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standards of 2020, their approach is super outdated and not in keeping with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 反誹謗聯盟
簡單來說ADL最近提出了一個報告，內容就是Steam放任極端份子。他們發現在Steam社區
中有數百個用戶以各種方式宣傳納粹和白人至上主義。
但是....ADL的數據不足以證明Steam上的極端主義比其它平台多。而且也沒有任何證據證
明Steam比其它平台更能吸引極端主義。
但總之ADL指出Steam最大的問題就是它的寬鬆政策。Steam在2018年時公開說過它的政策
是：
“the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam store,” except
offerings that are illegal or “straight up trolling.”
正確做法是同意所有東西都能進入Steam商店，除了違法和想引戰的。
所以儘管沒有證據指出Steam上極端份子比較多，但ADL還是想對Valve施壓。要求：
1、採取和執行打擊仇恨內容的政策。
2、和民間團體互動。 (ADL特別指出Steam沒有回應過他們任何一封信)
3、提高第三方透明度。
ADL還請求和Steam的合作夥伴關注Setam對極端份子寬容的問題，建議重新考慮和Steam的
合作關係。
總之在我看來，ADL的意思就是：
現在都2020年了，你Steam還這麼不合群，能行嗎？雖然沒有任何證據能證明你Steam特別
吸引極端份子或極端份子比較多，但反正你就是不能再寬容下去了。合群點好嘛！