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
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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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.
yeah I think it's fair to argue there are bigger problems that steam.
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.
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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
Those hours were safely recalled from your memory by the government Bureau of Memetics to protect your peace of mind. Thank you for your understanding.
I mean, if your gonna go for the worse of it all, 4chan is right there.
And 4chan has already been the recipient of government scrutiny, including a lawsuit attempting to shut them down.
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.
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.
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“...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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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For anyone who wants an example, go to the Helldiver's 2 patch logs on the Steam Community Hub.
No matter which one.
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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".
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Come back when you can argue without the "but the kids" line of thinking.
I would have agreed if they replaced steam with discord.
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.
Or twitter
Or Facebook
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.
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