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Valve must address swastikas and other hate on Steam, writes US senator in a letter to Gabe Newell (www.rockpapershotgun.com)

submitted 16 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In the letter, Democrat senator Mark Warner argues that Valve's content moderation doesn't meet industry standards, and says he wants Valve to "crack down on the rampant proliferation of hate-based content".

The exact hateful stuff he's talking about was highlighted in that report by the Anti-Defamation League last week. Its many findings include swastikas in profile pictures, antisemitic images such as the "happy merchant", and instances of Pepe the frog, a meme appropriated by the far right that - let's be honest - has never washed the stink off. Steam is "inundated with hate" as a result of these findings, say the anti-discrimination group.

While the simmering bubbles of fascism won't be news to the average Steam user (or average internet user, to be frank) that doesn't mean we ought to get complacent about them. It's proof, says senator Warner, that Valve is lacking good moderation.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

I have never seen a swastika on steam... how do you guys find them? I have come across "git gud" idiots and met one single nazi on there. What in the world are you people up to?

instances of Pepe the frog, a meme appropriated by the far right

LOl, get outta here. I use pepe all the time. It's a friggin' frog. I won't let the far right take him away from me. Fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

You literally just need to go into the discussion boards for trending games or check out the curation pages for groups like "DEI watch." Guaranteed to find comments and posts of huge ASCII swastikas eventually. There's next to no moderation for any given game's discussion board or comments for anything related to it (workshop, screenshots, other media, etc).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago

You literally just need to go into the discussion boards for trending games or check out the curation pages for groups like “DEI watch.”

I just spent 10 minutes doing both of these things and didn't see any questionable content.

I did see gamers saying things like "this game sucks", but nothing worse.

At this point I think you should provide a link to an example.

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

I frequent Steam discussions on and off to see what morons say. BG3, Veilguard, anything they accuse of DEI or whatever. In all of my scrolling I've never encountered a swastika or someone just straight up being a white supremacist. I'm sure it's there somewhere, but it's not rampant. I also see a lot of moderation in those discussions. Goobers getting banned all the time. So if it is, I do think it's getting moderated to some extent. That probably also falls on the game dev I guess. Not sure who controls the discussion forums.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah, I'm definitely in favor of banning the edgy kids who use fascist imagery on the platform, but Pepe is not and has never been that. Just because some assholes tried to appropriate it for a few months doesn't mean everyone else should just surrender it to them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

Yeah, and Chaplin had the mustache first!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago

I get it there... but sadly to my knowledge it is lost. Generally speaking when you see the "SomeoneNew has joined the server" and see a pepe avatar... I already pretype the /ban SomoeneNew command watch the screen for 15 seconds... and 9/10 times they say something blatantly racist within that time-frame.

(and don't think that 1/10 that they don't means 10% aren't alt right... of those that don't manage to break the rules in the first 30 seconds, I don't think I've seen one that's gone a week without doing so)

Point is... Pepe is the modern swastika... For those who don't know, the swastika was a peaceful symbol used by many different cultures for thousands of years. But the fact is, using it now just gives legitimacy to those who have attached it to their hateful messages.