[kyledrake]

Oh wow, they actually provided the full torrent. I was always hoping they would so it could be studied.

For those unfamiliar, 2B2T was a Minecraft anarchy server that had almost no restrictions. It devolved into roving gangs of people trying to kill each other, use cheats to find secret bases, etc. The trick to hiding on this server was to go as far away as possible from the center, which led to an enormous map size.

I joined with a friend several years ago to see if we could survive, and it took days just to get out of the spawn, which was completely destroyed, surrounded by massive walls, and flooded with Withers (very difficult to kill enemies).

Fascinating study and perhaps the biggest metaverse experiment that's ever happened (but definitely the most lawless one).

This is what spawn looked like from above https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vrKyqEBoNvRVbCtHoG6BGX-970...

[l3x4ur1n]

Wow, how did you do the screenshot?

[madeofpalk]

looks a bit like chunky, maybe? https://chunky-dev.github.io/docs/

[dopidopHN2]

Also, this is minecraft ? Holy shit

[krisroadruck]

Was? It's still online no?

[doodlesdev]

It's still online, but it's not anarchy anymore [0].

[0]: https://www.2b2t.org/terms/

[pineapplepizza6]

[flagged]

[no_time]

MS really hates minecraft's inherited self hosted server model. You can actually get a global ban for wrongthink commited on your own private server. (granted, someone needs to report you but still)

Also not really a censorship issue but I'm kinda bummed that the new version will default to having the server whitelist on. Going on an ip scanning site and joining random minecraft servers accindentally left on for years is an experience like no other. Some of the longer running ones are full of signs left by other explorers, or just griefed to shit. One of the few remaining wild wests on the internet.

[63]

I think broadly I'm in agreement that the censorship via blacklisting threats was unwarranted. That said, I also think we should keep in mind that this isn't some public forum made for adults to have discussions, it's a public block game server. I think it's more than reasonable to say that the average minecraft player is probably a child and one of the most popular servers being full of swastikas and racial slurs probably isn't good for children. Personally I think there was potential for some kind of middle ground, but I'm also not mourning the loss of the obsidian nazi builds too hard. The paradox of tolerance and all that. The vast majority of the anarchy spirit is still there, it's just slightly less edgy. It's hard to discuss in good faith because the advocates for lack of censorship here are largely people who want to spam the N word in chat all day or their unwitting allies. Ultimately, whatever the outcome (and I think the current outcome is at least /ok/), I've made peace with the possibility of losing minecraft as a medium for totally free speech. It's just a block game.

[vintermann]

> I think it's more than reasonable to say that the average minecraft player is probably a child

That is almost certainly not true, especially for the Java version, which this server runs.

[ericmay]

> I think it's more than reasonable to say that the average minecraft player is probably a child and one of the most popular servers being full of swastikas and racial slurs probably isn't good for children.

Maybe. They’ll encounter if eventually and if they are coddled too much they can’t handle it. I also think folks forget, or perhaps they were coddled, that kids already know about a lot of this stuff and when parents aren’t around say all the bad works and make very, very crude jokes. That’s what kids do. That’s what we did.

[phatskat]

Sure, kids will encounter a lot of things, but there’s a difference between coddling and having conversations when the time is right (well, better - there’s rarely a correct time in any exact sense with kids).

Our kid is old enough now to have a good grasp on “world war 2 was bad, nazis are bad”, and if they were to hop on this server and then we have discussions surrounding ie the “obsidian swaztikas” mentioned above, I think it would go alright.

This kid is also smart, and emotionally aware, and actually a pretty cool dude. They can swear around us, and never in anger towards someone, and tbh they’ve said “oh shit” once while playing a game with us because they got spooked and last night during a run on Marathon they went “hey phatskat, I might use a swear word”. I asked what they wanted to say and why they were hesitant (since they know the rule that it’s ok generally), and they explained that swearing makes the “queasy” lol. A couple minutes later they went “ok, I’m gonna say it. Fuck yeah!”

All that is to say, I don’t feel like they’re coddled, and they also aren’t just going to grow up like I did in the Wild West of the 90’s internet. I saw a LOT of things I shouldn’t have, way too soon, and I also grew up in an environment where hiding that from my parents was the safest option. So yeah me and my friends swore and made off color jokes around each other because the adults would get mad, despite us learning a lot of the crude stuff from them and then Something Awful et al. In hiding it, I felt like the harder topics were absolutely not able to be broached with my parents, and looking back on it that sucks.

The way my partner and I are approaching it is to be up front and have the conversations we can at the kid’s level in a way that makes sense (eg age six: war bad, age ten: World War Two was a war about…).

There’s a middle ground between coddling and bootstraps, and it’s the kind of parenting I want to encourage others to do if they can.

[saidnooneever]

its sad ppl cant run their own servers without companies interfering. Was never an issue on games like CS. sure there was a lot of toxic ones but also rly nice ones. you cant moderate human nature. hiding it does no one any good either.

[Hugsbox]

I don't understand why you're being downvoted for this. Microsoft should not be moderating privately-run servers.

Sure, on the realms or whatever they're called or whatever servers Microsoft do operate, fair game and good idea. But if I'm running a Minecraft server on my homelab it should be my decision what behaviour is acceptable within that server.

[Telaneo]

It's a case of some people making it worse for everyone. If people behaved on the server, MS wouldn't have intervened, which then wouldn't have made 2b2t cave on a what feels like a core ideal. It may only have chipped a corner of that ideal, but it still stings.

That said, I think it is inevitable for any anarchist server that gets large enough to end up in this exact situation. MS wasn't going to let one of the biggest and most famous servers of its most popular game be filled with swastikas. Even less so when it's so popular with kids.

In a funnier world, 2b2t would have said 'no', but I have a feeling MS would escalate, and that whatever email or whatever the admins got probably implied as much, so maybe that world wouldn't be funnier after all.

[phatskat]

> That said, I think it is inevitable for any anarchist server that gets large enough to end up in this exact situation.

Agree, and I think it’s the community’s responsibility to decide what is and isn’t tolerable - even within anarchy. Forget MS, the (imo) proper response should have been the community actively choosing to deface and destroy the nazi stuff, or outright ban it from the moment it became a thing.

This topic touches on a lot of the themes in [How to Radicalize a Normie](https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g).

[8note]

doesnt everyone on 2b2t use hacked clients anyways?

[63]

I suspect the real threat wasn't the blacklisting so much as the possibility of lawsuits that could come after

[DANmode]

Hey now, they just want a very polite, predictable world for the children! /s

[lwkl]

Microsoft just wants to avoid press of kids getting groomed or seeing adult content on Minecraft servers. Stuff like this is bad for a brand that primarily targets kids as new players and could get them into hot water with regulators.

I personally believe that they probably should add parental controls to Minecraft so parents can control what if and what kind of servers kids can join. I also believe more control will put more scrutiny on Microsoft since I haven't a lot of negative press about child safety in Minecraft especially in comparison with Roblox for example.

[nonethewiser]

what? how does censoring "fuck" not make it anarchy?

[csande17]

"Anarchy" in Minecraft means no rules, and "you can't say bad words (or build things containing bad words)" is a rule.

[lostlogin]

That’s wild if true. The slippery slope starts somewhere, but I too am not convinced it starts there.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

Where else would it start if not "you're not allowed to say this word because I don't like it"? Personally, I don't see why that word being banned gets a free pass. Would this proverbial slope start with speech at all? I can't imagine why one would accept one word being banned, then stand up to decry another being banned. What word would that be? Why is it more worthy than any other word?

Historically, it doesn't seem like much of a fallacy to say speech controls become more stringent after being introduced. Indeed, historically, one could remove the word "speech" and still be correct. The control doesn't go away in most cases until power changes hands, and even then it's often meeting the new boss, same as the old boss.

[hhh]

censorship and anarchy are opposing ideals