(cache)Discord Off-Site Conduct Policy Criticized For Staff Engaging In “F*ck Cis People” Hashtag - One Angry Gamer
Discord Off-Site Conduct Policy Criticized For Staff Engaging In “F*ck Cis People” Hashtag
Posted on March 27, 2019, 1:27 am By
Discord Kadybat

Discord’s code of conduct policies were recently made front and center in a Reddit discussion back on March 24th, 2019 by a Twitch partner named Rainy. There were a number of topics that the policies covered, including prohibiting partnered servers, which are basically officially affiliated servers with Discord, from using words like “retard” or “nigga” (with an ‘a’) within their channels. Well, there appears to be a little more to the story than what was mentioned in the Reddit thread.

Server operators were not at all pleased with Discord’s decision, especially given how vague the code of conduct is, resulting in some of them speaking out against the new changes. Others decided to leak some of the discussions that have been taking place in private with the Discord staff to highlight that some of the administrators working at Discord have a rather suspect history that seems to contradict the company’s new code of conduct practices, which includes considering moderation based on off-site behavior. This was something that the /r/JoeRogan moderator had serious issues with.

In one of the screenshots shared with One Angry Gamer, we see that the moderator of /r/JoeRogan, going by the handle of Mayor, reproaches Discord for wanting to enforce the new code of conduct, which goes into effect on April 18th. His derision for the policy popped up when one of the Discord staff, Ellen “Kadybat” McGrody, made disparaging remarks about cis-gendered people (which is a term to refer to men and women biologically born as men and women).

Mayor points to tweets from Kadybat’s Twitter account, where the Discord staff member was posting in the #fuckcispeople hashtag many years ago.

These tweets are actually still available, in fact.

There’s an archive of Kadybat’s tweets from the #fuckcispeople hashtag dating back to 2013 and 2014.

There’s also a tweet archive of Kadybat that might explain why Discord decided to prohibit people from using the word “retard”. Kadybat posts a number of tweets stating that people had used the word as a slur to slander them in the past.

That’s not all, though. Mayor had archived a number of tweets from Kadybat constantly using discriminatory language against “cis people” across Twitter. When someone criticized Mayor for bringing up old tweets from back in 2013 and 2014, he presented archives of Kadybat making comments from 2016 up to December, 2018.



As pointed out by Mayor, he felt it was hypocritical and the “pot calling the kettle black” that someone like Kadybat could denigrate “cis” people while also having a section in the code of conduct that could warrant sanctions based on off-site comments. He also asked if someone would still be allowed on the Discord staff if the comments were reversed and someone wrote disparagingly of trans the way Kadybat wrote of “cis” people?



The image that Mayor linked to is from Discord’s new code of conduct. The section reads…

“As a Discord Partner and effectively a face of the Discord community, your behavior may reflect on Discord. You should be on good behavior on the Discord platform, across other social media, and in real life. If we are made aware of situations where you are representing Discord poorly by, for example, violating other platforms Terms of Service or acting in a manner that is unbecoming of a Discord Partner, we may rescind the Partner status.”

This is similar to the policies that both Twitch and Blizzard Entertainment employ, where they sanction or “action” accounts based on a user’s off-site behavior.

The conversation fizzles out without any administrators addressing Mayor’s points about Kadybat’s comments about “cis” people.

Some of the server operators felt as if Discord was being operated unfairly and that the administrators could get away with things that other users couldn’t, as well as the staff being put into positions based on their sociopolitical beliefs rather than their qualifications to actually run Discord.

A good example of this is the fact that if you look into Kadybat’s history, there are a lot of red flags. For instance, in the employment history profile, Kadybat has contributed to some notable Left-leaning websites that basically push the Social Justice Warrior agenda.

While being a contributor to Left-wing websites like PC Gamer or Waypoint may not be instant giveaways, there’s a bit more to Kadybat’s history than meets the eye. For instance, the byline “Ellen McGrody” might sound familiar to Metroid fans. Why? Because that was the name on an article co-authored with Brianna Wu over on The Mary Sue back on September 1st, 2015 titled “Metroid’s Samus Aran is a Transgender Woman. Deal With It.”

It wasn’t just the article that caused quite the stir. You might remember the caustic tweet that Kadybat posted to accompany the article.

Yes, Kadybat has a hat in the ring with the anti-#GamerGate, pro-SJW crowd.

While there are some hints of Kadybat enjoying Sonic shipping and doing some fanart for the series…

…Back in 2016, Kadybat made a tweet indicating that they were not a “furry”.

Not everyone in the Discord partner channels believe Kadybat denying being a furry, and linked to the profile which features a dog as the profile icon, not unlike the Twitter icon which features a trans version of Tails from Sonic The Hedgehog.

However, it should be noted that profile pictures don’t immediately indicate that someone is a furry, but many of the images and friends within Kadybat’s circle are furries, and the icon that Kadybat uses in Discord comes from a reference sheet produced by a furry artist named Noel “Komoroshi” Rodriguez, who is working on an action adventure furry game starring anthropomorphic dogs called Breeze.

However, back in October of 2014, Kadybat admitted to being a furry and roleplaying as Sonic after posting some romantic art of Sonic and Tails together.

Whether or not Kadybat continued to maintain the furry status up until or beyond 2016 is up in the air, but the significance of this little idiosyncratic trait circles back to information sent to One Angry Gamer indicating that Discord favors hiring in furries, not for their qualifications but for their personal preferences. While this hasn’t been completely verified, it was confirmed previously during the initial fallout over Discord banning loli and shota porn but not cub porn that the administrator who was at the forefront of that decision was a furry.

Going by the handle All The Foxes, the admin came under heavy scrutiny along with Discord itself when they chose not to ban cub porn, which is basically pornography featuring anthropomorphic animals visually representing children.

After a lot of media attention and one FBI investigation later centered around child grooming gangs using the service has a recruitment tool, Discord changed their policy and opted to ban cub porn.

There were rumors floating around that All The Foxes had been banned from Discord for corruption. However, it was revealed through the screenshots in the Discord staff channel that All The Foxes simply modified his user name to ATF, but is still on Discord staff.

Ultimately, this has led a lot people to believe that Discord is being influenced in a very dangerous direction that will protect certain kinds of speech and content, but grant leniency toward those in certain groups, not unlike how they wanted to protect cub porn but ban loli/shota porn, and only modified that decision after massive media blow back.

In fact, this was one of the major issues with Discord’s new code of conduct. As people began peppering All The Foxes in the original Discord chat about the changes and the moderation of the words “retard” and “nigga”, he responded by saying that Discord wasn’t going to ban the words but they expected server operators to moderate their communities when those words are used.

The relevant part of the image from All The Foxes states…

“[…] there are no words that are banned on Discord. If we wanted to ban a word, we would…. ban that word.

 

“As we’ve said multiple times before, you are not expected to add word filters. You are expected to be a good steward of your community.

 

“We think abuot our policy a lot. It’s something we’re always doing, and this isn’t a situation in which we’ve never thought about this kind of thing before. Reclaiming of words is actually something we think about a lot. I cannot give you some implicit confirmation that everything will be okay because context is going to matter.”

As mentioned in the previous article, the Discord staff do not have a word filter list, nor a list of words that are ultimately prohibited. So it’s going to be up to the discretion of Discord’s staff to determine what becomes of the channel if they violate the code of conduct.

While the new code of conduct rules will go into effect on April 18th for partnered servers, some users fear that it’s only going to be a matter of time before these rules filter down into the rest of the channels. Others fear that the rules won’t be applied evenly across all channels given the vagary of the code of conduct’s wording, and the fact that All The Foxes has proven in the past that he’s willing to show favoritism in moderation based on certain groups and channels. How this all plays out will be dependent on how users reacts to these new changes in mid April.

(Thanks for the news tip anons)

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Billy has been rustling Jimmies for years covering video games, technology and digital trends within the electronics entertainment space. The GJP cried and their tears became his milkshake. Need to get in touch? Try the Contact Page.

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