You really have no sense of irony do you?
Here, let me remind you of what your comrade in arms Ultimate Paragon said a few posts ago.
Okay.
But anyway, let's talk about what anti-GamerGate considers censorship.
Censorship- asking companies to pull their advertisements
Not Censorship- shadowbans, fake DMCA takedowns, editing users' posts, and other bullshit.
See-Gamergaters do cry censorship when they are banned from forums, when their posts are edited on sites that are not their own but you don't think that it is censorship to ask that a company pressure a website to stop a writer from writing their opinion!
In any case, you didn't answer my question-it wasn't about censorship it was about ethics. Aren't journalists supposed to resist the sort of external pressure to influence coverage that was applied to Gamasutra by gamergate as a matter of ethics?
There's a clear difference. And i very doubt it is just "opinion" considering at this point it is a coordinate PR attack. The press are reaching their nuclear option with the mainstream media and there's still no notable slowdown. But I digress.
As for the censorship and the coverage argument, it is not censorship or putting external pressure on them when the customers to ask the advertisers to say "hey, those websites you are advertise on is being a dick to me. I think it is bad for your business to continue to do it". Advert money are earned from good will, from people visiting and clicking on your website. It is not just there for granted. It is FROM the consumers. Also, you are forgetting the part where the writers of those website are still FREE to write or publish whatever they want. They are still pretty much free to slander us and they had been continue doing that since 28/29 of August in the face of Operation Disrespectful Nod. We only utilize our power as a consumer (our only weapon mind you) to tighten their revenue stream because of them being a dick to us. It is not putting a tape over their mouth as much as tighten the noose around their neck because they wasted their good will and they don't deserved OUR ad money anymore. TotalBiscuit put it best on the later part of the Erik Kain's stream. Keep in mind his conclusion came from running a StarCraft team and very much understanding what the consumer's power have.
Although, if you think what we are doing is "censorship", then what do you purpose what we should do as a consumer to fight against the corrupt press? You can suggest that we bury our head into the ground and not clicking on them, but that's only putting oneself in a position to ignore the blatant corruption rather than fight against it.
Ok, this is all the time i had for now. I will be back later with some installments of the essay i promised. Cheers.
This is the third time I've posted this image. This is censorship, plain and simple. You go on and on about wanting a "free press," but then you tell people to demand Nintendo cut Polygon out of their press material for a review you disagree with.
You want to know what you can do as a consumer that doesn't involve trying to starve outlets because they don't cater to you?
Not read them. Find an outlet that fits with what you want to read. No one is making you read Polygon, Gamasutra, Kotaku or any other outlet that you disagree with or find (somehow) unethical. It's called
capitalism. These outlets are just as much businesses as they are press.
You want to starve them? Show them that their audiences don't like what they're reporting and the easiest way to do that is not read them. You don't have to like their coverage, but you also don't have to pay attention to it. A free press means that you are just as free to ignore outlets you don't like as those outlets are to report on things you don't like.
Why do you want to read these outlets that you are so strongly against? Because demanding they change with threats of making advertisers pull revenue or publishers pull press material is not just contradictory to your claimed goals of free press, it implies that you want these outlets to cater to you when they have no such obligation.
Whether you want to believe it or not, trying to starve an outlet for content you don't like is censorship. You bitch and moan about the "death of gamer" articles as if 1) they were a personal attack against you (bitter tone and opportunist timing were why those were made) and 2) you were in their target audience in the first place, but did it ever occur to you to simply go elsewhere for coverage you were happy with? Or even start covering games yourself?
You go on and on about the gaming press mailing list, despite these kinds of social clubs existing for journalists all over the goddamn world in all fields for literally centuries. Professionals in the same field will talk to each other. They will build professional friendships because that's business. It's building connections for the purposes of advancing careers and setting up safety nets. Just like professionals in any field.
If you know so much about ethics and journalism that you think you know better than professionals who took years to study those things and even more years to build up good reputations (the moment a journalist is shown to be unethical is the moment that no legitimate outlet will hire them), then why not take advantage of this timing and provide an alternative?
I know you're probably thinking that this is me going "let's see you do better" and to an extent, it is. However, the timing is perfect. GamerGaters at least claim that they want a better alternative, but I've not seen anything major pop up. I've seen a minor website pop up (and props to Good Gamers for being, as far as I can tell, a solid outlet), but I have no idea how much traction they've gained.
It really doesn't even take that long to become a decently major outlet. Polygon started in 2012. While not as big as the titans that are IGN and Gamespot, it's silly to say that they're not a relatively major outlet.
Believe it or not, the press needs diverse voices. GamerGate is one of those voices. If GamerGate feels unrepresented, then under the free press they keep demanding, they have every right to seek out outlets that speak to them. Don't pretend that you're being censored somehow just because you're not in an outlet's target audience. Remember, the press is only obligated to be neutral when reporting on hard facts and, even then, eliminating bias altogether is outright impossible.
