Your online presence is how people see you online. Unfortunately some people see this like a red flag to a bull, they believe that they can say what they like without discrimination. This is great of course, free speech is a wonderful thing, but, when you are affecting others in a negative manner by what you choose to say, then somethings wrong.
Last week at the world’s largest digital festival, Dreamhack, a Hearthstone player named TerenceM was subjected to abusive and racist comments on Twitch whilst he was competing. This disgusting attitude has created a kneejerk reaction and prompted Blizzard to look into the matter in order to combat online abuse and prevent this from happening again.
The president of Blizzard, Mike Morhaine said when speaking to Polygon,
“To that end, we’re investigating a pilot program that Twitch has in the works to streamline moderation and combat ban evasion. We’re also updating our esports tournament partner policies with a stronger system of checks, balances, and repercussions to provide a better chat experience around our content.”
He also said:
“This is obviously a larger, societal problem that affects us on many levels. We can only hope that when instances like this come to light it encourages people to be more thoughtful and positive, and to fully reject mean-spirited commentary, whether within themselves or from their fellow gamers.
“We believe these are important steps to take to help address the related issues, but we acknowledge that they only address part of the problem. This is ultimately an industry-wide issue, and it will take all of us to make a real impact.”
I should imagine this probably means more details taken during account creation, which is good for stopping the same user from just creating another account to abuse further. The downside of this is that, when it comes to the average user of sites such as Twitch who have not abused their account, they will probably have to give more of their privacy away because of the few who abuse their anonymity.
So, will it work? Yes, possibly, but. It is like pulling a greased eel from a barrel; people find a way around things like this, ultimately you cannot stop somebody from being ignorant, people need to be educated to think of others more, and that is an issue that society has been grappling with for a very long time.
Source: Polygon