Censorship in official MSFS forums

[Lonesome Cowboy Burt 160]

7 hours ago, JYW said:

Exactly as Dillon says, I suspect at the corporate or 'Jorg' level, they've no idea this is happening.  I suspect this is much lower down the pecking order.  If you're a mod and feel pretty defensive about your "employer", how easy is it to have alternative account(s) that you can pop into and set lot's of "community flags".   Then, to the management, it appears that the censorship is community-driven.

Someone needs to get a question about this into one of the Q&As, so that the senior team can at least be made aware of it, and directed towards some examples.

It's rarely those with a lot of power that love to wave it about and misuse it.  More so, it's those with a tiny little bit, who are energised by banning people and blocking posts.  It points to some sort of distorted personality issue.

Spot, its the same with the official Discord.

[Reader 2,030]

18 minutes ago, AnkH said:

but I can still write my disagreements with the way they treat forum users over there, no?

Of course.

I think that the moderators of the Microsoft forum, whether paid employees or not, are constrained by 
internal codes of conduct and NDAs and these possibly impose a duty to disapprove of unofficial fixes
and hacks that allow things that cannot be released officially.

In the specific case of the frame rate generator unofficial hack, apart from commercial considerations, it does
introduce anomalies, that if it was an official release, would be deemed to be unacceptable.
Of course, the "community" is far more tolerant of the shortcomings, because it is unofficial.

[cavaricooper 2,615]

The good thing is that Joerg supposedly reads this Forum. Perhaps he will see this and have an opportunity to rectify the policies in place at the Official Forums. I do think they are trying, I believe it is a huge problem, and anytime you put many middle managers in place for checks and balances, the outcome is disaster.

If any actual change occurs (and remember, in the Microsoft ecosystem even Joerg answers to committee) we will have done Tom proud!

C

[DD_Arthur 1,066]

I don’t understand. None of these places offer free speech, including here. It explains all this in considerable detail when you sign up for these places.

Complaining that your magnificent words of wisdom have been obliterated on a flight sim forum? You’d be better off wandering around raving at the weather. At least chaos theory says you might be making an actual difference…. 

[Lonesome Cowboy Burt 160]

1 minute ago, DD_Arthur said:

I don’t understand. None of these places offer free speech, including here. It explains all this in considerable detail when you sign up for these places.

Complaining that your magnificent words of wisdom have been obliterated on a flight sim forum? You’d be better off wandering around raving at the weather. At least chaos theory says you might be making an actual difference…. 

This is true, but.... whilst nobody can demand or perhaps even expect what they see as reasonable behaviour to always be extent on a freely provided platform, it's as natural for people to complain about what they see as unreasonable actions from certain mods on a forum as it is for certain mods on a forum to actually be unreasonable

Personally I don't stress it as it's ultimately just about a video game. But I understand, well perhaps not understand but accept the reality that some people invest lots of time and effort in it (this counts for users not just providers)

 

 

 

[ErichB 3,643]

21 hours ago, cianpars said:

Pretty pointless forum where you can't say what you think or be critical of anything. 

The problem is, some people don't do that very well.  

[Virtpilot 152]

Yes, my posts has also get flagged and I have been warned and been temporarily blocked from writing. I´m kind of proud of that... 🤣🤣. But that was quite long time ago. Nowadays I´m pretty happy with this sim. 

[Fielder 3,682]

Flagged by members?

[Ixoye 1,823]

16 hours ago, Vitold69 said:

Could it be forum support mods are based in Russia? 💀

In Russia? rather in the EU I would think, the masters of disinformation, corruption and censorships 🤡

[Virtpilot 152]

16 hours ago, Vitold69 said:

Could it be forum support mods are based in Russia? 💀

Go ahead and ask that from the forum 😂😂... 

[Tierborn 188]

On 1/29/2024 at 3:02 AM, AnkH said:

Seriously, it is getting more and more ridiculous, what kind of posts of myself get "redacted" over there. And come on, do they really think that anyone believes this "was flagged by the community" bull? Never ever was my last post "hidden due to flags from the community", this is straight forward impossible and it would be absolutely embarrassing for our simming community, if this post was flagged. 

Heck, I even get this message sometimes after (!) a comment got 5 or more "hearts", clearly indicating that people share my thoughts and then, bam, half an hour later it was so called "flagged by the community". Come on, do they think we are all utterly stupid? I wonder, why this kind of "flagging" always only happens when a post is around something they simply do not get right, did not do anything about for years, is on the longtime buglist since months or even years and no progress is visible etc.

Go to a topic which is completely unrelated to any potential failure by the devs from Asobo and you can post basically whatever you want, it will never get a "community flag". Ridiculous, this is straight forward censorship at its best and they think we are so stupid to not realize it. 

What are your thoughts? Do you believe the rubbish they write you if one of your posts gets "flagged"? I mean, it is their forum and they can put up rules they want, I am aware, but then they should be honest and not try to tell people that it is the community "censoring" the stuff in their forums, but they do it on their own. 

Seriously, I am sick of this behaviour in the software world recently. Are there still companies out there knowing that it is us customers keeping them alive in the very end? They do NOT provide a service for US, they make a product and we BUY it, if we LIKE it. So it is US customers being the important part here, not them. 

/rant over.

It is clear to me that you likely are getting community flags.  The tone of this post is a clue.  The hearts you are getting are from people who think like you, but it doesn't preclude that many don't. Thus, the community flags.

[Tierborn 188]

23 hours ago, cianpars said:

Pretty pointless forum where you can't say what you think or be critical of anything.  I rarely visit it nowadays as everything you need to know is on AVSIM without the censorship.

You even find some humour on AVSIM on occasions, something else banned from the official forum.

And don't even dare to mention a war or evil dictator over there either.

Not what you say but how you say it.  The youth today have nearly zero tact.   You can read thousands of complaints of the MSFS forums.  Where is the critical thinking?  

[dogmanbird 269]

I see Tierborn's point. I don't think avsim is much different to the msfs forum in that a highly passionate post tends to get lots of likes from other highly passionate members, often whether the post was really justified or not

[Dillon 2,197]

22 hours ago, Nuno Pinto said:

Just don't go there. Censorship has no place in 2024.

I stopped going to those forums and i am way happier now.

Where else are you going to go that supposedly has a direct line to Asobo for issues with the sim?🧐

Concerning Censorship, one must be living under a rock to think it's died in 2024 (quite the opposite). A whole ideology, countries, companies, political party, etc. operates on shutting people up.  Even if you see the truth with your own two eyes you better not say it...

Edited January 30 by Dillon

[dogmanbird 269]

btw, mbucchia is still active on the msfs forum. For the VR enthusiasts, don't get yourselves banned or there'll be no way to communicate with our deity 😮