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If you follow the links, they refer to copy pasta’s of hatefull stuff including swastikas but no breakdown of what is counted, the use of the happy merchant (a meme with an antisemitic origin used to convey greed) and the use of pepe the frog in profile pics (pepe is a symbol of hate according to the ADL).
The issue I have with the whole here is that I don’t subscribe to the premise on which the analysis is based.
IF you assume pepe is a hate symbol, then each case it is used is an expression of hate and furtherance of that hate. I however reject the premise that pepe is a symbol of hate.
The use of the happy merchant is a bit more of a problem, because I see the antisemitic message it has. However I also see a lot of stupid people that don’t… and have seen the image used (probably in antisemitic context referring to greed) but people associate it with greed primarily… so this one is an issue, I think I refuse part of the premise, namely that the antisemitism part is a dominant factor when the image is used.
These are the 2 main examples, a lot more in the report that have similar caveats.
I love that people are still doubling down on people pepe means Nazi. ADL big ol swing and a miss.
Steam forums and groups have become a place to organize far right raiding groups that have harassing people and bullying women and minorities or straight up nazism glorification as their sole objective and Steam just does not care.
Of course they don’t, companies only care when Pepsi Co and P&G take away their ad revenue for serving extremist content and catering to extremists. Valve has no ad revenue and is the only real PC game store on the block, so no one can make them “care” the way YouTube and Twitch, and other platforms are made to “care”.
Civilization as we know it is an unsafe space for most humans
Damn you, Sid Meier!!!
For anyone who wants an example, go to the Helldiver’s 2 patch logs on the Steam Community Hub.
No matter which one.
Right wing and not understanding second degree, name a more iconic duo
Edit: Lemmy users and not understanding who people are talking about, name a more iconic duo! I’m talking about the right wing Steam users commenting on the patch notes.
Which is exactly why the US senator that said this is a left-wing Democrat, right?
Politics is so tiresome.
I’m talking about the users commenting on Helldivers patch notes. Just like with Starship Troopers, people on the right see Helldivers as inspiring when the real message behind the media is anti fascism.
Try to follow the conversation, that should have been very clear considering the comment I was replying to.
I really like that there was a whole thing about building a super-weapon where players had to complete quests or whatever to contribute to its development. Then enough players compete the quest and the weapon was completed, and it turned out to be an orbital bombardment that killed enemies and players indiscriminately.
A lot of players were pissed but it’s so aggressively in-character I can’t imagine how they didn’t see it coming.
I mean yeah, no shit. The steam forums could be removed at no loss to the human race, in fact it’d remove a non-negligible percentage of all really shitty talk on the internet if they deleted everything entirely.
There is some important ounce of knowledge there.
Let’s say a majority.The steam forums are fucking cancer. I was looking for info about a bug I was having with a newly released game. I instead saw an entire thread about how the game is woke and you shouldn’t buy it. The game has an implied lesbian character. Who gives a fuck? The game was pretty good btw.
I’ve seen whole threads in game forums dedicated to Nazism, and I myself have been called a “groomer” and the t-slur because people knew be as a boy before I transitioned. Legitimately horrible place, they absolutely need to take more action against this.
Sorry to hear about your experience. Are the forums moderated at all? All I see is people being terrible to each other. I also saw someone requesting a Brazilian Portuguese translation for a game and people calling them a fucking idiot and telling them to learn english.
It’s up to each game dev to police their forums, AFAIK.
Can they disable their steam forums if they don’t want to moderate them?
That’s a good question. I would hope so!
There’s almost no moderation on Steam at all. Sometimes threads advocating violence get removed, or threads with a lot of hate get locked but it’s almost always long after the damage has been done and often times the ones doing nasty shit don’t end up getting banned.
I’m surprised European governments haven’t demanded better enforcement of laws when it comes to hate speech on Steam. Instead they regulate stuff like lootboxes or spicy content because they think those are more harmful than fascism apparently.
The latter two are a much more broad and prevalent issue in the gaming industry overall. No need for the whataboutism.
That’s not whataboutism. Whataboutism is when someone brings something unrelated up to make the main topic look less important and that’s not happening here.
Fortunately in the US I trust that their First Amendment has some teeth. If that were happening in most other countries, I’d be seriously worried that this senator might succeed with his evil plans.
First amendment is for public spaces, a forum owned by a private company isn’t a public space.
It’s a public space in Europe for sure. No idea why the US would think openly accessible forums are a private little backroom where rules don’t apply.
Privately owned company.
Another thing, the first amendment doesn’t protect against violent or criminal speech, like terrorist threats/advocacy, threats towards individuals (bodily harm, sexual assault, murder, etc.) things which there is no shortage of anyway on Steam and they have every right to force the platform to moderate this, on the count of it being against the law.
No it’s not a public space.
Public space would be a place like a national park or the sidewalk. These forums are owned and operated by a private company, they’re private spaces and can be moderated however the company sees fit. Same thing for Twitter or Facebook or Lemmy.
A senator has the right to tell them that they need to do a better job at moderating their platform if there’s reasons to believe they’re letting people threaten violence or incite criminal activity.
Alright that’s still a weird ruling to someone outside America though because something like a shopping mall or a parking lot are public spaces here too as well as anything that is openly visible on the internet. Which makes a lot of sense.
@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works misspeaks when saying “public space”—the term they are thinking of is “public forum.” source
The rules around what constitutes a true public forum and what the public forum doctrine even means are fuzzy, but in all cases the term refers to a space owned or created by the government.
Thus, a shopping mall, parking lot, or internet forum, being owned by a private company, is not a public forum and can’t really be defended on the basis of the public forum doctrine.
Finally, as @Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online points out, none of this matters anyway in cases of incitement to imminent lawless action like threats or terrorist speech, which the First Amendment does not protect.
A US Senator is part of the government.
You don’t say?
So? He doesn’t have to protect free speech on a private platform
on occasion one logs into the internet only to be confronted with the darnedest things said with such confidence
I don’t get how kids can be unsafe because of other kids being dumbasses. I guarantee the majority of the hate symbolism and speech on Steam’s forums, is from people under the age of 18. Kids are fucking little shits. Especially when they have no supervision, like on the Steam forums.
Teenage nazis when not moderated or taught otherwise will grow up to be adult Nazis, and also have the very real possibility of spreading their hate to others when not moderated. It may seem trivial like something to hand-wave away, but many of these people complaining about woke games will grow up to be hateful republicans like the ones currently trying to take our rights away. It’s not a laughing matter.
Never heard of kids committing suicide due to being bullied?
Good point.
ADL says steam was unsafe after stating that pepe the frog is an extremist symbol to more than double the number of cases found.
Remove the meme, and take into consideration the number of users, 0.1% of users have used some form of extreme symbol or statement. That is a lower ratio of extremism than what Lemmy has.
This is a reach for control and surveillance. Nothing else.
Fuck ADL.
Okay, Asmongold.
I think every youtuber has talked about this now, not just Asmongold.
Oh my god, is this you? https://discuss.online/modlog?userId=247367
No wonder you hate the ADL, they advocate for the rights of minority people you regularly undermine and attack. They’re working against you, especially because more protections means people won’t take your comments seriously and instead call you what you are, a troll, and you’ll also end up getting banned from more and more places.
@Ategon@programming.dev @erlingur@programming.dev @snowe@programming.dev Just so we’re clear, this person is on your instance, using your platform to spew hate towards minority people on the Fediverse. Just want to make sure you’re aware of this.
Yes that is me, and no I am not a transphobe. The ghazi mods banned me because I said that someone losing a visa for something they said is fucked up. I didn’t even know who the person was who lost the visa or what they had done. I have never made any transphobic statements whatsoever, and you can dive deeper through the modlog to find evidence of that because it would show.
Also, I don’t appreciate you trying to cancel me just because I don’t agree with your post. We’re adults here.
Thinly veiled transphobia is still transphobia, and even if you never said anything transphobic, your modlog shows a clear history of atrocious behavior such as downplaying death threats, engagement/promotion of bigoted ideology and just overall hostility and incivility in general. Things most server owners don’t want on their servers.
Also, I don’t appreciate you trying to cancel me just because I don’t agree with your post. We’re adults here.
No one’s canceling you sweetie, servers have rules, and when you break them or are an ass people won’t want you to be there. You’ve already been banned from quite a few of them, and the fact is a lot of your behavior indeed does go against PD’s CoC. These admins deserve to know since they likely won’t see the reports, and removals unless they’re investigating you personally.
I haven’t downplayed death threats. It was a conversation where someome falsely alleged that someone else had received death threats, which had no evidence, and the person in question never even claimed they had received any.
The rest is just me calling out misinformation about black myth wukong (the sexism allegations that turned out to be mistranslations) and about the harassment campaing against Sweet Baby Inc, bias in gaming journalism, etc.
I’ve never taken a specific political stance in any of their conversations. I just am against misinformation and censorship and call them out when they happen.
The reason I’m against what your post is about, is because ADL were extremely dishonest in their findings, and I think they’re biased or politically motivated to implement restrictions that require users to give up more private information about themselves, or not be allowed free speech.
And no, I didn’t break any rules either. Every ban I’ve faced have all been completely unjustified, which is why I’ve blocked most of the communities I’ve been banned on. It’s like being banned from hexbear and you saying that makes me deserve to get my account removed. The little information you get out of that modlog only shows the mods being biased.
And you would know about biased mods, seeing as you yourself have been banned and then called out after making a thread about it. It isn’t all black and white. I’m not interested in who was right in that post, you or the mod, but you get my point.
