Real ID comes to WoW

[Ingmar]

I don't want to derail this any more into Politics than it already is, but that picture is very uh, 'charged' shall we say, to American eyes. The whole black man/white woman thing has a long, storied history of being used as a scare tactic here.

[Malakili]

I don't want to derail this any more into Politics than it already is, but that picture is very uh, 'charged' shall we say, to American eyes. The whole black man/white woman thing has a long, storied history of being used as a scare tactic here.

This is true.

However, I, and I know this isn't your intention, am just hesitant to risk writing off valid concern because some people are being sexist or racist about it.

[sickrubik]

No one is trying to write off valid concern. It also does not mean you can't point and say "knock that shit off too" while the discussion is going on.

[Simond]

I don't want to derail this any more into Politics than it already is, but that picture is very uh, 'charged' shall we say, to American eyes. The whole black man/white woman thing has a long, storied history of being used as a scare tactic here.

Of course, if they were both anonymous it'd be a non-issue anyway. 

[Khaldun]

Look, just about every time I can think of when a company has said "Don't worry, this is just a small change to our privacy policy, we would never do all that horrible stuff the panicky people are talking about", it hasn't just been a hypothetical distance between that moment and something like, "Well, yes, we did sell your personal information to a huge variety of third parties without asking you about it, you agreed to that back when you gave us the information in the first place". This is why I don't do customer loyalty cards anywhere unless it's the kind where they don't need any information about you at all (like a coffee card that they stamp every time you buy a latte or whatever). A company that is willing to rethink its privacy policy because it sees a new opportunity for monetizing information is a company that misunderstands what privacy is. Privacy is a social contract, it's a basic establishing condition of a community. When a company like Blizzard that benefits from building up a particular community decides to unilaterally alter the basic infrastructure of the community built around their product, they are telling you quite forcefully that they are not trustworthy stewards, and that whatever they promise you today about the things that they will never, ever do with the information they now have, they're certainly lying.

Companies like Yelp and Facebook are nothing without the content that users provide them. When they forget that they're the beneficiaries of free labor and try to use what's been given to them for purposes that most of the people giving it would never have agreed to or endorsed, they foul their own nest badly. What companies like Yelp, Facebook and Blizzard are now trying to do is so thoroughly block all the exits from digital culture that the only way out of the maze is to make like Ted Kacynski and go live in a shack in the woods somewhere. Digital culture and new media are my cultural life at this point: they're integral to my work, my leisure, and my social existence. I don't want to opt out of them as a whole, and couldn't even if I did want to. But much of what's been best about digital work and digital fun hangs in the balance of these kinds of moves by various companies. If we accept those moves on the grounds that what the heck, it's not so bad, I fucking guarantee you that the next move will be a worse one in some crucial way and so on down the line, as the frog boils slowly to death.

[Simond]

Oh hey, speaking of. Apparently Blizzard changed their privacy policy in the not too distant past from "We will never pass on customer details" to, well...

As with any business, your personal information is also an asset of Blizzard and will become part of our normal business records. As such, we may also disclose your personal information to a third party if we decide to sell a line of business to that third party, so you can continue to receive service and information in connection with that line of business with as little disruption as possible. Similarly, in the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or other similar event, your personal information may be transferred to Blizzard 's successor or assign.

Remember that Blizzard is now partnered with Facebook.

[Malakili]

Oh hey, speaking of. Apparently Blizzard changed their privacy policy in the not too distant past from "We will never pass on customer details" to, well...

As with any business, your personal information is also an asset of Blizzard and will become part of our normal business records. As such, we may also disclose your personal information to a third party if we decide to sell a line of business to that third party, so you can continue to receive service and information in connection with that line of business with as little disruption as possible. Similarly, in the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or other similar event, your personal information may be transferred to Blizzard 's successor or assign.

Remember that Blizzard is now partnered with Facebook.

Do you have a link to that?  Its not that I don't believe you, but I'd like to post it somewhere else.

[Ingmar]

After doing a little reading between the lines on Wryxian's later posts in this...

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/13816838128/battle-net-update-upcoming-forum-changes/

...I get the impression that the CM team is definitely not happy about this, as has been widely rumored.

[dusematic]

So you're essentially saying that any female/LGBT/person with a non-WASP name who posts on the Blizzard forums is asking for it?

Yes, clearly that is what I mean.  

lol

[Simond]

Oh hey, speaking of. Apparently Blizzard changed their privacy policy in the not too distant past from "We will never pass on customer details" to, well...

As with any business, your personal information is also an asset of Blizzard and will become part of our normal business records. As such, we may also disclose your personal information to a third party if we decide to sell a line of business to that third party, so you can continue to receive service and information in connection with that line of business with as little disruption as possible. Similarly, in the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or other similar event, your personal information may be transferred to Blizzard 's successor or assign.

Remember that Blizzard is now partnered with Facebook.

Do you have a link to that?  Its not that I don't believe you, but I'd like to post it somewhere else.

Sure: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/privacy.html#h3l5

[Paelos]

Fuck it, I just cancelled my account and told them specifically it was over their RealID decision.

[Modern Angel]

I don't want to derail this any more into Politics than it already is, but that picture is very uh, 'charged' shall we say, to American eyes. The whole black man/white woman thing has a long, storied history of being used as a scare tactic here.

I said the same thing when I first saw it. Except the American eyes bit, since I am American. So now I just change my opinion of people who go THIS IS HILARIOUS ever so slightly and go on my merry way.

[Outlawedprod]

It would be a lot easier for this guy to relieve his stress if Eve used REALID =p
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns9oAGnK9CU

[tmp]

There's something oddly paternalistic about all this "well we have to protect the women!" business to me. Like "oh they don't know any better and they'll post and put their name out there and get raped, we must protect them by locking them up safely where they can't do damage to themselves by letting men get a look at them!"

Granted it can be just my bad memory but i was under impression this particular angle of "freaks will have field day with knowing which taurens really have vaginas" gets pointed out by women. I.e. not as much a paternalistic thing but simple and understandable concern of people looking after themselves, and based on first-hand experience for the most part.

[Arthur_Parker]

THIS IS HILARIOUS

If that's aimed at me, I was honestly confused but have accepted Ingmar's explanation, I forget this is mostly an American forum sometimes.  Skin colour was pretty far down the list of things I first noticed upon seeing that picture, let's try to avoid a nasty derail.

[Nevermore]

There's something oddly paternalistic about all this "well we have to protect the women!" business to me. Like "oh they don't know any better and they'll post and put their name out there and get raped, we must protect them by locking them up safely where they can't do damage to themselves by letting men get a look at them!"

Granted it can be just my bad memory but i was under impression this particular angle of "freaks will have field day with knowing which taurens really have vaginas" gets pointed out by women. I.e. not as much a paternalistic thing but simple and understandable concern of people looking after themselves, and based on first-hand experience for the most part.

Yes.  And I think Ingmar is pretty far offbase in this case.

[Pantastic]

Remember that Blizzard is now partnered with Facebook.

I don't see what the problem is with that policy, or how their partnership with Facebook affects it. The bit you quoted just says that if they sell off a game or all of Blizzard, they'll pass the account information on with it, and that if they merge again or go out of business then whoever they merge into or takes over their business will get their business records. Do you really think that if Vivendi decides to kill Blizzard as a seperate entity, they would destroy all of the account records? That's pretty standard stuff, it's probably illegal to delete business records during a bankruptcy, and nothing in that section other than real id is unexpected at all (obviously they're going to provide infromation if subpoenaed)

The part they'll use with facebook is below, and that's worrying to me now that we've seen how cautious they are with personal information.

Blizzard may enhance or merge the personal information collected at a Blizzard site with data from third parties. Blizzard may also provide your personal information to other companies or organizations that offer products or services that may be of interest to you. In such cases, we will notify you that the information will be shared and provide you with an opportunity to opt-out.

It's also interesting that:

How secure is my personal information?

Blizzard has taken steps to assure that all information collected will remain secure and in its original form, i.e. free from any alteration. As such, access to all personal information is strictly controlled. When credit card information is transmitted, for example, we use industry standard, SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption. In addition, we will take reasonable steps to assure that third parties to whom we transfer any data will provide sufficient protection of personal information.

Is violated by the current RealID setup - personal informationis transferred to third parties with no steps taken to assure that they provide any protection. They provide the information to any friend of a realid friend with no investigation of that person, and any addon can get your name and send it to arbitrary people if you haven't opted out of RealID entirely. I count what an add-on does as a transfer from Blizzard, since the addon doesn't do anything itself, it runs entirely inside of WOW.

[Lantyssa]

I don't think I know anyone of any gender who especially likes it, but my point is the sort of scary talk about this sounds pretty similar to the scary talk that has been used over the years to keep women from doing all sorts of 'unsafe' things over the years, like getting a job, or being alone with a man they're not related to, or going out dancing, etc.

If they want to make an opt-in system or a single, unchanging user name like every other forum in existence, I have no problem with it.  It's the default being to show the real name and how it's being tied into every identifier imaginable.

As I said, I've seen it happen too many times.  Asking to let us make our own choices about whom to give our name to isn't being protective so much as saying that's not their right or responsibility.  Unfortunately simply asking for this respect isn't sufficient.  We have to explain exactly why by giving real scenarios that have happened, and since those apparently aren't sufficient, we have to give worse ones.  And I'd rather use past examples as a preventative than wait for new ones to crop up.

If that makes me 'paternally' protective, so be it.  I'd really rather not spend any more all-nighters comforting someone again.

[Ingmar]

Asking to let us make our own choices about whom to give our name to isn't being protective so much as saying that's not their right or responsibility.

I'm picking out the one sentence that I think highlights the issue here; ultimately you are still the one making the choice about whether other people can see your name, even with the proposed changes. Obviously that could change if they alter things further, but I think everyone can probably make their own decision about exactly when it has gone too far - and of course it is obviously fine if this is that point for you.

[Pantastic]

I don't think I know anyone of any gender who especially likes it, but my point is the sort of scary talk about this sounds pretty similar to the scary talk that has been used over the years to keep women from doing all sorts of 'unsafe' things over the years, like getting a job, or being alone with a man they're not related to, or going out dancing, etc.

No one is arguing that women should not be allowed to provide their name, they're objecting to forcing people to provide their name, and pointing out that it's a bigger problem for women than for men. Tacking real life info into a game with tons of nerdrage and obsessives with lots of time on their hands is not a good idea for anyone, even though most people will be fine, but it will disproportionately affect women and so lots of examples involve women.

I don't recommend that anyone stroll naked through dark alleys in the bad part of town. But it's way more dangerous for a woman to do so than a man - the woman is pretty likely to get raped, while people are a bit likely to think the man is a crazy person and stay away from him. If I was discussing a game that required you to stroll naked through dark alleys and why it's a bad idea, most of my examples of bad things happening would probably be from women, but that doesn't mean that 'don't walk naked through dark alleys' is sexist advice.

I mean yes I know it doesn't map perfectly to this exact situation, but I feel like there's a strong undercurrent here of "we shouldn't let these crazy women put their pictures on Facebook, don't they know it isn't safe!" that I find kind of disturbing.

There's a big difference between "we shouldn't let these crazy women..." and "we shouldn't force anyone to do this, and it affects women more...".

[Ingmar]

Perhaps I should clarify somewhat, also: I do see a difference between a woman posting "hey, this could affect me personally in a direct way" and a dude wading into the thread saying "we must protect the womenfolk". It is more that second thing that I was getting at.

[Malakili]

Perhaps I should clarify somewhat, also: I do see a difference between a woman posting "hey, this could affect me personally in a direct way" and a dude wading into the thread saying "we must protect the womenfolk". It is more that second thing that I was getting at.

Has there really been that much of the second?

[Ingmar]

There's been some, but yeah it is something I see elsewhere a bunch. I guess its just that here happens to be where I'm actually participating in the discussion about it. Also somehow I seem to have landed in the devil's advocate seat in this discussion so I'm just kind of going with it. 

[Minvaren]

Canceled last night, saying I didn't like some of the recent battle.net/Cataclysm changes (but probably should have added Facebook in there too to be explicit).

[Vision]

So is problem here that the personal info collected by Blizz on each player is going to be used in a malicious way? IE Blizzard either uses or forces players to reveal information that would be potetially harmful?

Is the problem that this is most likely an implementation spurned on by activision?

Or is it that blizzard now holds interest in facebook, and could potentially exploit player information in conjunction with facebook?

Obviously I think using real names on the wow forums is a bad idea. But I still have no idea what the REAL issue is? I don't say that in defense of RealID. I'll be canceling my battle.net account regardless, but is everyone pissed off because they feel this is a strike against being anonymous on the internet? Or because it is a push from Blizzard to make money? And if so. how?

[Fordel]

There's been some, but yeah it is something I see elsewhere a bunch. I guess its just that here happens to be where I'm actually participating in the discussion about it. Also somehow I seem to have landed in the devil's advocate seat in this discussion so I'm just kind of going with it. 

You, argue for the sake of it, I would have never guessed such a thing! 

[kildorn]

It's less "must protect womenfolk" as much as "hey, very recent history says this will probably lead to X"

If they were trying to add something extra to help protect against things that are pretty obviously a problem, woo! Let's make an experiment of it!

But all they're doing is making the information even more accessible and expecting it to be totally different this time. Really, I'm not as worried about kids or adults. I'm worried more about the 16-22ish pack of women who are in that age range when attention from random guys you don't know seems kinda cool, and are prone to posting entirely too much personal information about themselves online. You know, the invulnerable "oh, bad things won't happen to ME" phase.

Those (men and women) are the people who are still going to post on the forums. And the creepy people aren't going to be posting or trolling. They're just going to be lurking where their personal information is safely hidden, but everyone else's is exposed.

This just screams bad fucking idea on every level.

[Khaldun]

Well, in some cases, the dudes are trying to respect the views of many women players that they know and to amplify them however possible. You know, like people do when they're trying to make common cause. Am I supposed to restrict myself when I share the opinions of other people to endorsing only those views which come from middle-aged professional straight white guys with a postgraduate education?

Anyway, one thing that's interesting in Wryxian's replies in that linked thread is again the repetition of the idea that the forums need to be a better vehicle for transmitting information to WoW players. To which I again reply: and what kind of information is desired by those players which is not already available via: articles on the main WoW pages, stickied Blue posts, or via third-party forums like Elitist Jerks, Wowhead and Wowwiki? This isn't just a question for the Blues, it's a question for people here and anywhere else who say "Oh joy! At last I shall be able to look at the official forums and get all the information I desire cleanly and clearly, without any trollage or noise!" What is the information that you presently feel you do not have that you expect to have in a clean forum, and why is that important to you?

The thing is, official forums for MMOs are NOT primarily information sources. That's not what they're for, and not why they're needed. What they are is a communication channel between players which helps them to create some sense of a larger community and a communication channel between players and developers which functions as chaotically and inconsistently as polls, lobbyists, newspaper editorials, protests, and so on serve as a communication channel between elected representatives and citizens in a democracy. Official forums are messy in both respects because the communities they correspond to are messy and because there are a great many different factions with different interests within those communities, many of whom benefit by creating a lot of noise rather than signal.

This is no different than any other forum or venue for communicating online: they're all community making. Sometimes weakly or pathetically so, sometimes really productively so. But they're not for information. Information is still best communicated the old fashioned way, from one-to-many.

Blizz either knows this and the whole point of this is not to improve the informational quality of the forums but to reduce the labor load of moderation and to move their whole product towards social networking (without understanding social networking). Or they don't know it and they're being stupid. People who say they want the forums to be more informational usually mean instead, "I hate most of the fuckers that post there and want them to go die in a fire".

[Ratman_tf]

Fuck it, I just cancelled my account and told them specifically it was over their RealID decision.

Is there any way to get them to delete the account permanently? At this point, I'm starting to question whether I want Blizzard and Activision access to my personal information at all/

[Ingmar]

If I had to guess the sort of information exchange they want is between players. In theory it would be "noob posts question and gets an answer and the trolls are discouraged from flaming his gear or posting L2P nonsense because they're no longer anonymous."

I'm not sure if that will or won't work out in practice (I probably lean to won't, but you never know), but I'm pretty sure that's what they're talking about in theory at least.

[kildorn]

If I had to guess the sort of information exchange they want is between players. In theory it would be "noob posts question and gets an answer and the trolls are discouraged from flaming his gear or posting L2P nonsense because they're no longer anonymous."

I'm not sure if that will or won't work out in practice (I probably lean to won't, but you never know), but I'm pretty sure that's what they're talking about in theory at least.

You could do that by throwing a bit more brutal moderation at the issue, too. Just eat a temp ban for trolling. or for more laughs, a "troll" debuff on all your characters that essentially gives you rez sick for 8 hours of in game time per offence.

[Paelos]

Fuck it, I just cancelled my account and told them specifically it was over their RealID decision.

Is there any way to get them to delete the account permanently? At this point, I'm starting to question whether I want Blizzard and Activision access to my personal information at all/

I don't think so, although you could just change your accessible information to something else nonsensical when you quit.

[Simond]

Fuck it, I just cancelled my account and told them specifically it was over their RealID decision.

Now call your bank and get them to do a chargeback for any time left to run on your sub. Accounts departments love dealing with chargebacks.

[Rendakor]

You can't just change the name on the account without faxing in an ID.

In response to Khaldun's question, I think Blizzard wants you to get ALL of your info on the official forums, instead of EJ, wowhead, mmo-champ, etc. Personally, I don't think the benefit outweighs the cost.

[Paelos]

Fuck it, I just cancelled my account and told them specifically it was over their RealID decision.

Now call your bank and get them to do a chargeback for any time left to run on your sub. Accounts departments love dealing with chargebacks.

It's not worth the month. I'll run out time until August, finish selling off shit I won't need, and then just ice the account until the policy gets more defined/changed. If they release the expansion with more options to get out of the RealID, and/or don't have it affect anything I do in my gameplay or show up anywhere I don't want it to, then I'll reconsider.