Steam accused of 'normalizing hate and extremism in the gaming community' in new ADL report

The Anti-Defamation League, a US organization that aims to combat antisemitism and support Israel, published a report. report He claims that Steam is “rife with extremism and antisemitism” and accuses Valve of allowing the spread of hateful and extremist material with “an extremely permissive approach to content policy.”

The ADL said its report was based on what it described as an “unprecedented, platform-wide” analysis of publicly available data on Steam, including more than 458 million user profiles, 152 million profile and user group avatar images, and 610 million user comments. The ADL’s Center on Extremism found “millions of examples of extremist and hateful content, including overt hate symbols like sonnenrads and ‘happy merchants,’ as well as copypastas (blocks of text copied and pasted to create images or long-form posts) shaped like swastikas” The photo titled ” is shared on the platform.

“Glaring loopholes in Steam’s moderation of this content cause harm by exposing unknown users to hate and harassment, enabling potential radicalization, and normalizing hate and extremism in the gaming community,” the ADL wrote. “Understanding the extent of extremist and hateful content on the platform is key to combating the spread of hate online.”

According to the report, Pepe the Frog and swastikas are the most common extremist symbols found on Steam, representing 54.6% and 9.1% of detected symbols respectively. The ADL also found “tens of thousands of terrorism-related content in the Steam Community,” including more than 15,000 public accounts with profile images featuring flags or logos of ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas and others. Hundreds of accounts were found using photos of white supremacist mass murderers Brenton Tarrant and Anders Breivik as avatar images.

The report, which claims to have found hundreds of mods for the games, also mentions game modes in which Garry’s Mod “specifically refers to mass shootings”.

“Steam’s public content policy makes no mention of hate or extremism,” the report states, which is not entirely true: Steamworks documentation It specifically states that content containing “hate speech, that is, speech that promotes hatred, violence or discrimination against groups of people based on ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation” should not be published on the platform. of Steam code of Conduct It does not specifically refer to hateful or extremist content, but prohibits harassment, disruptive or harmful behavior, and violation of other users’ personal rights.

More important are questions about the implementation and effectiveness of Steam’s moderation policies. The report says Steam appears “technically capable” of moderating content and has done so “selectively” in response to external pressures in the past: An example of this is Removal of Pepe the Frog emotes from Steam Marketplace following a DMCA takedown by Pepe creator Matt Furie. But its overall approach “has been largely ad hoc; Valve has failed to systematically address the problem of extremism and hate on the platform.”

valve updated the community rules To provide a much more detailed breakdown of what is and isn’t allowed in 2023, but as noted at the time, the real question was how to ensure those rules were enforced. Because this has been an ongoing problem for Steam: Valve’s “hate group problem” In 2018 and 2022, U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan called out Valve boss Gabe Newell for claiming “a significant presence of users who display and espouse neo-Nazi, extremist, racial supremacist, misogynistic, and other hateful sentiments” and Valve’ He sent a letter asking what to do about it.

“Valve needs to make significant changes to their approach to managing the platform, both in terms of policy and practice, to address the ways in which hate and extremism proliferate on the Steam platform,” the report states.

“As the ADL has previously stated, policymakers must demonstrate their commitment to eliminating hate and harassment in online multiplayer gaming. While the government must necessarily focus on the dangers posed by social media and artificial intelligence, policymakers must also pay attention to the immediate threats prevalent in online gaming environments.” “

ADL also putting pressure on Twitch latelyThis led to the temporary ban of a group of Arab streamers at a TwitchCon panel who made jokes that the organization interpreted as anti-Semitic.

I’ve reached out to Valve for comment on the report and will update if I hear back.

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