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.
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.
There’s been an aggressive push against gaming recently. Check all the recent Steam news.
I haven’t seen anything like that. What steam news specifically are you referring to?
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.
As I said, I have never seen anything I would consider extremist myself. Though from your reply, I get the feeling the issue could be an unreasonably broad definition of extremist content on your side. That or I just happen to not visit games with such discussions.
I guess it depends on the game, extremely so. Two main factors I can think of: Whether or not the game has been picked up as an object of hate by the “anti-woke” content mill, as well as the average age of people who play the game.
Just for kicks I skimmed the BG3 forum and indeed there’s this recent post. Apparently unwanted exposure to Gale’s gayness can be solved by not interacting with Gale, who would have thought and that’s a perfectly valid solution for OP, but some users in the thread are clearly out for blood. Not getting terribly much resonance, though.
EDIT: Apparently OP has changed the “accepted answer” to one of the worst comments in the thread. SMH. Comments proceed to tell OP they’re confusing friendship scenes for romance ones.
And that’s like one thread in pages upon pages of threads. People predictably talk about general gameplay stuff (The Gale thread can actually be considered a gameplay question), mechanics, bugs, the usual.
Bonus: A thread on Musk wanting to buy Hasbro for D&D. Now there’s plenty of stuff D&D players have to say and criticise about Hasbro, them having clear language about the misogyny etc. in the first edition is not among it. Licensing terms are a thing which can get the community riled up, but the “backlash” against inclusivity is, as usual, manufactured, and from what I see the thread is mostly Musk bashing. Thinking of, Shaun recently published a video on the manufactured outrage around Stellar Blade.
Oh, the average age thing. Yeah don’t go to the LoL forums or whatever though without checking I expect them to be full of talk about the current meta. And people unironically using “gay” as an insult in <currentyear>, presumably because they’re too young to even know their sexual orientation.
Overall trying to portray steam like some kind of second kiwifarms falls flat on its face for a very simple reason: Even if (and I don’t think that’s the case) there would be no moderation at all, the majority of users on steam will be talking game mechanics, about bugs, because they’re there to play a game and the reason you find yourself interacting on those forums is because you have something to say, or ask, about the game. That kind of talk will always drown out the angry goblins.
I guess you wouldn’t see it as extremist, either, if you were one of the peeps getting fussy about a black woman in a video game…
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?
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.
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.
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).
And ultimately they’re still Valve’s responsibility. If you provide a platform, you’re responsible for what people do on it.
Actually this is the purpose of section 230, to remove the responsibility of the provider in terms of content. The steam discussion forums would be a form of social media and therefore steam as a whole under at least US law would not be responsible for the content that’s posted on it.
Please note that this doesn’t mean that they can’t moderate their forums, section 230 does allow the owner of the platform to dictate what they want on the forums as long as they’re acting in good faith.
In my opinion section 230 is healthy for an environment, because it’s primary purpose was to prevent an individual from being able to sue the company as a whole for Content that someone else posted, which in my opinion is fair. If someone produced libel against someone, that’s something they need to handle with the person who posted it. It doesn’t make logical sense for the person to go after the platform that held the content as they wern’t involved in that process.
Valve also does business outside the US. American law doesn’t clear them of their legal obligations in other countries. And besides, legality and morality are not always the same. Providing a platform for hate speech is supporting hate speech, and as far as I’m concerned that’s unethical regardless of whether or not it’s legal.
I don’t think it’s moral to be able to sue a third party for something that another user did though. Like I definitely agree they should have some sort of reporting system active which they do, but it’s not ethical to sue someone who isn’t involved for Content that someone else did.
Let’s look at it from a hypothetical scenario. you’ve decided you want to run a lemonade stand, you become popular everyone in the neighborhood comes to visit your stand. Your town unfortunately has a quite racist sector, knowing this you have put up signs saying please be respectful , we hold the right to refuse service to anyone, and not surprisingly this group decided to come visit as well, a fight breaks out between that section and another group that’s attending your stand. People are hospitalized, instead of them suing the people who caused the injury they’re now suing your lemonade stand because you never stopped people of that group from showing up in the first place.
This is comparable, steam provided the environment to allow for the posting(the stand), they provided a terms of service / guideline of usage for the platform(the signs), they provided a reporting system to be able to report the misconduct to get people banned by both forum mods and official mods(the right to refuse service), people ignored the last two systems and did it anyway, and now people are saying that they should be responsible for people ignoring the rules and doing it anyway.
Ethically, they have done enough that the system practical and should work, if people use the tools that are provided
Morally they are not responsible at all since they’re in independent third party they only provide the infrastructure and they have put practices in place to help avoid a situation like that happening, while also abiding by US federal laws which is where steam is HQ’d
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.
Oh yeah those reports where they count pepe the frog as extremists content.