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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry to hear about your experience. Are the forums moderated at all? All I see is people being terrible to each other. I also saw someone requesting a Brazilian Portuguese translation for a game and people calling them a fucking idiot and telling them to learn english.
It’s up to each game dev to police their forums, AFAIK.
Can they disable their steam forums if they don’t want to moderate them?
That’s a good question. I would hope so!
Yes, some are completely read only
There’s almost no moderation on Steam at all. Sometimes threads advocating violence get removed, or threads with a lot of hate get locked but it’s almost always long after the damage has been done and often times the ones doing nasty shit don’t end up getting banned.
I don’t use steam forums. But I have questions. Do the steam forums have any moderation at all? Is there a report button? Can you report comments or forum threads?
I want to know because I feel like a lot of social media has the same problem as steam forums and these tools exist on the majority of those. They rely on the moderation of fellow users.
I also question whether or not steam actually has an automod or anything like that. Or human moderators.
Please keep in mind that I don’t use the forums so I really have no idea. This is the first time I’m hearing about this, and I’m interested in knowing more.
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While I agree with you that some people are too thin skinned to handle some conversation online… Steam forums or YouTube comment sections are really the very worst of the worst.
If all you read is trash tier content on a platform even if you understand it, it still sucks and remain quite infuriating.
Basically, steam forums are mostly trolling so at this point it’s not about the sensitivity of people but rather that these platform are particularly bad.
I think it really depends on the game (genre?).
I mostly play economic strategy / tycoon games and the forums are pretty chill. The most “controversial” threads revolve around gameplay mechanics discussion or perhaps complaints about lack of updates.
I don’t think I’ve even seen anything approaching what you are describing in economic strategy game forums.
I would most definitely oppose shutting down the steam forums.
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Be careful of not putting plain hate for no reason at the same level than an overzealous minority advocating for rightful social changes.
There is some important ounce of knowledge there.
Let’s say a majority.
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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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”.
Got some links… I wanna see. I probably normally don’t venture on these forums where that happens.
For anyone who wants an example, go to the Helldiver’s 2 patch logs on the Steam Community Hub.
No matter which one.
Right wing and not understanding second degree, name a more iconic duo
Edit: Lemmy users and not understanding who people are talking about, name a more iconic duo! I’m talking about the right wing Steam users commenting on the patch notes.
Which is exactly why the US senator that said this is a left-wing Democrat, right?
Politics is so tiresome.
I’m talking about the users commenting on Helldivers patch notes. Just like with Starship Troopers, people on the right see Helldivers as inspiring when the real message behind the media is anti fascism.
Try to follow the conversation, that should have been very clear considering the comment I was replying to.
I really like that there was a whole thing about building a super-weapon where players had to complete quests or whatever to contribute to its development. Then enough players compete the quest and the weapon was completed, and it turned out to be an orbital bombardment that killed enemies and players indiscriminately.
A lot of players were pissed but it’s so aggressively in-character I can’t imagine how they didn’t see it coming.
Edit: Lemmy users and not understanding who people are talking about, name a more iconic duo!
I’m laughing with how relevant this feels to me.
Jesus, that’s a lot of people afraid of gay people.
can you link one? I’m on community hub looking for hate and can’t find it.
found someone spamming for LGBT stuff but most people just ignored it
https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/eventcomments/4635986512580739894?snr=2_9_100003_
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.
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.
was going to say the same thing, pepe is internet nonsense, but didn’t have the words.
That’s why these conversations are so cool. It helps all of us give words to some of the things we cannot express properly. Why I also enjoy reading co tributuins by others… especially if they challenge my preconceptions.
Some cases is an understatement. Ever since The_Donald and Kekistan, Pepe has become a hate symbol due to the wide adoption by far right trolls. Pepe might’ve never meant to be that, but neither was the Swastika or the roman salute, or other symbols that the Nazis adopted for themselves. The more pressing issue is that you should really not give people on Steam the benefit of the doubt of arguing in good faith. The whole gamergate movement is alive and well there.
As I said before I reject your premise about pepe and it’s use. And the swatsticka is a false equivalence.
I have seen zero substantiation of this overly broad statement except for some ADL fundametalists making claims and the alt-right whacos making claims. I consider both camps equally fringe.
Also keep telling all these people they are racist loonatics… at some point they might start to believe you are make it a self fulfilling prophecy. The alt right does the same… we co-opt the meme and tell people they are one of us… because we meme the same we must be the same… or something…
I have seen zero substantiation of this overly broad statement except for some ADL fundametalists making claims and the alt-right whacos making claims.
I don’t care for American institutions, I simply speak out of personal experience on that matter of what I experienced and seen firsthand in many places.
Also keep telling all these people they are racist loonatics… at some point they might start to believe you are make it a self fulfilling prophecy.
Ah, yes. They’re only racist because I called them racist. That’s the typical bullshit excuse racists use, claiming that the other side pushed them to become racist.
Here we see that you are also arguing in bad faith, and not just out of ignorance.
Could the first point on anecdotal evidence be that you see very specific instances. And/or confirmation bias? I’m not saying your observations are invalid… Just maybe not representative for the bulk of use cases… pepe is in reaction emojis on discord… in gifs on keyboards… and he is just silly. Does that mean all people that use them are aware of what the dogwistle to some might be… I’d argue … they are not.
And I think that in regards to calling people racist for doing innocuous things does have the potential to alienate people from your stance and that void is something the alt right gladly fills. And I think that is a danger that should be acknowledged. And I don’t mean be kind to open Nazis… I more mean “don’t ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence”.
Discord is equally full of racist gamergate incels. Not sure what keyboards you’re referring to that have any sort of gifs, but I also fail to see how any of that is prove of it not being used by those people.
And if you think crying about black NPCs in video games, or other anti-woke shit, is not being racist / hateful, then you’re just part of the same problem.
I’ve posted in elsewhere already but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g
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.
I fear it is the latter. Nuance seems to get lost over time. It’s maybe the opposite of black people in the US using the N word amongst themselves in an attempt to take it back… I don’t think that this was successful by any measure as it just caused the racist to point at it and say… see they even say it about themselves because only hoodlums (what a word) use it…
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.
Boomers saying and thinking boomer things.
I am not a boomer, but I am starting to be an old fart myself.
Guess what the older generations said about video games back then? Satanic, create violence, hyper sexualization…
And at the end of the day, we didn’t end up as violent atheists watching porn on a portable device…
(For the people wondering, this post is a joke)
ADL says steam was unsafe after stating that pepe the frog is an extremist symbol to more than double the number of cases found.
Remove the meme, and take into consideration the number of users, 0.1% of users have used some form of extreme symbol or statement. That is a lower ratio of extremism than what Lemmy has.
This is a reach for control and surveillance. Nothing else.
Fuck ADL.
Oh my god, is this you? https://discuss.online/modlog?userId=247367
No wonder you hate the ADL, they advocate for the rights of minority people you regularly undermine and attack. They’re working against you, especially because more protections means people won’t take your comments seriously and instead call you what you are, a troll, and you’ll also end up getting banned from more and more places.
@Ategon@programming.dev @erlingur@programming.dev @snowe@programming.dev Just so we’re clear, this person is on your instance, using your platform to spew hate towards minority people on the Fediverse. Just want to make sure you’re aware of this.
Yes that is me, and no I am not a transphobe. The ghazi mods banned me because I said that someone losing a visa for something they said is fucked up. I didn’t even know who the person was who lost the visa or what they had done. I have never made any transphobic statements whatsoever, and you can dive deeper through the modlog to find evidence of that because it would show.
Also, I don’t appreciate you trying to cancel me just because I don’t agree with your post. We’re adults here.
Thinly veiled transphobia is still transphobia, and even if you never said anything transphobic, your modlog shows a clear history of atrocious behavior such as downplaying death threats, engagement/promotion of bigoted ideology and just overall hostility and incivility in general. Things most server owners don’t want on their servers.
Also, I don’t appreciate you trying to cancel me just because I don’t agree with your post. We’re adults here.
No one’s canceling you sweetie, servers have rules, and when you break them or are an ass people won’t want you to be there. You’ve already been banned from quite a few of them, and the fact is a lot of your behavior indeed does go against PD’s CoC. These admins deserve to know since they likely won’t see the reports, and removals unless they’re investigating you personally.
I haven’t downplayed death threats. It was a conversation where someome falsely alleged that someone else had received death threats, which had no evidence, and the person in question never even claimed they had received any.
The rest is just me calling out misinformation about black myth wukong (the sexism allegations that turned out to be mistranslations) and about the harassment campaing against Sweet Baby Inc, bias in gaming journalism, etc.
I’ve never taken a specific political stance in any of their conversations. I just am against misinformation and censorship and call them out when they happen.
The reason I’m against what your post is about, is because ADL were extremely dishonest in their findings, and I think they’re biased or politically motivated to implement restrictions that require users to give up more private information about themselves, or not be allowed free speech.
And no, I didn’t break any rules either. Every ban I’ve faced have all been completely unjustified, which is why I’ve blocked most of the communities I’ve been banned on. It’s like being banned from hexbear and you saying that makes me deserve to get my account removed. The little information you get out of that modlog only shows the mods being biased.
And you would know about biased mods, seeing as you yourself have been banned and then called out after making a thread about it. It isn’t all black and white. I’m not interested in who was right in that post, you or the mod, but you get my point.
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Okay, Asmongold.
I think every youtuber has talked about this now, not just Asmongold.
I made that exact statement in another thread on Lemmy before his video was even out, and it is the most obvious thing to point out so I doubt I was the first to do so either. And the way you phrase it makes it sound like you disagree with the argument. Do you consider pepe to be a dog whistle for racism? Because I think not even a small percentage of conspiracy theorists seriously do that. Or maybe you just want to argue with someone?
Well, the ADL has plenty of details about how and why Pepe is used as a hate symbol, but you already said “Fuck ADL”, so I guess you’re probably not going to be receptive to their explanation.
I already know the story of Pepe and the attempt at portraying it as a hate speech symbol. Almost everyone made fun of them when they first made that statement.
And the thing about Pepe is that he is a meme template. That means he can be used in any ideological statement, greentext story, copy-pasta or anything. It is very apparent that the ADL do not understand internet culture, and that’s why no one took their statement about pepe seriously. They have no idea what they’re talking about.
So you didn’t read it, got it.
Pepe wasn’t initially a racist meme, but was misappropriated by alt-righ groups. The author tried to fight it, but the damages were done. So the addition to the statistic by ADL is valid, but to be taken with the context it is in.
For reference :
Come back when you can argue without the “but the kids” line of thinking.
I would have agreed if they replaced steam with discord.
Or twitter
Or Facebook
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.
Fortunately in the US I trust that their First Amendment has some teeth. If that were happening in most other countries, I’d be seriously worried that this senator might succeed with his evil plans.
First amendment is for public spaces, a forum owned by a private company isn’t a public space.
It’s a public space in Europe for sure. No idea why the US would think openly accessible forums are a private little backroom where rules don’t apply.
Privately owned company.
Another thing, the first amendment doesn’t protect against violent or criminal speech, like terrorist threats/advocacy, threats towards individuals (bodily harm, sexual assault, murder, etc.) things which there is no shortage of anyway on Steam and they have every right to force the platform to moderate this, on the count of it being against the law.
No it’s not a public space.
Public space would be a place like a national park or the sidewalk. These forums are owned and operated by a private company, they’re private spaces and can be moderated however the company sees fit. Same thing for Twitter or Facebook or Lemmy.
A senator has the right to tell them that they need to do a better job at moderating their platform if there’s reasons to believe they’re letting people threaten violence or incite criminal activity.
Alright that’s still a weird ruling to someone outside America though because something like a shopping mall or a parking lot are public spaces here too as well as anything that is openly visible on the internet. Which makes a lot of sense.
@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works speaks unclearly when saying “public space”—the term they are thinking of is usually “public forum.” source
The rules around what constitutes a true public forum and what the public forum doctrine even means are fuzzy, but in all cases the term refers to a space owned or created by the government.
Thus, a shopping mall, parking lot, or internet forum, being owned by a private company, is not a public forum and can’t really be defended on the basis of the public forum doctrine.
Finally, as @Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online points out, none of this matters anyway in cases of incitement to imminent lawless action like threats or terrorist speech, which the First Amendment does not protect.
See the US section, the use of the term “public space” in this conversation is acceptable as the term “public” is used in opposition to privately owned and not public in the sense that it’s open to the public like a mall is.
.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space
The government cannot usually limit one’s speech beyond what is reasonable in a public space, which is considered to be a public forum (that is, screaming epithets at passers-by can be stopped; proselytizing one’s religion probably cannot).
that’s fair, i’ll edit to say speaks unclearly rather than misspeaks. thanks for the clarification :)
Think of it like your house. You can ask people to leave if they say something you find offensive. That is not infringing on their free speech.
If the owner of a shopping mall wants to ban the word banana, they can ask anyone who says it to leave. That is also not infringing on their free speech. That’s because shopping malls are not owned and operated by the government.
A shopping mall is absolutely not a public space, and if youre shouting slurs into a megaphone, or even just harassing random shoppers with your crazy beliefs, you are definitely going to be dragged out by security. And or/have the cops come to remobe you. I hope you understand how badly you just disproved your own point.
I think you’re misunderstanding the use of the term “public” here.
A mall is a public space in the sense that people can go, but it’s not a public space in the sense that it’s not operated by the government, it’s a private space.
I’m using the term public space in the governmental sense, not in the publically accessible sense. If you use that definition of public I’m pretty sure even in your country you can get censored and kicked out of a mall and moved off its surrounding property (the parking around it), because it’s privately owned. Once on the sidewalk you’re on public property though so you can do whatever you want as long as it respects the law.
Also, talking about Europe as a whole is wrong since different countries can still have different rules on the subject.
A US Senator is part of the government.
So? He doesn’t have to protect free speech on a private platform
You don’t say?
on occasion one logs into the internet only to be confronted with the darnedest things said with such confidence
I don’t get how kids can be unsafe because of other kids being dumbasses. I guarantee the majority of the hate symbolism and speech on Steam’s forums, is from people under the age of 18. Kids are fucking little shits. Especially when they have no supervision, like on the Steam forums.
Teenage nazis when not moderated or taught otherwise will grow up to be adult Nazis, and also have the very real possibility of spreading their hate to others when not moderated. It may seem trivial like something to hand-wave away, but many of these people complaining about woke games will grow up to be hateful republicans like the ones currently trying to take our rights away. It’s not a laughing matter.
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Never heard of kids committing suicide due to being bullied?
Good point.
Never forget, Steam allowed Alex Jones to publish his “anti-woke” video game there. And it was as disgusting as you can imagine.
Worst part is, it seems like it’s still up on the platform for purchase. They legitimately do not care. It’s funny though that they decided to ban one developer and their games because the person was being openly transphobic, so it seems like they’re trying to make people think they care, despite not actually caring.
Sort of like every business and corporation that has a booth at Pridefest. Many of them are hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, yet they’re at Pridefest just for the PR.
Yeah, sort of. Though they’re a bit more honest since they don’t even pretend to care about us. Probably hoping that if they stay quiet long enough the problem will go away and won’t hurt them.
