1mo ago

Steam is 'an unsafe place for teens and young adults': US senator warns Gabe Newell of 'more intense scrutiny' from the government if Valve doesn't take action against extremist content

www.pcgamer.com Steam is 'an unsafe place for teens and young adults': US senator warns Gabe Newell of 'more intense scrutiny' from the government if Valve doesn't take action against extremist content

US Senator Mark Warner comes less than a week after an ADL report accusing Steam of "normalizing hate and extremism in the gaming community."

Games @sh.itjust.works

www.pcgamer.com /software/platforms/steam-is-an-unsafe-place-for-teens-and-young-adults-us-senator-warns-gabe-newell-of-more-intense-scrutiny-from-the-government-if-valve-doesnt-take-action-against-extremist-content/

308 200

113 comments

Civilization as we know it is an unsafe space for most humans
- Damn you, Sid Meier!!!
  
  It is dangerous indeed, I have lost hours without noticing

Not to excuse any hate speech of any kind, but looking around at social media and the effect it has especially on young people and saying "steam forums are the problem" seems like missing the forest for the trees
- who said steam forums are “the” problem?
  
  Me. There's just an irony in pointing out the failure of Steam to effectively moderate (true) when Twitter has a much larger footprint, seems to be actively encouraging hate speech not just tolerating it, and is being rewardered for such behavior. The article points this out too:
  There's an aspect of irony to the complaint: Elon Musk turned Twitter into a haven for racism and far-right rhetoric, after all, and he's being rewarded with a high seat in the incoming US government.
  Senators only have so much time to pick and choose which issues to raise awareness about, so Steam seems like a weird fight to pick given the wider landscape ¯(ツ)_/¯ . Could just be there's a much higher chance of getting an actual change from Steam than a larger social media platform.

Worth mentioning that the main US senator supporting this, Mark Warner, received substantial donations from Disney, which also poured 1.5 billion (with a B) dollars into Epic Games.
Wouldn't be surprised if some bigwig at Disney pushed for this investigation, too, especially given how fucking flimsy the results were (55% of all hate symbols were fucking pepe the frog).
- I feel like the kinds of people who assume every pepe is a symbol of hate are very similar to the kinds of people who assume that all metalheads are satanic. Some are, and some aren't. It's an overly reductionist view.
  Man, I love frogs. The alt-right can't take Pepe away from us.
  
  Not only that, even the ADL try as they might can't really make that claim with their chests. They qualify that pepe edits exist that have antisemitic connotations, which is true of literally any of the 4chan template meme characters.
  There's nazi trollfaces, nazi wojacks, nazi chads, you can't use that as a reason to call pepe an antisemitic dogwhistle.

twitter, facebook, instagram, etc are not a problem. steam is 👍
- I know they're not entirely related but it's the first thing that came to mind so I had to make it.

I mean yeah, no shit. The steam forums could be removed at no loss to the human race, in fact it'd remove a non-negligible percentage of all really shitty talk on the internet if they deleted everything entirely.
- The steam forums are fucking cancer. I was looking for info about a bug I was having with a newly released game. I instead saw an entire thread about how the game is woke and you shouldn't buy it. The game has an implied lesbian character. Who gives a fuck? The game was pretty good btw.
  
  I've seen whole threads in game forums dedicated to Nazism, and I myself have been called a "groomer" and the t-slur because people knew be as a boy before I transitioned. Legitimately horrible place, they absolutely need to take more action against this.
  
  I think it really depends on the game (genre?).
  I mostly play economic strategy / tycoon games and the forums are pretty chill. The most "controversial" threads revolve around gameplay mechanics discussion or perhaps complaints about lack of updates.
  I don't think I've even seen anything approaching what you are describing in economic strategy game forums.
  I would most definitely oppose shutting down the steam forums.
- There is some important ounce of knowledge there.
  Let's say a majority.

For anyone who wants an example, go to the Helldiver's 2 patch logs on the Steam Community Hub.
No matter which one.
- Right wing and not understanding second degree, name a more iconic duo
  Edit: Lemmy users and not understanding who people are talking about, name a more iconic duo! I'm talking about the right wing Steam users commenting on the patch notes.
  
  Edit: Lemmy users and not understanding who people are talking about, name a more iconic duo!
  I'm laughing with how relevant this feels to me.
  
  Which is exactly why the US senator that said this is a left-wing Democrat, right?
  Politics is so tiresome.
- Jesus, that's a lot of people afraid of gay people.
- can you link one? I'm on community hub looking for hate and can't find it.
  found someone spamming for LGBT stuff but most people just ignored it
  https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/eventcomments/4635986512580739894?snr=2_9_100003_

Steam forums and groups have become a place to organize far right raiding groups that have harassing people and bullying women and minorities or straight up nazism glorification as their sole objective and Steam just does not care.
- Of course they don't, companies only care when Pepsi Co and P&G take away their ad revenue for serving extremist content and catering to extremists. Valve has no ad revenue and is the only real PC game store on the block, so no one can make them "care" the way YouTube and Twitch, and other platforms are made to "care".
- Got some links.. I wanna see. I probably normally don't venture on these forums where that happens.

If you follow the links, they refer to copy pasta's of hatefull stuff including swastikas but no breakdown of what is counted, the use of the happy merchant (a meme with an antisemitic origin used to convey greed) and the use of pepe the frog in profile pics (pepe is a symbol of hate according to the ADL).
The issue I have with the whole here is that I don't subscribe to the premise on which the analysis is based.
IF you assume pepe is a hate symbol, then each case it is used is an expression of hate and furtherance of that hate. I however reject the premise that pepe is a symbol of hate.
The use of the happy merchant is a bit more of a problem, because I see the antisemitic message it has. However I also see a lot of stupid people that don't.. and have seen the image used (probably in antisemitic context referring to greed) but people associate it with greed primarily.. so this one is an issue, I think I refuse part of the premise, namely that the antisemitism part is a dominant factor when the image is used.
These are the 2 main examples, a lot more in the report that have similar caveats.
- I love that people are still doubling down on people pepe means Nazi. ADL big ol swing and a miss.
  
  Pepe to me seems like the opposite of the Confederate flag.
  Pepe is an internet meme that is in some cases used by racist and hateful people to carry their message, but the primary function is internet nonsense.
  The Confederate flag is a symbol or hate and oppression that in some situations is used to express country & westerns ideals of freedom and roaming the country with not a care in the world.. without the racist subtext... however you cannot deny the basis of its use and thus should not use it.
  
  Iirc, when the ADL put out their guidance on Pepe, it was during the 2016 election when Pepe was being actively coopted by alt-rightera and neo Nazis. One of those "take something innocuous and poison it by using it as a pseudo secret signal to other bigots.
  I vaguely recall them saying that Pepe was a hate symbol only insofar as it was being used for that purpose. I wonder if that changed, or if this investigation is ignoring that nuance to hamfist a "hate speech" argument.
  
  If you look at the same section of the ADL website that Pepe is in, you'll see the first page is just full of simple numbers (symbols are listed alphabetically). I don't see anyone doing a similar study to the one posted here, but with "100%" instead of Pepe.
  Also, side note, ADL lists "ACAB" as a hate symbol because some skinheads are racist and use the phrase. They have a similar disclaimer in the Pepe listing that context is an important consideration.

Boomers saying and thinking boomer things.
- I am not a boomer, but I am starting to be an old fart myself.
  Guess what the older generations said about video games back then? Satanic, create violence, hyper sexualization...
  And at the end of the day, we didn't end up as violent atheists watching porn on a portable device...
  (For the people wondering, this post is a joke)

Come back when you can argue without the "but the kids" line of thinking.

Crunchyroll removed their comments section recently. They said it was because of all the hateful comments for one show. Sony just didn't want to deal with it, so gone, which is a real shame. If the comments are not part of the product being sold, then they will end up getting dropped if abused.

I would have agreed if they replaced steam with discord.
- Or twitter
  Or Facebook
- To be fair, Discord has been feeling the heat for a while, on multiple fronts and for multiple reasons. Not the least of which was a dumbass leaking classified information to his teenage buddies.

I mean, if your gonna go for the worse of it all, 4chan is right there.
- Valve hasn't openly stated they are like 4chan though, they may correct it if pressured since it wasn't their explicit goal to be a right-wing safe haven. Maybe it is but they haven't been open about it yet. 4chan is a lost cause when it comes to this, same as kiwifarms. They do not care and will not budge. Valve might since they need Governemnts not to ban them or publishers not to pull out else they lose money.
- And 4chan has already been the recipient of government scrutiny, including a lawsuit attempting to shut them down.

“...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Stop having fun you god damn nazis.

Never forget, Steam allowed Alex Jones to publish his "anti-woke" video game there. And it was as disgusting as you can imagine.
- Worst part is, it seems like it's still up on the platform for purchase. They legitimately do not care. It's funny though that they decided to ban one developer and their games because the person was being openly transphobic, so it seems like they're trying to make people think they care, despite not actually caring.
  
  Sort of like every business and corporation that has a booth at Pridefest. Many of them are hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, yet they're at Pridefest just for the PR.

If there's one thing I hate about Steam, it's their lack of moderation. There's Nazi shit everywhere, every game who's using "woke" elements like neutral terms for body types or giving people the choice of their pronoun, or having gay characters, or people of color, or women in positions of power, etc. etc. gets the inevitable flood of constant woke crying threads, comments & review bombing. There's many people who glorify the RuZZian invasion of Ukraine as well through their profiles, while I could not even have a freaking avatar depicting a person dangling from a tree, which was graphically maybe a small step ahead of a stick figure from a hangman game. And even outside of politics it's full of trolls and clown farmers (they should really remove that one anyway). You ask for technical help, and everyone tells you basic shit or attacks you. It's a cesspool.
- Agreed, they really need to step it up when it comes to moderation of this type of content, including giving out permanent bans to people who make threats or harass others. Most people get a slap on the wrist if anything. I was literally harassed the last time I logged in to steam because the people I knew before knew me as a boy and I come back as a girl (I'm transfem) and they really didn't like that, ended up calling me a groomer and the t-slur. Awful experience, even though I reported it Valve did absolutely nothing about it.

Authority fetishists really turning the screws on Middle Earth eh

Young adults. What we gonna write laws to protect young adults like goddamn children now? Fuck off.
- Wait.. what's wrong with laws that protect it's citizens? This seems like pretty standard practice.
  I'm not saying that I agree with this particular take but having laws in general isn't a bad thing IMO.

I don't get how kids can be unsafe because of other kids being dumbasses. I guarantee the majority of the hate symbolism and speech on Steam's forums, is from people under the age of 18. Kids are fucking little shits. Especially when they have no supervision, like on the Steam forums.
- Never heard of kids committing suicide due to being bullied?
  
  Good point.
- Teenage nazis when not moderated or taught otherwise will grow up to be adult Nazis, and also have the very real possibility of spreading their hate to others when not moderated. It may seem trivial like something to hand-wave away, but many of these people complaining about woke games will grow up to be hateful republicans like the ones currently trying to take our rights away. It's not a laughing matter.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g

ADL says steam was unsafe after stating that pepe the frog is an extremist symbol to more than double the number of cases found.
Remove the meme, and take into consideration the number of users, 0.1% of users have used some form of extreme symbol or statement. That is a lower ratio of extremism than what Lemmy has.
This is a reach for control and surveillance. Nothing else.
Fuck ADL.
- Okay, Asmongold.
  
  I think every youtuber has talked about this now, not just Asmongold.
- Oh my god, is this you? https://discuss.online/modlog?userId=247367
  No wonder you hate the ADL, they advocate for the rights of minority people you regularly undermine and attack. They're working against you, especially because more protections means people won't take your comments seriously and instead call you what you are, a troll, and you'll also end up getting banned from more and more places.
  @Ategon@programming.dev @erlingur@programming.dev @snowe@programming.dev Just so we're clear, this person is on your instance, using your platform to spew hate towards minority people on the Fediverse. Just want to make sure you're aware of this.
  
  Yes that is me, and no I am not a transphobe. The ghazi mods banned me because I said that someone losing a visa for something they said is fucked up. I didn't even know who the person was who lost the visa or what they had done. I have never made any transphobic statements whatsoever, and you can dive deeper through the modlog to find evidence of that because it would show.
  Also, I don't appreciate you trying to cancel me just because I don't agree with your post. We're adults here.
- Pepe wasn't initially a racist meme, but was misappropriated by alt-righ groups. The author tried to fight it, but the damages were done. So the addition to the statistic by ADL is valid, but to be taken with the context it is in.
  For reference :
  https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-the-frog

Fortunately in the US I trust that their First Amendment has some teeth. If that were happening in most other countries, I'd be seriously worried that this senator might succeed with his evil plans.
- First amendment is for public spaces, a forum owned by a private company isn't a public space.
  
  A US Senator is part of the government.
  
  It's a public space in Europe for sure. No idea why the US would think openly accessible forums are a private little backroom where rules don't apply.
- on occasion one logs into the internet only to be confronted with the darnedest things said with such confidence

I'm surprised European governments haven't demanded better enforcement of laws when it comes to hate speech on Steam. Instead they regulate stuff like lootboxes or spicy content because they think those are more harmful than fascism apparently.
- The latter two are a much more broad and prevalent issue in the gaming industry overall. No need for the whataboutism.
  
  That's not whataboutism. Whataboutism is when someone brings something unrelated up to make the main topic look less important and that's not happening here.
- I suspect they haven't heard about it as much lately. I bet if German politicians heard about the Swastika and Nazi stuff they would be on it very quickly. Nazi content like that is a big No-No in Germany.

113 comments