Been there, done that. [Skip this post if you're bored already, it's a long one] I wouldn't really have the time (or much desire) to do it now at this stage in my life, I'd rather just be a regular user even though it would be nice to fix one or two things if I saw them, but others can do that easily enough.
I was a moderator for many years in a totally different community. I didn't do a perfect job, but it was something I enjoyed and things went pretty smoothly for the most part. The worst I ever got was when I deleted a bunch of spam posts (from a small group that in retrospect were just having some fun) which lead to a campaign by those people to get me demoted. I've been called every name in the book, but it had nothing to do with identity or politics, rather that some people felt like they were the best judge of how a forum should be run, based on some other unrelated community (or communities) they were a part of. They briefly succeeded but I was reinstated and continued to do my job there (volunteer, always, so it wasn't a real job) through periods of unpopular decisions like censoring risque material that didn't really belong and managing spoilers for a brief period for a certain product (those are the breaks, but it worked out, and the few who were still complaining eventually had nothing more to complain about) until other things in my life meant I couldn't devote the same time it deserved. After I retired from moderating (but stayed a member for several more years), some new people did things their own way but more or less it stayed the way it was intended by the site owners. But you moderate the "wrong" way, you're absolutely the worst person, as they'll tell it, because they want your "job!" Everybody wants a playground, but some want to troll. As irritating as the behavior is, are those people really "bad" at heart and do they really believe the things they say? A real troll would never tell.
People who enforce the rules will grind up against those who want to test them to prove some point, that's true in all of life, so it's a good lesson to learn here in internet-land. But the idea that everyone needs to believe exactly what I do, and I'm going to throw my power around to try to force that to happen, is territory that I don't like to get into on the internet. I can pray for your soul, while agreeing to disagree, live and let live. We experimented with having debate forums (which were really good, people were very mature for the most part and had some excellent long conversations about all sorts of deep topics), and the failed experiment was a no holds barred forum where it was just about insulting each other. So there you go.
That's why I like small communities like this, because you can do whatever you want (within reason) and if you don't like it you can start your own fairly easily. With social media it becomes much more a struggle between the will of the mob and the corporate overlords who want to get the most profit from advertising and data-mining possible, with the draw of discussing shared interests and exchange of ideas falling by the wayside. In other words, those platforms start to look more and more like old corporate media where everything is carefully choreographed to follow a very specific narrative designed to get maximum viewership and advertising dollars while pushing the agenda of a very few at the top.
I don't want to just sit there and nod my head to whatever the political fads of the day are and what some CEO wants me to say and I can't say what I really think about a product or service for fear that I'll lose access.
I'm imagining leaping back into all those old communities and "firing" everyone because they expressed opinions or used words that are no longer PC. Nobody would be left, and the most ardent crusaders for whatever would be considered bigots by the radicals of today (just as tomorrow's radicals will judge them as backward if not outright bigoted, mark my words). Letting someone have a "wrong" (in your view) opinion and learning to live in the same world with them (even if you fail to change their mind with reason) vs seeking to punish them until they vanish from the world (or convert to your viewpoint) is a much more human way to live, I think. After all, for the most part we are talking to other ordinary folks here, not the powerful who can change the world to whatever end. My believing "wrong things" doesn't impact your life anymore than you believing "wrong things" doesn't impact mine... at least in terms of preventing us from enjoying other things together that have nothing to do with that issue. If the guy who cooked my steak is actually a racist, I'll never know, or care, unless somehow it means he was trying to poison me or something I guess, but there are other things preventing that from being a likely threat. But a little grace ought to be extended, because even the most hardcore of modern crusaders should know that their own past is not perfect, and the culture will undoubtedly change in the future, meaning they will not always be on the crest of the curve.
The internet's social media algorithms are designed to gather data, notice trends and recommend similar things and to let others use that data to maximize potential profit, so the diversity of platforms has tended towards creating echo chambers. This tends to make people even more unprepared to debate their ideas in an open and civil way. Hence the tendency to try to chase away dissenters and try to get them banned or whatever. There are many theories of freedom, but the freedom to experiment, to reinvent one's self and even the freedom to be "wrong" in the eyes of the majority seem to be important safeguards from the whims of the mob or the dictatorial control of a few. Again here I'm speaking in broad terms. A forum having strict rules and kicking people out is comparable to having strict rules in your home you impose upon guests. But when your "home" contains millions of people, it becomes a different story. It's like if one business has exclusionary practices, who cares, shop somewhere else, but if they're the only game in town (or almost the only game in town) then they have more of a responsibility to be more open for fear of outright oppression. Lots of political theories about this sort of thing and lots of debates on the extent of it (with lots of passion behind every one of those theories and arguments), I realize. Hence, this is not the place for it. I'm just acknowledging it exists.
So the problem I think is not that people want to have their own community, that shares their "values" to a certain extent and want to keep people out who rub them the wrong way, that's a natural enough inclination. Rather the issue is with those who want broad censorship, to make it so that certain beliefs are not just unwelcome in every possible venue, but actively sought out and persecuted into silence, not by force of argument but by brute force, even though no one is actually being physically threatened (being "offended" by something you see or hear is not the same as actual violence, some disagree, but those are the facts).
So yeah, if a company like Hasbro wants to jump on some kind of bandwagon to appeal to those who want to purify all culture from wrongthink, I think that's a riskier strategy than just trying to stay out of that fight and just producing quality products that lots of people want to actually buy. They'll alienate lots of potential or current customers who don't agree with them 100%, and they'll be forced to evaluate their own past actions and damage their own reputations (and lose more potential sales, not to mention damage their own IPs) in the process. All to please a small segment of their audience for this brief time period as the phases shift and so forth.
Many, if not all big companies have some kind of sensitivity training they mandate for their employees. Let's be real, it's not so much that these companies actually care about the issues at hand, but it's a stop-gap measure to head off potential lawsuits, a token gesture to re-assure investors and share holders that they have a plan to stave off potential problems (and have another ready excuse after they've fired someone... well, we tried to warn him!). The general principle that you don't want to offend your customers, because all their money is the same color makes a lot of sense in a purely pragmatic way. Corporations are utilitarian for the most part. If you are a non-profit trying to promote a specific ideology, that's cool, but companies like Hasbro don't fit into that category.
Some have speculated a future where you'll have separate companies for every ideology. But in terms of the market that seems rather inefficient (I'm not stumping for monopolies here, but this would be even more ridiculously segmented than necessary). And really, do I really care that much if the person who put my toys into the bag has different beliefs than I do, so long as they did what I paid them for properly? Sure, it would be nice to make some kind of statement, saying you're giving your money only to people who uphold all your same values, but good luck finding such a perfect match with everything. Since these are luxuries, rather than essentials, I guess it's easier to make those choices, but an entertainment company taking really loud positions on controversial topics seems like a risky strategy, again, since your goal is not so much to be "right" (forever?) but to push more products and make more profit in the process. Instead, what you'll get is Big Company X makes r-rated games for mature audiences and maybe has another division that makes g-rated games for kiddos, and Competitor Company Y makes extreeeeeeeeme games for rad dudes and such but also sells normy edition games on the side to net some more dollars they'd otherwise miss out on.
But I'm not in charge of Hasbro, and even if every single one of their customers complains that they're doing it wrong, they still can ignore us and do what they were going to do anyway. Unless their pride is set aside and it starts to cut into their profits, they won't change. But people can still try and send them letters, of course and talk about it in public to see how those decisions are perceived (and the interview video was one such conversation, certainly not the beginning or the end of it).
Eventually I'm going to start repeating myself and nobody wants to hear that.
"Oh I see you bought the Republican Hero Quest, good for you, but I'm buying the Democrat Hero Quest since that's what I believe in. Bill over here, he bought the Libertarian Hero Quest, let's jump him after the game... just kidding!"
Making people work it out among themselves, rather than having authority figures force an end to the dispute is a refreshing option so far.
