this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Steam accused of 'normalizing hate and extremism in the gaming community' in new ADL report (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 16 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Pepe the frog and swastikas are the most common extremist symbols found on Steam, according to the report, respectively representing 54.6% and 9.1% of detected symbols.

So more than half of the "extremist" symbols are a meme that a tiny fraction of conspiracy theorists think is a dogwhistle for racism.

Game mods are also touched on in the report, which claims to have found hundreds of mods for games, most notably Garry's Mod, "that specifically reference mass shootings."

Who even thinks this is a big deal? This screams boomers being upset about violent video games all over again.

Are you sure they're not just pissy about the DEI Detected community and want to force steam to shut it down?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Who even thinks this is a big deal? This screams boomers being upset about violent video games all over again.

While its not a big deal, at least for Gmod specifically, they really could use some further moderation. I've seen some pretty reprehensible stuff there. The most recent example that comes to mind is "Burning Ukrainian Soldiers" on the front page (complete with combat footage to compare against and racist description of Ukranians), but that sort of thing is not rare at all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I had some other thing I was gonna say but you blindsided me there; why the living hell would it be bad for Steam to shut down a community that makes list of games featuring diverse characters so they can boycott them and spread ignorant hate about their developers? Yadayadayadablahblah the first amendment guarantees the right to freedom of speech. But Valve aren't an arm of the federal government, so it truly would be fine for them to nuke these groups. High past time even.

Fuck the ADLs censoring of Palestinians but I gotta ask, what is even the relation here?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Because both the Palestinian communities and anti-DEI communities have legitimate core messages, and both have members that spread hate.

If you're willing to let any community get taken down despite them breaking no rules or laws, accept that it also can happen to the communities you support. It is as simple as that.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Whenever I see a pepe, I assume it's someone who at least doesn't mind being confused for a terrible fucking person.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Where did you go for it to be associated with terrible people? It is one of the most used twitch emojis.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Ah, that bastion of social responsibility. If the only thing I know about someone is that they are on Twitch, I'm probably not motivated to learn a second thing about them. One can say Twitch > 4chan > Stormfront, but it's a pretty shallow gradient.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Anti-Defamation League, a US organization that aims to combat antisemitism and support Israel

I can tell they are trying to shut down more Pro-Palestine community again

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago

Many of us have been saying the ADL is shit for decades now.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

The Steam Community is a cesspool, and a good part of that is owed to the lack of any centralized moderation. Game communities are moderated by publishers, developers, or their chosen volunteers or employees. If a game is forgotten, its community becomes totally unmoderated, and there's nothing like Reddit's auto-bans to prune these abandoned communities.

Also... pretty sure they just let community moderators do anything they want as long as it's not outright illegal.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 15 hours ago

I understand Steam not wanting to moderate the absolute flood of user-created content of its thousands of games (on their own), but then, it probably shouldn't force community forums on every single one of its games when the developers can't or don't want to moderate them.

(Also, the ADL doesn't recognize the ongoing genocide of Palestinians so maybe we should just ignore what they think.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 16 hours ago

It's the same in most gaming related communities, as it's largely the same people that inhabit them.