99
submitted 15 hours ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] navi@lemmy.tespia.org 15 points 14 hours ago

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.

[-] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 13 points 13 hours ago

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 5 points 10 hours 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.”

[-] Sundial@lemm.ee 21 points 14 hours ago

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 3 points 8 hours 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.

[-] Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 4 points 14 hours ago

Do American streets count as a platform?

this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2024
99 points (100.0% liked)

Gaming

30500 readers
596 users here now

From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!

Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.

See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS