The ADL Calls Out Steam for Giving Extremists a Pass
https://www.wired.com/story/valve-steam-adl-white-supremacy-extremism/
AFTER THE HORRIFYING 2019 shooting at New Zealand’s Christchurch mosques,
over 100 profiles on the gaming platform Steam paid tribute to the shooter.
A digital videogame storefront with some social networking features, Steam isn
’t the most obvious home for charged political content. But just hours after
the shooting, 66 Steam profiles took on the shooter’s name. Dozens more soon
followed. At that time, the Christchurch shooter wasn’t the only terrorist
commemorated by Steam users; hundreds of Steam pages referenced massacres in
Parkland, Isla Vista, and Charleston.
Steam publisher Valve removed profiles referencing the Christchurch shooting
after Kotaku reached out for comment on an article. But the fact that so many
people—extremists, edgelords, or trolls—felt that they could profess these
views on an over $4 billion platform with over 95 million active users says
something unflattering about Steam.
Today, the Anti-Defamation League, a 107-year-old nonprofit founded to fight
identity-based discrimination, released its report on “how the Steam
platform harbors extremists.”
“It was disturbingly easy for ADL’s researchers to locate Steam users who
espouse extremist beliefs, using language associated with white supremacist
ideology and subcultures, including key terms, common numeric hate symbols,
and acronyms,” the report reads. In a random search, researchers found
hundreds of Steam profiles advertising Nazi or white supremacist imagery in
their usernames, profile pictures, posts, or bio descriptions.
The ADL’s sample size is not significant enough to confirm that extremism is
widely prevalent on Steam or more common than on other platforms. It does,
though, underscore how little Steam has done to address a long-known issue. “
It’s an effective platform for extremists, because there’s a very public
acknowledgement of a lack of content moderation,” says Daniel Kelley, the
assistant director of the ADL’s center for technology and society. “By the
standards of 2020, their approach is super outdated and not in keeping with
other companies in social media and games that are ramping up efforts to make
their platforms respectful and inclusive spaces for all people.”
Steam is famously hands-off about moderating content uploaded to its
platform. Although Steam’s community guidelines prohibit discrimination, “
abusive language,” and “offensive content,” a 2017 Vice report revealed
that groups with titles like Nazi Revolutionary Party, Hitler’s Nazi’s, and
Zhe Nazi Followers of Razor_One persisted there. At the time, term “Nazi”
returned 7,893 search results for Steam Groups. After similar reports from
the Huffington Post and The Center for Investigative Reporting, Valve
silently began removing extremist groups and profiles called out in the
press. It wasn’t a total purge; even today, searching the term “Nazi”
under Steam’s Community page returns more than 21,000 results.
Valve has had mixed results moderating the content of the games its users
sell, too. The company posted a blog in 2018 justifying that permissive
approach, saying that when it comes to the games on Steam, “the right
approach is to allow everything onto the Steam store,” except offerings that
are illegal or “straight up trolling.” The post argued that this philosophy
let Valve focus more on “building tools to give people control over what
kinds of content they see,” the digital equivalent of plugging your fingers
in your ears. Some games did cross the line, though: In 2018, Valve removed
Active Shooter, in which the player commits a school shooting, and in 2019 it
removed a game called Rape Day, in which “you can rape and murder during a
zombie apocalypse.”
“White supremacist subculture traffics in bigoted humor, shitposting, memes,
” says Joanna Mendelson, the associate director for the ADL’s Center on
Extremism. “All of this serves to normalize extremist ideology and hatred.
You find that same subculture on Steam.”
The ADL report points to several notable extremists whose accounts included
Nazi imagery or phrases, including the former leader of a small international
hate group whose past Steam profile names made racist and neo-Nazi
references. Although they had a “Community Ambassador” badge, according to
the ADL report, their bio contained references to Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich
Himmler, and other Nazi figureheads. Jarrett William Smith, a former US
soldier who discussed killing antifa affiliates and pleaded guilty to sharing
instructions on making bombs over social media, praised the mass-murder game
Hatred, sold on Steam. In encrypted Wire chats obtained by the ADL, Smith
shared images of himself playing as a Muslim persona and also suggested that
“The most baste [based] is of course playing as Hitler." (Before its
release, Steam briefly removed the controversial game, but Valve CEO Gabe
Newell reinstated it himself.)
The ADL hopes to pressure Valve to adopt and enforce policies combating
hateful content, engage with civil society groups and, most of all, offer
increased transparency to third parties. Valve has a reputation as a black
box, and throughout the course of its investigation, Kelley and Mendelson
say, Valve did not respond to a single email from the ADL. Valve also did not
respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
There’s no strong evidence that Steam attracts or fosters more extremist
ideology than any other online platform with a social media aspect. Yet in
2020, after the clear negative impact of lax moderation policies has led
former “free speech” bastions like Reddit to overhaul their policies,
vigilant moderation is becoming the norm. Steam is widely considered a
utility of PC gaming. But treating it like a utility rather than a cultural
node has led to a moderation philosophy that, Mendelson says, “desensitizes
users to hate.” In its report, the ADL calls on Steam’s partners in the
games industry to address concerns over extremism with them directly and
suggests reconsidering their business entanglements.
“We’re seeing white supremacist ideology percolate in these living online
communities, and they’re helping to shape this hateful narrative and also
creating a connection between extremist adherents,” she says. “Not
enforcing responsible policies on their platforms signals an acceptance and
encourages others to possibly share similar content. We need to address the
root of the problem.”
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ADL Anti-Defamation League 反诽谤联盟
简单来说ADL最近提出了一个报告，内容就是Steam放任极端份子。他们发现在Steam社区
中有数百个用户以各种方式宣传纳粹和白人至上主义。
但是....ADL的数据不足以证明Steam上的极端主义比其它平台多。而且也没有任何证据证
明Steam比其它平台更能吸引极端主义。
但总之ADL指出Steam最大的问题就是它的宽松政策。Steam在2018年时公开说过它的政策
是：
“the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam store,” except
offerings that are illegal or “straight up trolling.”
正确做法是同意所有东西都能进入Steam商店，除了违法和想引战的。
所以尽管没有证据指出Steam上极端份子比较多，但ADL还是想对Valve施压。要求：
1、采取和执行打击仇恨内容的政策。
2、和民间团体互动。 (ADL特别指出Steam没有回应过他们任何一封信)
3、提高第三方透明度。
ADL还请求和Steam的合作伙伴关注Setam对极端份子宽容的问题，建议重新考虑和Steam的
合作关系。
总之在我看来，ADL的意思就是：
现在都2020年了，你Steam还这么不合群，能行吗？虽然没有任何证据能证明你Steam特别
吸引极端份子或极端份子比较多，但反正你就是不能再宽容下去了。合群点好嘛！