'Offensive' Symbols/Emblems Not Tolerated: Microsoft

By Mark

If you've been playing Black Ops recently or really any online game that allows players to have a clan tag/emblem/symbol then you will have undoubtedly seen a certain amount of people who think it's 'funny' or 'cool' for one reason or another to have provocative images/words just because they can. Stephen Toulouse (essentially chief cop for Xbox Live) has written an extensive piece on his blog explaining that the use of a 'Swastika' symbol can indeed get you banned. 

Here's an extract from the blog explaining their standpoint, i realise it's word heavy but stick with it.

"Tonight I got asked one of those questions that only my job can apparently engender, namely “Hey, I’m not a genocidal hater of Jews but I really love the design of the swastika because its actually used by numerous religions, can I use it as my Call Of Duty: Black Ops logo? SWASTIKAS ARE AWESOME.No really, someone asked me this as a serious question on twitter.  So I of course replied, “no, of course you can’t, we’ll ban you.”

UH OH!  OUT COMES THE INTERNET PUNDITS!

You know the type I mean.  They’ve read an article that’s contrarian to some position widely held, or they’ve found some obscure fact that contradicts common interpretation.  Some of them claim to have known it as innate fact, others claim it to be widespread common knowledge taught to every single person in elementary school. Of course, usually neither is true at all. Most of them are just contrarians.  They would never dare to wear a swastika openly, but they love to argue about how the world has “misunderstood” this symbol. Or they view any opportunity for human interaction, no matter the appropriateness, to push their point."

There is a fair bit more to the article but i won't bombard you with it here, I feel he makes a good point and does go to explain why it is that Microsoft will punish people for doing such things. In the conclusion of the post he writes its all about context and sums up his message in a TL;DR statement which was:

"TL;DR: If you see offensive symbols in Call of Duty, Black Ops, report them using the in game option and they will be taken care of.  If you want to argue that swastikas are actually AWESOME, go to another forum.  On Xbox LIVE they are not allowed. :>"

If you've stuck with this article so far I thank you for reading and here is the original blog page - http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=635