Poll of the Day > Lmaooo we can't post about politics here anymore

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/6-gamefaqs-announcements/80747432

Fandom sucks

Hopefully they dont ban me Also weird that they turned CE into something like LUE.

Wait, what? That's actually terrible. They're shutting down Current Events?

Do they want us to stop visiting the site?

Furthermore, while we understand the passion surrounding political discussions, we believe it is essential to maintain a focus on gaming-related content.

Tmmy, I don't come here to talk about video games. A lot of grown adults have a variety of interests and find talking about video games all the time mundane. A lot of people want to have arguments. I don't want to live in corporate pillow world. I'm already annoyed enough that GameFAQs started banning all conservative posters (I know they are a legal nuclear waste hazard but idc)

Additionally, political topics outside of CE will be banned.

I hate you. I hate trust and safety.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/11-team-gamefaqs/80747428?page=1

I will be posting here

It's weird they banned politics topics for everywhere except CE when they were already banned on system/game boards.

I mean, it makes sense to not have them on the game boards... but c'mon

I'm... kinda ok with this right before the election.

Fandom is just keeping up a time-honored GameFAQs pastime: Owners/admins making stupid-ass decisions.

if I win the lotto Ima just buy gamefaqs

Lokarin posted...

if I win the lotto Ima just buy gamefaqs

it really can't be worth much either

The only reason Fandom owns GameFAQs now is because it was bundled with the rest of the CNet assets they bought. I doubt they'd have actually paid for it directly.

Yellow posted...

Wait, what? That's actually terrible. They're shutting down Current Events?

Um, no?

"As such, we are implementing a measure to turn the Current Events private. Every user who has visited GameFAQs in the last year and who currently has access to the board will retain access to the board. No additional users will be allowed to view or post on the board going forward. Additionally, any user who is placed in Purgatory (which is always an administrator/staff decision) will permanently lose access to the board. Additionally, political topics outside of CE will be banned."

Just no new people will be able to join, kinda like how they shut off access to LUE.

Though given what happened to LUE, we can make some guesses about CE's future. Not that I expect the site as a whole to last long enough to see out the full duration of a death as slow as LUE's.

DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC posted...

Um, no?

"As such, we are implementing a measure to turn the Current Events private. Every user who has visited GameFAQs in the last year and who currently has access to the board will retain access to the board. No additional users will be allowed to view or post on the board going forward. Additionally, any user who is placed in Purgatory (which is always an administrator/staff decision) will permanently lose access to the board. Additionally, political topics outside of CE will be banned."

Just no new people will be able to join, kinda like how they shut off access to LUE.

That's even more cruel because they didn't kill it, they just gave it a terminal illness, lol. Now the room is slowly losing oxygen and random people will be excommunicated.

So they killed off 261 (politics board), and now is making CE the new 261, with all the restrictions that 261 members wanted for decades (high karma limit, and/or private).

It's admitting "we fucked up" without saying it, but their solution is just worse. Just resurrect 261, then.

hornyposting

So does that mean I can't do my regular nightly posts?

DeltaBladeX posted...

So does that mean I can't do my regular nightly posts?

I say just do it until they actually enforce it. The response is very negative and it might not fall through like they say.

Most political topics devolve into a shit show so I kinda understand. But that's also part of the fun

Jen0125 posted...

Lmaooo we can't post about politics here anymore

THANK FUCKING CHRIST.

Some of you people honestly never shut the fuck up about it.

It's funny to see them pulling a LUE on CE, though.

a platform eternally stuck in 2003 really shouldn't be discussing politics anyway

couldn't talk about politics without getting suspended n look where it got ya

That brings up the question that if Jan 6 happened again, are we not allowed to talk about it? Cuz that was definitely a event to talk about

Worst. Thing. Ever. >_>

And nothing of value was lost

jsb0714 posted...

And nothing of value was lost

This site can't even crack 1100 users at any given time.

Frankly I think GameFAQs just needs to close the boards at this point.

Solid_Sonic posted...

This site can't even crack 1100 users at any given time.

Frankly I think GameFAQs just needs to close the boards at this point.

That's what makes this funny. Like who the hell is even on this site that's getting scared away from posting by the hot political takes of a bunch of 40 year-old weirdos that haven't just migrated to reddit or whatever?

SomeUsername529 posted...

That's what makes this funny. Like who the hell is even on this site that's getting scared away from posting by the hot political takes of a bunch of 40 year-old weirdos that haven't just migrated to reddit or whatever?

I think the idea is to make sure that anyone looking to come talk about games isn't put off by trolling or controversial topics and discouraged from joining the community, with political arguments being a significant part of that, but what happens on social boards also does nothing to affect that because social boards aren't going to be showing up for people searching for game discussions. Maybe the theory is that by trying to contain it to one board, that will free up moderation resources to clean up system/game boards that are more likely to be, but I don't know that a blanket ban on a certain topic (which means every instance of that topic on non-CE boards will need moderator attention) is actually going to help in that regard.

Personally, though, I'd be more put off by the aggressive ads than by any off-topic discussion or trolling that might be happening on the game board I was looking at. This site is honestly half the reason I use uBlock, and my understanding is that it's only gotten worse in the years since I swore off browsing it unprotected.

SomeUsername529 posted...

That's what makes this funny. Like who the hell is even on this site that's getting scared away from posting by the hot political takes of a bunch of 40 year-old weirdos that haven't just migrated to reddit or whatever?

*30 year old weirdo, thank you

Also why would I post on Reddit? The whole point of the site is a weird game to get as many upvotes as you can, there's no point in remembering the names of anyone, they might as well not even be real people, and the site itself breaks if you have a conversation for more than 10 replies. If you're having a normal conversation with someone, you don't just get downvotes and then silence for saying something stupid/controversial. It feels bad. Imagine talking to your friends, and out of nowhere you say something, they all just stare at you silently, give you a. No, they reply to you like a normal interaction.

But now this place has become North Korea, so idk. Oops, a political post...

rofl killing PotD

I almost feel like they're trying to kill the site... like they're just saying go away so we can shut it down lol. The game boards are a barren wasteland. Politics, in some form or another, make up a pretty large percentage of discussion on the site

OhhhJa posted...

I almost feel like they're trying to kill the site

they bought it as a package deal with cnet so it's not implausible they literally do not care about gamefaqs at all or they want to actively kill it off because there's no foreseeable revenue source for the site

gamefaqs really hasn't been getting new users for the past decade and everyone already here uses ublock

adjl posted...

Personally, though, I'd be more put off by the aggressive ads than by any off-topic discussion or trolling that might be happening on the game board I was looking at. This site is honestly half the reason I use uBlock, and my understanding is that it's only gotten worse in the years since I swore off browsing it unprotected.

I accidentally loaded this site earlier today with NoScript off, and holy shit does it look terrible when it actually functions the way it's supposed to. I can't imagine using the site for any length of time without blocking 99% of the scripting.

I stopped allowing the site to load ads like 15 years ago, because I kept getting ads that were either locking/freezing my PC or that were active malware. At which point I decided that if they couldn't be bothered to quality control the ads they were delivering, I couldn't be bothered to give a shit if I was costing them ad revenue by blocking every ad. I've never been given a single reason since to change that stance.

Wow, LUEing their most popular social board and banning one of the few topics of discussion that actually drives engagement is... certainly a decision.

OhhhJa posted...

I almost feel like they're trying to kill the site... like they're just saying go away so we can shut it down lol.

agesboy posted...

they bought it as a package deal with cnet so it's not implausible they literally do not care about gamefaqs at all or they want to actively kill it off because there's no foreseeable revenue source for the site

They don't really need to drive people off for that. If they wanted to shut the site down they could do it tomorrow and it wouldn't really matter in any meaningful way.

They could also easily just shut down every social board and only keep the game boards, or shut down all forum activity and just keep the FAQs (sort of like IMDB did years ago), or otherwise try to keep the site as a monetizable resource without having to deal with all the pesky annoying users.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

They don't really need to drive people off for that. If they wanted to shut the site down they could do it tomorrow and it wouldn't really matter in any meaningful way.

They could also easily just shut down every social board and only keep the game boards, or shut down all forum activity and just keep the FAQs (sort of like IMDB did years ago), or otherwise try to keep the site as a monetizable resource without having to deal with all the pesky annoying users.

Honestly, I was wondering why they hadnt done that. They obviously dont care about the site, and want it to fail. So, why havent they just shut it down already?

LinkPizza posted...

They obviously dont care about the site, and want it to fail. So, why havent they just shut it down already?

I think this is the thing. It's not that they want the site to fail, it's more that they just have no idea how to fix it/make it relevant again. But they also don't care all that much, so while they'll make the occasional half-assed change, they're just making things worse.

To paraphrase Hanlon's Razor, it's not malice as much as it is apathy combined with incompetence.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

They don't really need to drive people off for that. If they wanted to shut the site down they could do it tomorrow and it wouldn't really matter in any meaningful way.

it'll still be a stain to be used against them for a website to fail within two years of their acquisition, so I think they want to draw it out. make it an inevitable "gamefaqs wasn't going to last forever" thing but a little faster

I also wonder if they're going to challenge guide rights in the near future tbh. SBAllen said it wouldn't happen but he made a super bitter post about this whole situation on CE earlier, so his input on the situation is out the window

I already got 2 moderations for political comments

I don't know where to go for general current events anymore.

BoomerKuwanger posted...

it just isn't necessary to discuss politics online IMO. It's important stuff to pay attention to but your chances of actually changing people's minds are very low.

Some people talk online if they have no one IRL to talk to about this sort of stuff Not to mention the point of talking about politics isnt to change someones mind. Its just to talk about it, in most cases. And share youre own views

As for why people may use this site, its because its smaller. Something like this board, you have discussions with users you know well enough. And not complete strangers Which can help some people to feel more comfortable talking about certain things And its helps that people who know you might understand why youve taken certain stances and such

We're all in trouble.. tbh.

agesboy posted...

it'll still be a stain to be used against them for a website to fail within two years of their acquisition, so I think they want to draw it out. make it an inevitable "gamefaqs wasn't going to last forever" thing but a little faster

I'd argue the exact opposite. If you shut something down right after acquiring it, you can blame the previous owners for ruining it and say you're just shuttering an asset you never really wanted in the first place, that you just got stuck with as part of a larger deal.

The longer you wait after acquiring it, the more it starts to look like you're the one who ran it into the ground, because it looks like you wanted to keep it but failed to run it properly.

Maybe they're looking at how much user base they lose to people getting angry over politics. It's like "wow we've had to ban a bunch of accounts and it's almost all over politics. The solution must be to ban nearly all political discussion!"

MechaKirby posted...

That brings up the question that if Jan 6 happened again, are we not allowed to talk about it? Cuz that was definitely a event to talk about

I could see one arguing that discussing something on the news isn't in of itself political, which obviously puts the onus on the mods to evenly apply what is "political".

The one mod's example that discussing politics in a video game itself won't be a violation. For example, apparently Spider-Man 2 mentions Black Lives Matters, so discussing that within the game isn't "political."

I'm sure this won't at all lead to mass confusion and wildly uneven application of the ruling at all.

"a leading destination for gamers worldwide"

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/1e111133.jpg

That RFK Jr. topic that was created 6 fucking days before the dumb fuck announcement is closed and TC is "not an active member".

The draconian crackdown on politics and even more so "horny posting" (which apparently means, "anything that a single person reports as such") is so god damned extreme, it's like they're trying to speed run a tumblr-fication of this site's user numbers.

streamofthesky posted...

That RFK Jr. topic that was created 6 fucking days before the dumb fuck announcement is closed and TC is "not an active member".

The draconian crackdown on politics and even more so "horny posting" (which apparently means, "anything that a single person reports as such") is so god damned extreme, it's like they're trying to speed run a tumblr-fication of this site's user numbers.

Yeah retroactive moderations are bullshit.