this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2024
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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 4 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org
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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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[–] Computerchairgeneral@fedia.io 15 points 3 days ago

Curious what industry standard Senator Warner is judging Valve against because a social media site, which Warner is comparing Valve to, being filled with Nazis and the far right feels like the standard, even if some sites at better at quarantining them than others. Also, "intense scrutiny" from Congress is kind of an empty threat at the best of times, but especially when Congress is about to be run by the sort of people who aren't going to see this as a problem.

[–] millie@beehaw.org 61 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Get rid of actual fascist imagery and references? Yes please. That shit is rampant.

Get rid of fucking Pepe? ..Are you kidding? Way to make yourself and your argument seem fully out of touch. Yeah, sure, there was a point when Pepe was being coopted by right-wingers, but at this point? Like.. have you been on discord once ever? Everybody uses Peepo. Moreover, half my trans friends use D&D emojis derived directly from Peepo.

People pointing fingers at Pepe are literally taking the bait and making themselves look less credible, which was presumably the point of it being adopted by assholes to begin with. That fight is over and we won and took it back. Yeesh.

[–] Joelio@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

They can't do this to peepo, not my boy! 😥

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 47 points 4 days ago (4 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.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 34 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days 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).

[–] Buttons@programming.dev 10 points 4 days ago (1 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.”

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.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Check out the comments on Helldiver's 2 's latest patch notes.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 3 points 3 days ago

I think the moderation team has been working quite well. I'm 200 comments deep and only two mentions of LGBT.

[–] termus@beehaw.org 8 points 4 days 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.

[–] verdigris@lemmy.ml 21 points 4 days 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.

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The Pepe doesn't quite have the same significance and weight yet. It's not too late. Make leftist Pepes. Drown their identifiers in false positives until they become useless.

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 3 points 3 days ago

Well I have to say, off the bat, it needs to be not just leftist/marxist. It would need to have large non offensive use in general discourse.

Again my example of pepe for general discord moderation. It's not trolls that show up in say political discussion groups. It's trolls that show up in random game discords or other non-pollitical locations. IE as a moderator I'd also be auto banning someone bringing up random arguements on how we need wealth re-distribution, not because I disagree with them, but because people are just there to talk about a game, and not have political arguement.

and in short that's generally the thing, IMO Pepe isn't... really that overwhelmingly good of a meme where it's just a universal funny to outside groups. But the alt right is the only ones bringing it into more general average Joe locations, along with their hateful rhetoric.

In short for pepe to be recovered it needs... major mainstream Apolitical usage, which quite frankly I don't see often.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 days ago

Yeah, and Chaplin had the mustache first!

[–] luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago

A signal is less useful the more "false" signals (i.e. noise) pollute the medium it's transferred over.

If we can make it clear that "their" memes aren't actually just theirs by "re-appropriating" them and abuse whatever secret identification dogwhistles they want to use, we can drown their signals in noise.

Posting Pepes for non-nazi purposes is an act of resistance.

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[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Whataboutism to avoid the conversation talking about Twitter

[–] Vodulas@beehaw.org 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Why would a gaming news website talk about twitter? How is it whataboutism? Two things can be bad at the same time.

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Not the gaming site article. The senator themselves

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

So he could ask Valve who, if the fanboys are to be believed, might actually do something about it, or go ask Elon to fix Twitter who will certainly not

[–] Vodulas@beehaw.org 1 points 3 days ago

Oh, got ya

[–] Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org 36 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I think the issue is possibly rooted deeper than just usage on steam. I mean I know steam could/SHOULD do more to fight it, but I mean...has said US senator looked at the newly elected government and the people that voted for said government? I mean damn dude.

The rot is deep and is very soon going to be considered "default" behavior.

[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 50 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What industry standards is he talking about here? Steam code of conduct only says you must engage in lawful behaviour. There's no American law banning far-right symbols. There's no doubt Steam has a content moderation issue and I would love to see those things go as well. But unless there's some kind of law then Valve is just going to ignore this problem like they've done in the past.

[–] navi@lemmy.tespia.org 15 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Well, name another game platform that openly allows swastikas. I think they are saying the rest of the industry largely doesn't allow this so Valve shouldn't either.

[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 33 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No other gaming platform has the userbase Steam does. I see this more of a numbers thing than anything else. If 2% of the gaming population is far right then it's going to be much more noticeable when one company has a userbase of ~100million. I'd be very surprised if the other companies like Ubisoft and EA have this kind of content moderation.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 6 points 4 days ago

I have a steam account. I write like half a review and maybe a handful of comments a year, talking mechanics. The amount of people who don't even lurk because they are there to play games has to be absolutely overwhelming.

[–] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Roblox. It’s a game but also a platform in a sense. It’s full of kids running around yelling racial slurs, kicking users with dark coloured avatars, and lots of far right content. It is like a grade school run by 4chan.

[–] alyaza@beehaw.org 8 points 4 days ago

i mean if Roblox is any indication, Valve will probably bend the knee sooner or later. government scrutiny is obliging them to make changes and actually do even basic moderation over there:

The fast-growing children’s gaming platform Roblox is to hand parents greater oversight of their children’s activity and restrict the youngest users from the more violent, crude and scary content after warnings about child grooming, exploitation and sharing of indecent images.

The moves comes after a short-seller last month alleged it had found child sexual abuse content, sex games, violent content and abusive speech on the site. In the UK, Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, told parliament: “I expect that company to do better in protecting service users, particularly children.”

[–] Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 days ago

Do American streets count as a platform?

[–] SteelCorrelation@lemmy.one 19 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Imagine taking the ADL seriously.

[–] Rose@lemmy.zip 15 points 4 days ago

Imagine using ad hominem to dismiss factual and easily verifiable points.

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[–] Crotaro@beehaw.org 29 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Swastikas, okay. Happy merchant, sure. But how is Pepe an alt right symbol now? I read half of an article about it which seems to conclude that it depends on the context the meme is being used in. If it's by a nazi in their username, it's a nazi symbol, wow. To me this feels like "serial killers often ate bread for breakfast, so all of Germany is now a dogwhistle for serial killers."

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 50 points 4 days ago

Pepe was previously coopted by far-right groups. The usage has died down since the creator of the original comic began suing people, but there are still people who put Pepe in Trump hats and shit.

[–] Bougie_Birdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Pepe has been sensationalized for a while now in the media as being a hate symbol. I think it's because you see it largely on 4chan which traditional media demonizes.

I'm not on 4chan, but it seems like it has similar problems to Steam: a large userbase and poor content moderation gives insufferable people a platform to spread hate from. These problems aren't unique to either platform, but the news likes to latch on to them.

I hate that some people consider Pepe to be a hate symbol. He's just an expressive frog, dang it

[–] TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social 19 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I guess I've been out of the loop for pre-hate Pepe (pre-2016), but the only reason I know of him at all is because of all the Nazi/Quon/KKK folks blasting him all over Twitter and everywhere else. I've always assumed everyone knew since it's been almost a decade, and anyone using him these days is doing so in bad faith.

[–] einkorn 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Pepe was and always has been a neutral meme figure. And I'm not going to let some fking nazis take my meme frog!

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 12 points 4 days ago

Pepe was a neutral meme. He is not anymore.

https://beehaw.org/comment/4105872

The sad reality is that he is a politicized figuredhead for fascism. You can try and use him, but you need to be aware of how others use him, and it will end up reflecting more poorly on you than it will help reclaiming him.

I suggest looking the links on my comment linked, but at the very least on your own look up, "Pepe meme Putin", and "was Pepe at January 6th". People are using him to storm the capitol and dressing him up in an iron cross to assassinate political figures. That's not just casual memes :(

I say this as someone who grew up with his era of memes (my first memes were icanhazcheezeburger which was the precursor to RageFu). I remember his good days too man.

But Pepe got Alex Jonesed. He got assaulted by the MAGA cult and they put him on a cross like Jesus and now he's dying for their sins. I don't think we can save him.

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[–] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 17 points 4 days ago

Pepe was used as the mascot for all sorts of content on Reddits “the_donald”

[–] underscores@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 4 days ago

It was pretty heavily associated with the alt right a decade ago as it was getting more popular. Some alt right meme communities like frenworld and clown world were centered around it, with overtly fascist pepe variants. It's gotten more popular in a lot of other circles, but if someone identifies enough with it to use as a profile picture I'd at least check their posting history.

[–] nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago

Whatever the result in, I wish there won't be over-moderation that too Western-centric.

Not all swastika are Nazi (I live in a country where swastika is simply symbol of religion and peacefulness). Not all words that too similar with offending word in English are bad (some games literally banned Indonesian for having "nasi goreng" as their name, too similiar with Nazi they said.)

[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

We've come across it all too often, even personally been attacked before just for asking a game to fix its pronoun usage before.

Now we just don't bother saying anything and keep reporting until something is done.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 6 points 4 days ago

NataliePortman.gif: to remove them, right?

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago

I have it all censored and replaced by hearts.

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