Bluesky Post (this was also posted on twitter)
I was hoping to find a statement from the aggressor, but it seems to be too early.
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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They are probably referring to this: https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/millions-examples-extremist-and-antisemitic-content-found-steam-new and this: https://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/
It's it anti video games to point out something that is actually happening? Just because you love the company doesn't mean that any bad news is an attack against the industry. Valve doesn't want to moderate their forums, it was bound to happen.
I am a big GOG enjoyer myself, but when I need to use steam for anything, I have never encountered such content. Perhaps there is such content in private or otherwise not very visible spaces (such as user profiles), where they will not get reported, but that is true for any site with user content. I call BS on this being an issue.
Really? Because in my experience you have to wade through racist, homo- and transphobic, and misogynistic shit the second you foolishly open the discussions page on any game that features black or brown, LGBTQIA, and/or female characters.
Much of that is just bots and if you spend any measurable time on the internet you start to ignore stuff with variable capital letter words and emoji spam so it's not outside of the realm of possibility that the person you're responding to, doesn't see that stuff. I don't really either. My brain auto filters paragraphs of anti woke/racist rhetoric like pop-up ads.
You've never seen a Pepe meme on Steam? I'm not kidding there either - if you dig into that ADL link and follow it to the research, they have a list of top extremist and hateful symbols on Steam and the swastika is number 2 at 9 percent of detected symbols. #1, representing something like 55% of extremist and hateful symbols their automated detector found on Steam was Pepe.
If you dig into their research, it's mostly private user groups and profiles. Game discussion pages are moderated by their respective devs or whoever the devs appoint but user groups are moderated by their owner/appointees and user profile pages aren't really moderated at all unless you're doing something actually illegal in the US.
So unless you go looking at the user profile pages of white supremacists, or go searching for white supremacist user groups you won't run into much of it.
Yeah, that is my point. How can people be radicalized by something they don't see?
Also, as non American, I find it mental that pepe memes are considered hate symbols now.
If you have Nazis in the place they just wait until they see someone expressing opinions that's bordering on their side of the political fence and they initiate contact to try and comfort them in their thoughts.
How to radicalize a normie: https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g
So, any platform that offers unmoderated DMs should be banned? Or how exactly do you want to solve extremists reaching out in private?
Who said anything about DMs? Make extremists feel unwelcome (contrary to what's going on on Steam's forums) and they'll leave, you don't need to scan DMs, you just need to delete extremist content instead of leaving it up like is happening now.
Wait, so your point is that we don't need to moderate DMs (and by proxy other spaces that users don't see), just make them feel unwelcome in the public ones.
And earlier in the thread, when I ask where the extremist content is, I and Schadrach agreed it is mostly places people don't see. Which you didn't object to.
So isn't it job well done, Steam is as is should be? Or what is the issue here?
The implication is that someone is going to come off as a likely mark and for example get invited into a private user group with people "joking" with things like the Happy Merchant or being ridiculously over the top in a way that's hard to take seriously to ease people in to taking white supremacist ideas seriously.
Ever seen the South Park episode about the Passion of the Christ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_the_Jew)? The idea is basically that that is constantly happening online anywhere it's not sufficiently prevented.
Ok, cool. How should Steam prevent it?
Edit: Or more relevantly, how is having unmoderated usually unseen public spaces worse for this than having unmoderated private spaces? Is the issue only that steam does not hide what is happening unlike other websites?
Pepe isn't hate speech. It was re-co opted by the creator and I often see it in queer friendly gamer spaces. If your threshold for hate speech is a cartoon frog, you may need to recalibrate. Most people do not see it as such and do not use it as such.
The ADL still does for whatever reason
They aren't the sole authority on the topic.
Clearly, but the articles floating around recently do treat them as the sole authority.
Then ignore those articles.
The ADL considers Pepe a hate symbol, which I agree with is daft but that's kind of key to their data and they are considered experts in the field by most. They scanned Steam with some automated tool looking for hate symbol images, came up with like a million hate symbols detected. If something contained more than one detected hate symbol, it got counted as however many hate symbols the tool detected (so for example Pepe saluting a swastika would count as a Pepe and a swastika).
Almost 55% of those were Pepe. The next highest was the swastika at 9%. A literal majority of hate symbols they detected with that tool were Pepes, at more than 5 times the rate of the next most common symbol. It's literally included to make the problem bigger in the hopes that most readers either won't look that deep or won't know what Pepe is.
EDIT: Another fun one is if you go look at their hate symbol index, about an eighth of two digit numbers are either hate symbols or part of a hate symbol.
Well, Pepe is a popular meme format among gamers, so it makes sense that the hateful subset of gamers would also use it. That doesn't mean Pepe is hate speech, it just means people use it for hate speech.
Just because the creator doesn't want it used as a hate symbol doesn't automatically mean it isn't used as one, and next to chan-level garbage is the grand total of where I've seen Pepe.
Sounds like you need to hang out on better parts of the internet.
Uh huh, uh huh.
Meanwhile, here on earth, Matt Furie's own lawyer brought up the fact that, on Steam, Pepe emotes were being used "in connection with hateful speech."
Tell me something, has that changed, or is it possible, just maybe, that the Steam Community is one of those places I was referring to?
So now tell me this, when you claim that it's ridiculous to treat Pepe use as a sign of hate on Steam Community, are you ignoring the active, proven and admitted use alongside hate speech, or are you trying to downplay it?
Matt Furie protecting his copyright as part of the re-co opt efforts? That doesn't conflict with what I have said.
Unlike the swastika, someone owns the copyright and can make moves to reclaim it.
I love it when people respond to exactly one line and ignore the rest of my comment. Totally not a bad faith argument at all. Totally not exactly the same shit Reddit bigots always did.
Gish gallops don't work online. I only responded to the part with substance. The rest is subjective to personal perspective.
People are shitty online? Yeah, so shit. May want to focus on those private facebook groups or twitter first. Steam users can't maintain a boycott, but lets focus on that while facebook and twitter were involved with January 6th.
So it's no longer "Pepe isn't used by extremists on Steam," it's now "Pepe being used by extremists on Steam doesn't matter," huh?
Goalpost status: moved.
How does that saying go?
All you need to do is join a Rust server and then look at some profiles.
Or don't. Rust is famously toxic, so why do that to yourself?
If you only check the forums for technical questions then you'll dodge it, if you look at the non tech sections for certain games (with diversity or ambiguous message like Hell Divers) then it's something else.
Care to provide a link? I just skimmed Helldivers 2 discussions a bit and found nothing extremist.
Edit: The worst I found so far is this, which is pretty dumb but not really at the level of "dangerous", or where it obviously needed to be removed.
Devs and publishers are mods of their forums, if it's too much for them they can add community mods or lock their forums (like some do).
This is what manufacturing consent looks like. This increasing barrage of news about a topic, most of which is based on nuggets of truth but stretched so thin you can see your hand on the other side. The idea is to make you believe something needs to be done just with the sheer volume of time spent talking about something.
The reality is that the ADL is a Zionist front that is full of shit even on their best day, and they want control over Valve the same way they have the CEOs or owners of Reddit, Meta, and even smaller players like Bumble under their thumb. You watch, they will pressure the government to act and then when the squeeze is coming, offer Valve an easy out by joining their special advisory board on tech.
So instead we should let racists, misogynists and lgbtphobes make people believe that something needs to be done to protect white men from oppression?
What are you even talking about?
You're saying that calling for something to be done on one side (censorship) is manufacturing consent, well so is letting extremists spread their message that something needs to be done about white men oppression.
No I'm saying the entire premise is bullshit. You're talking about a conversation that isn't even taking place and I'm saying the ADL is trying to convince you it is because it benefits them if you believe it.
What? The conversation has been about Valve being criticized for the lack of moderation on their forums for a while now, keep up buddy! You're saying that it's a bad thing to push for censorship, I'm saying it's just as bad to let some fucking Nazi spread hate on their forums.
Oh yeah those reports where they count pepe the frog as extremists content.