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
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."
From the article
"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."
So is Texas. What are we gonna do about that?
Right. Nothing. Politicians are done governing and simply want to rule now.
So you sent the same letter to Musk, right? Right?
There are neonazis grooming children in both steam forums and texas we can walk and chew gum
The feds never actually crack down on neonazis though
What are they referring to here exactly? Multiplayer games? Steam friends' list? I have never at any point ever experienced extremist content on Steam; I use it as a convenient location to buy games. It's a retail shop, not a social media site.
Click on the community tab. There’s forums and shit there. There’s a shit ton of blatant racist shit, including people using highly offensive slurs and ascii art swastikas and stuff. It’s fucking disgusting.
I don’t even touch steam community because all it is is swastikas and Nazis. You’d think it’s the Odysee or Rumble or Twitter of gaming at that point
I've never clicked on this, and I have no desire to do so. Why does Steam even have a community tab? When I go on Amazon and purchase a spool of Cat6, I'm not in the slightest bit interested in Amazon community about networking. I just want the shit I paid for in a semi-reasonable time. If I buy a game on Steam, I just want to receive and enjoy the product I paid for. If I want to talk about it with other people, I'll come to Lemmy.
I recently started playing some games and I was called slurs in the in-game chat, also by people on my friends list because I'm a girl now, and they knew me as a boy (Yay, transphobia /s).
Extremist as defined by who? Valve lets the customer decide what is too extreme for them, which is how it should be.
I've seen people outright call for the extermination of minorities in forums. I think everybody can agree that's pretty heinous. I don't get to decide if that's present or not except that I can report it. It's not just things that can be misinterpreted, there's a real problem.
As defined by Anti Defamation League, an Israeli lobbying group, based on their study on the use of language and emoji around steam forum, and the highest offensive emoji used count is...pepe.
Second is swastika.
Here's the infograph:
Sad that pepe is still on these lists after all the efforts to take it back.
Once you get into the realm of terrorism, threatening real world harm, calling for violence against minorities. It's no longer subjective, it's considered extremist and dangerous. In other words, your rights end where others' begin.
Extremist as defined by who? Valve lets the customer decide what is too extreme for them, which is how it should be.
I think is best also in your interest, as consumer (and human being, if you aren't Zuckeberg or Bezos) if companies are called accountable for the crap they spread just to make investor happy.
You may like Valve for their way of business, but the law doesn't work per persona: what it allow is a allowed to everyone (generally and depending if you're in a theocracy, oligarcy etc.)
No the way the law works is that distributors are not liable for what happens on their platforms by default, otherwise literally any kind of social media would be illegal/impossible unless we hired 6 billion people to moderate the other 2 billion. However if you curate the content you show to the user then you do become liable for that content (again this is the law not just my opinion).
Valve as far as I know do not curate forum content, its just there and you can sort it by date. Facebook and Twitter on the other hand do have algorithms curating their content which does make them legally responsible for that content, especially since their algorithms seem to actually promote extremist content.
"human being, ...aren't Zuckerberg or Bezos" These are the same.
That doesn't answer the question. This isn't a hypothetical. Some organization or person has called Steam extremist. Who? What short sighted individual can't understand a market place? I need to know so I can more efficiently mock then for what is obviously politics and business being mad at success.
Silence, Fed.
EDIT The ADL is a joke. Since they called Pepe a hate symbol. It's just an meme.
Good thing memes can't be racist and dog whistles don't exist /s. Not every instance of pepe is, and the ADL admits that (whether or not you agree with them), but the original creator has sued organizations for using it as a hate symbol. Sorry the world is more complex than you think it is.