On BoardGameGeek two games this month, Codenames: Back to Hogwarts and Ace of Spades, have led to heated culture war discussions. And the comment moderation on that seemed to me politically biased, and sometimes unfair. On the one side one poster just remarked that he would like not to get embroiled into politics when reading a board game forum, for which he received very hateful comments demonstrating Godwin's Law, claiming that not supporting the boycott against the game was equivalent of not speaking out against Hitler in the Third Reich. With some very nasty personal attacks in that thread, it would have been something I would have moderated. On the other side, somebody made a thread which probably was meant as a joke, or a test how unpolitical you were still allowed to be on BGG. The thread simply contained short messages like "I am looking forward to this game", with no political messages and no attacks on anyone. Maybe the thread was secretly meant to "own the libs", but it formally complied with all forum rules. But with the automatically generated Hotness list on BGG pushing Codenames: Back to Hogwarts to the top, some people really couldn't stand any positive reporting about the game, so the thread saying nice things about it was deleted by moderators, and then they tried to hide that moderation action. It looked to me like a trap, with some moderator with a political bias falling right into it.

On the other political side, censorship efforts this months were mostly directed against "adult" content. Thousands of adult titles disappeared from Steam and Itch.io, apparently after a conservative group pressured payment processing companies like Mastercard, which then threatened the game platforms. At the same time, the UK Online Safety act came into force, meant to enforce age verification for adult content. That was rife with problems, from the ridiculous ways to bypass age verification by using an image from Death Stranding's photo mode, to protests that online privacy of the system wasn't guaranteed, as foreign companies that weren't subject to UK data protection laws had been hired to run the system.

What bothered me about all these stories was not that both left and right are trying to censor things they disagree with in the gaming sphere. What bothered me was the frequent use of emotional arguments designed to then censor any rational discussion of the issues. In the adult content censorship case the Think of the children argument was repeatedly used. While on the BGG forums I read the astounding argument that comments arguing against the boycott were not allowed, because they by definition constituted hate speech. In summary, if you argue against censorship from the right, you are a supporter of child rapists, while if you argue against censorship from the left, you are Nazi spouting hate speech. No debate, no compromise, no moderate position is allowed. Pointing out that your local toy store has a lot of Harry Potter merchandise is morally equivalent of going out at night with a baseball bat to kill trans people. Pointing out that the most harmless adult game removed from Steam was pretty tame and didn't involve children at all is morally equivalent of being Jeffrey Epstein.

The fake moral equivalence arguments to stifle debate are now increasingly used to justify comment "moderation" on various internet platforms. That isn't "moderation", it is downright suppression of any counter arguments. People like me, who are centrists, open to listen to arguments from both sides, and trying to find compromises, end up being persecuted by both left and right extremists. But if we can't solve conflicts by debate, what other option is there?