The Anti-Defamation League, a US organization that aims to combat antisemitism and support Israel, has published a report alleging that Steam is “rife with extremism and antisemitism,” and accusing Valve of allowing the spread of hateful and extremist material through a “highly permissive approach to content policy.”
The ADL’s Center on Extremism found “found millions of examples of extremist and hateful content, including explicit hate symbols like sonnenrads and ‘happy merchants,’ as well as copypastas (blocks of text that are copied and pasted to form images or long-form writing) shaped into swastikas” being shared on the platform. The ADL also found “tens of thousands of pieces of terrorism-related content on Steam Community,” including more than 15,000 public accounts with profile pictures featuring the flags or logos of ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas
I guess I’m playing different games because I’ve been on Steam like 14 years and have only seen a handful of issues, all reported and banned.
Frankly, I doubt that this trend of hatefulness will change. Just going on trending pages on any game community (ex. Workshop, News, and Guides) will subject anyone with the some of the most outrageous and vile BS. Hell, just this week I found people having a discussion on a workshop page on how they want to eliminate minorities. Following by just a day, I seen multiple trolls on the patch notes of games that I follow doing a copypasta of games needing forced lgbtq representation.
I am getting tired of this demeaning content which just subjects minorities to hate. Suggesting that I am a mistake, and people like myself should just kill ourselves. I am tired of this nonesense. The only good thing that came out of this is that I know Steam moderation works, but only passively untill called out.
“Aims to support Israel” is all I need to hear to shut my ears.
They’re getting big mad that they’re being called out for genocide. Cry harder.
I think one can criticise valve for not doing enough to moderate their platform while also not supporting genocide.
This would have a lot more weight coming from a human rights organization than from genocide lobbyists.
Sounds like BS.
I’ve been on Steam for years and I’ve never seen it. I’m sure it probably exists in the dark corners if you go searching for it but it’s not openly present like it is on FB and Zitter.
What region are you from and what games do you play? Because playing Counter Strike as a European gets me in contact with a lot of Eastern European players and lord have I seem some shit on those profiles.
Adl sounds compromised.
Not compromised.
They’ve been hypocrites for as long as I can remember.
I have never seen any of these things while browsing Steam. I feel like you have to go searching for it if you want to find it and you will find it on any platform if that is your intention.
This report makes it feel like 4chan 2.0 which is a place that would fit their description.
Instead this just feels like a lame attempt from Epic or some other competitor at pulling down Valve since they can’t/don’t want to directly compete fairly.
I’m sure there are some disgusting racists and imagery on Steam, but not to the extent they’re making it out to be or that Valve approves of it. As a matter of fact, if you go check out controversial games like Dustborn or the newest Dragon Age, you’ll see that Valve has actually been suppressing negative reviews, regardless whether they contain offensive content or not.
As a true centrisy, for every “Six Days in Fallujah” I want one “Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque”. Fuck the ADL.
