hammer could also fall if Cortana is listening at the wrong moment or if documents and files hosted on Microsoft services violate Microsoft's amended terms. But how would Microsoft even know if you had truly been "offensive?" Well, that part falls under Code of Conduct Enforcement, which states, "When investigating alleged violations of these Terms, Microsoft reserves the right to review Your Content in order to resolve the issue." Microsoft did add, "However, we cannot monitor the entire Services and make no attempt to do so." I'm not sure that will make you feel better, as another portion states that Microsoft "may also block delivery of a communication (like email, file sharing or instant message) to or from the Services in an effort to enforce these Terms or we may remove or refuse to publish Your Content for any reason."
Really, who uses offensive language on Skype?
The web was built on porn; remove it at your peril. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
It looks like typical process. You must be reported for your content to be reviewed, and the other party can provide it to Microsoft.
In other words, MS isn't actively monitoring, so if me and friends are on Skype playing a game and we F-this and F-that, nobody's going to give a shit. But if I start swearing at someone on Skype during gaming, well, that someone could report me and provide chat logs or session times to MS, at which point I'd probably be banned or punished in some way.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
What is offensive is subjective... and some times culture based.
To me the word Microsoft is extremely offensive. So they should block that one right away!
Linux Apple Google
What business would risk putting their documents on One Drive / Office with these terms?
No sane business would.
Between Windows 10 and now this, Microsoft is over for the business world. Over.
Please define "Offensive".
Audience matters. What offends one audience, won't offend another.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You can't, actually, do that on /., which rejects Cyrillic characters outright. But on most sites and with most applications you can replace the characters common between Latin and Cyrillic with those from the latter in the offensive words, and it will defeat today's filters. Of course, the censors will wise up to the technique eventually, but for now it works...
Not even your target will see it, screaming internally at his inability to call you "an asshole" in response, while enraged over your ability to use the terms like that with impunity.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
A vaguely word ToS that would ban, what, 80% of XBL users if they wanted to.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
And who pays $100+ for Office when there are free alternatives?>
Pay for? No. Use. Yes.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
A dumb pipe should be a dumb pipe.
It should be an insulated pipe (i.e. end-to-end encrypted).
Do Microsoft and whoever really want to be considered responsible for everyone's sh*t-stained content out there? Really?
They should be doing everything in their power to not be technically able to know what's flowing.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Seriously, let MSFT put such silly restrictions on 'use of their services', for one thing why are they snooping on anyone's conversation on Skype, even if they otherwise suggest they can't/won't/don't, having a Term of Service that implies otherwise immediately means I won't use any MSFT services as the only way to enforce such restrictions IS to 'snoop', so whatever they say to the contrary they clearly are.
Most importantly any company who tries to apply nebulous concepts such as 'offensive' is going to ban so broadly that people will leave it 'en masse'. Consider if I need to make sure the message "Hey, I need your pole in my hole NOW!" could easily get banned because of the 'offensive nature of it' when all I meant is I need the flag pole in the hole I dug ASAP. Basically MSFT has just guaranteed they'll lose users en-masse as this stupidity starts kicking in.
Now, just need to either set up a competing service or just move to a less silly provider & MSFT will die a nice death.
MSFT can ban whatever they want, its their service, happily we can choose to use any other available services. This is the way the free market works. AWESOME.
I'm not welcome anywhere.... ... I give up.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Really, who uses offensive language on Skype?
You forgot the <sarcasm> tags and you were apparently taken literally in some way?
I think that censorship is insane and offensive language is sometimes the only or at least the best way to express certain emotional states or to show sincerity. Right now I'm still reserving judgment because I think the story is quite likely an early April Fool's joke. (The problem with that theory is why pick Microsoft? A cunning selection of the highly improbable target of the joke to make it seem credible?)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
So, Microsoft is admitting that they can read or watch and listen to encrypted connections. Well, with "Legal Intercept" we knew that for some time. I banned Microsoft from my PC years ago in favor of Linux (KDE Neon on Btrfs). If you don't want MS to be your nanny then its time you moved to Linux as well.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Puritan mindset alive - God is watching (over) you, and from there an upbringing "don`t put foul words in your mouth", and on it goes, just always doing the "right" thing, in case of doubt, even more right, to be on the save side. Corporate culture, fitting in automagically....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTLBsIzk3UE
"Cortana listening at the wrong moment"?? That's so wrong on several levels.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"Sorry, I can't, Skype doesn't allow it."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
How about a chat/video/voice client that has a real p2p component. I only know of one on the market and it's Zyptonite. Unfortunately the clients are closed source.
See here: https://app.zyptonite.com/ [zyptonite.com]
Is there anything that is free software?
Microsoft just recently restored (and updated to 7.41.0.101) the "classic" Skype which you can use on the desktop instead of the 'dumbed down' new-fangled one.
She's beautiful.
Who?
The FBI agent reading this.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
So Microsoft is literally reserving the right to permanently lock you out of your own desktop if it doesn't like what you're doing it.
The web is mostly pirated material, porn, and everything else no government wants you to have free and easy access to.
Given a free hand, most people would stay home and browse pornhub.
Search "Celebrity Deepfakes"
That shit has every celebrity in the world shitting their pants, because Celeb porn is going to be everywhere soon.
I saw how shutting down Pirate bay has worked, lol.
Sure businesses use the web these days, but 90% of people using the web are looking for porn of some kind.
That covers a lot of ground these days. :)
So, lay back and fire up You favorite Tubgirl (or Goatse) video, porn will be here for a loooong time. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
NT.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Its just the paid subscription to Xbox live, which you need to play multiplayer games and so on. Unless you had an xbox or at least kept up with that part of the market, it's not something you'd be aware of.
to not use Microsoft product.
Spam, with no content but "Hey, check this out", and a link to goatse or something stored on OneDrive. They're saying this to give themselves cover when they nuke porno-spammers.
Any online cloud storage place that lets you share links to your content is infested with this. It's absolutely rampant, along with links to virus-infected documents, images of 419 scam letters, etc. It's the latest dodge to avoid spam filters.
Now, if they actually do start playing the eavesdropping Mrs. Grundy with peoples' Skype conversations, then we have another issue. But I really doubt that's going to happen. As someone else said, it's probably going to require a complaint about the content they're hosting to trigger action.
As to their Gold Membership, it's another manifestation of Microsoft's penis obsession.
This year marks another interesting milestone, another Linux desktop install and attempt to try to 'survive' without Windows. It's doable now, there's enough gaming choices for native Linux and plenty of emulation available to get a rich fulfilling gamer setup on Linux, at last. And in the nick of time, last fucking thing I need is my frickin' operating system telling me what I can and cannot type, look at, send and receive. Outrageous.
Still running a dual booting box, but, Windows 10 is seeing very little use now that I've got Linux taking over it's duties and doing a fine job too!
The point of posting? Try Linux. Start with Mint if you're frightened of Linux. It's plenty easy to use, as easy as Windows most of the time. Microsoft has pulled a lot of really dirty stunts over the years. This latest is the straw that breaks this camel. Done, finished. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gunna go play some SimCity 4 which runs fantastic on wine and Linux, flawless.
No it's not, September child.
But it is close to April, as in April Fool's day... And yet, that actually appears to be an authentic Microsoft website and the MSA does include the actual word "offensive" and MS is not known for its corporate sense of humor. Right now I'm leaning the other way, that it is for real, as in real crazy.
I'm really straining my brain for some way to interpret this as reasonable. Maybe it's a new make-work project to avoid firing people? From a company that used to have a policy of continuously firing the bottom-ranked people? Now Microsoft will just assign them to offensive-language-checking and they will sit around for 8 hours a day reviewing the complaints of "offensive" language? You have to admit that (1) It's a bottomless pit, and (2) They won't have to fire anyone because they'll all quit. Yeah, there will be one Guinness record holder who actually likes the work and wants to defend his world record, but the rest of them will soon be gone.
Let me offer a suggestion to actually do this in a sane fashion. It involves my old fantasy of EPR (Earned Public Reputation). As I've noted before, this should be a multidimensional concept, and the basic idea to to save time by favoring the nice people and filtering the un-nice people. If the default setting is just slightly positive, then most of the trolls and sock puppets are already banished to their private limbo, but let's consider the simple dimension of "politeness" and how it works with real people. If someone says something rude or offensive, then you would be able to rate that comment as negative on the "politeness" dimension, citing the rude comment as evidence.
This would be used in (at least) three ways. First, (from your perspective as an identity earning a reputation) if you are massively and repeatedly impolite, then that might tip your overall EPR into the bit bucket. Second, (as a reader) if you are easily offended by offensive language, then you could increase the weighting on that specific dimension of "politeness", and just stop seeing the offensive people (even if they have favorable reputations in other dimensions). Third, (as an earner of EPR) if you want to become more polite, then you can check your own rating on the politeness dimension and tone your rudeness down a bit.
BtW, the EPR should be linked to the data, and the data should age over time, with more recent comments and interactions counting more heavily than older ones. Lots of detailed suggestions available upon polite request, but I must warn you that I've been thinking about this topic for some years... I even have suggested solutions for the problem of inherently biased dimensions, where "politeness" might be an example. (Hint: How can you get people to report positive politeness when it is normally taken for granted?)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Nah dude, I rock a PS4 and a gaming PC. I don't fuck with no Xbox.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I figured I'd post the single positive comment on this article. At least Microsoft is being upfront about it. How long had Google been accepting 'offensive' content to grow their dominance then suddenly bans it all once they have the processing power to automatically tag everything?
Well, it started out positive...
Remember, language (and advertising fads) change. Gay used to mean happy. Which of your content will disappear and accounts be banned in a couple years because definitions changed and content filtering services aren't able to take those into account. No one will stand up for you then because you curren't don't stand up for those types of things now.
...into MicroSpank Orifice? mnem Damned shame...
Slashdot, home to the mentally ill AC since the 90s. It'll be OK snowflake. You can go back to layered sarcasm and depression at DailyKos
the "sex trafficking" laws. There are cam girls and whatnot that sell private shows, guess what some of them use? Yea. Microsoft's enemies (Facebook/Google/Apple) helped back this bill.
There's a lot of "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN@)(*#)$*" bullshit with this. This is how free speech dies, passing laws based on knee jerks that make people, or in this instance, platforms self-censor rather than repealing the 1st amendment.
Fuck the fucking fuckers. - 50% of the letters are the word "fuck".
#DeleteFacebook
Our engineers are tired of hearing your foul mouths while they data-mine/eavesdrop on your conversations for incriminating evidence and trade secrets. Most of our employees are contractors with no health insurance, so I'm sure you can imagine how hard it is to keep all of our already overworked and underpaid people drinking the cool-aide in the break-room. That, and what-with our government looking for scapegoats and patsies for every nut-job with a gun these days, we feel you will understand. After all, shit rolls down hill. Locking the accounts of all of the thought criminals, and the wrong-speakers (and the opposing party) is really in every ones best interest. The good people's computers will continue to operate just fine.
Now we can't exactly define offensive language in any certain terms, so we're just going to start locking accounts containing content we don't agree with, or the accounts of anybody our leaderships says is a bad person, or the accounts somebody somewhere else says may be involved in a crime, or the accounts of.... well you get the idea, and again, we're sure you understand, this is for your protection.
Now before you get all huffy puffy in your latte, let me just say, you can't sue us. We already ran this by our lawyers, and they said "If they still don't understand the difference between ownership, and licensing, then we are just going to have to show them the other side of the coin. Nobody actually thought our "free" new OS theirs anyway, it's all right there in the TOS!"
In closing, we wan't to thank you all for being such loyal products, and hope you continue to serve us for many years to come.
Sincerely,
The Microsoft account team.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Wait, people have to PAY Microsoft in order to play multiplayer games, on top of buying the console, buying the games and also paying for their own internet connection? I can understand paying a monthly fee for some of the more complex games like MMORPGs, but paying Microsoft on top of that?
What bullshit is this? And people keep buying Xbox consoles?
#DeleteFacebook
lmao, why i gotta be flamebait? truf hurthz
Just about the only thing I wonder when I see a story like this is "How the hell is Microsoft still even in business at this point?" Who is propping them up? Isn't everyone using GNU/Linux (or Macs) now? What business is stupid enough to be using Microsoft Office or any other of their crappy software at this point? What government is so careless with their taxpayer's revenue that they can afford to waste it, squander it really, on trash software that causes more problems than it solves? Especially when there are better, free alternatives to everything Microsoft makes? The appropriate response in the future to any story having anything to do with Microsoft should be, "who?"
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
"Wait, people have to PAY Microsoft in order to play multiplayer games"
Yes. $50/year or something like that, I think. I *don't* have an xbox (and that's one of the reasons why).
You need to pay that annual subscription to be able to use free 2 play games (yeah, I know!!) as well as online multiplayer play, and voice chat support.
I'm under the impression that you also need to have multiple subscriptions for multiple players who use the same xbox in the same home, if they want to have their own profile (their own acheivement tracking, their own friends lists, their own whatever...)
Fuck the fucking fuckers. - 50% of the letters are the word "fuck".
No......
There are 21 letters. 12 of them are the word fuck..
For 50% you'd have needed 24 letters (3 more). Your sentence is 57.14% the word "fuck"
You FAIL.
"Fuck the fucking fucker's ass."
That sentence is 50% the word fuck.
I'm amused you thought you could get away with that on Slashdot.....
They already do. Don't think they even deny it, do they?
If you use any offensive language anywhere on or near your computer, or store files that have offensive contents, or do anything that's offensive to someone somewhere without even using a computer, Microsoft will withdraw your Windows 10 license and erase all your... I mean _their_, who are we kidding after all... files.
Yeah, this AI revolution will be so great... Only yesterday having automated nannies watching over everyone's shoulders and approving, or disapproving, their behaviour seemed like a dystopian future. Now it seems like it has become a dystopian _now_...
We could go international (until they improve the algorithms). One of the best swears is Serbian (swearing champions of Europe - Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria), immortalized in the movie Underground where it is used against both the Nazi and the UN "peace keepers" 50 years later - "Mamku im/ti iebem fashistichku". No translation I have seen gives it justice - the official one is "fucking Fascist motherfucker(s)" but it actually is a promise/intention/desire to fuck the mothers of the fascists (swearing on mother is the ultimate offense; only old folks swear on God or disease in our part of the world).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Here - it's what he says just before nutting the UN blue beret (no subs, sorry, you can watch the full version with subs - it is a great movie actually)
All Slavic languages are similar, so the "bad words" are understood by all of us. Some, like "putka" (pussy, cunt) will be recognized by (some) Westerners, like the Spaniards or the French (puta); still, imagine the hilarity in Eastern Europe around the name Vladimir Putin (only the Russians differ slightly here - "pizda" is their word - used in Lord of War for instance). Another recognized one is "hui" which is a dick and of course "eba, ebane" - to fuck.
The Hungarians are a special case. First, their language is of course very different from all (apart from Finish). They swear like crazy! They say "horse dick" with the same ease we say "shit". Hungarians laugh hysterically during the scene in Blade runner when Gaff approaches Deckard at the food joint, he calls him "hey, horse dick!". Olmos was given the task to assemble futuristic, metropolitan blended language (like in Clockwork Orange) so he came up with that :)
The Hungarans are the only ones I am aware off that blended fucking and God in a one swear - the most offensive one there translates literally as "I will fuck your Jesus".
Now, finally I have to announce that I will not be able to use any censored products, since I am genetically disadvantaged (hey, another victim category for the neo-Marxists to protect) - my four grandparents come from four different countries and three of those are the above mentioned champion swearers (the last quarter is Romanian which is not much better). So I can't help it but fuck their fascist mothers....with a horse dick ;)
Go Microsoft Yourself.
It's about time we made that innuendo mainstream.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Is gonna be pissed at being banned
Of course! Now that Windows is a "service", all our files belong to Micro$oft!
... and be done with it.
Obviously you can't do that via Skype, but if you're storing your data on Microsoft's servers (cloud! synergy! apps!) why aren't you encrypting it?
Then, they can't see inside that data to look for "offensive" content.
The most swearing i heard on any of their platforms was directed at their products.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not about a "fee", sonny.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Remember folks - Demolition Man was a warning, not an instruction manual - plus, its funnier than 1984 and you don't need to be able to read...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
What about my RIGHT to FREEDOM OF SPEECH?!
Someone needs to educate the fucking idiot foreigner at the MS helm!
Just goes to prove that India naturals need to stay out of US roles.
Who let him away from the overseas help desk anyway?!
WAIT! Now I see it!
Knowing that everyone hates getting a India national that cannot speak or understand intelligible English when you call the help desk,
they want to stop us from cursing at them for their obvious lack of qualifications and stealing good US jobs!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
As quick as I am to get on MS, I'm not sure that this is a case of something they wanted to do. Given the timing, I wonder if this happens to have anything to do with that stupid anti-sex trafficking legislation that just passed.
Of course, they could just be dicks,...
Probably both. Why not make use of new legislation as a NEW excuse to be dicks.
What the fucking fuckity fuck.
Going to have trouble streaming episodes of "The Thick Of It" then.
The policy makes no sense legally or otherwise.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Nipple
The net affect: what appears to me to be a 90% dropoff in-game chat overall
Given the quality of chat, this sounds like a win for just about everyone.