New report accuses Valve of proliferating extremism on Steam

digitaltrends.com:

Valve hasn’t done enough to moderate its Steam platform against extremism, according to a scathing new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that found millions of examples of hateful language and images.

ADL looked at over 458 million profiles and over 610 million comments using an AI tool called HateVision, and found millions of instances of white supremacist and anti-Semitic imagery, as well as posts (specifically copypastas with swastikas and slurs), keywords, and avatars, along with thousands of profiles, “that glorify violent extremists.” Pepe the Frog was the most frequently used icon in these posts; it is often depicted in Nazi regalia. Steam Community profiles allow users to use custom images, which has also become a hotbed of imagery detected by the ADL’s analysis.

“Valve needs to make significant changes to their approach to platform governance both in terms of policy and practice to address the ways in which hate and extremism have proliferated on the Steam platform,” the ADL wrote.

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Valve has taken heat in the past in regards] to its Steam moderation policies. This came to a head in 2018. Valve started moderating its forums and game hubs in response to developer feedback, but only for user-reported posts. Valve has always had a more hands-off approach when it comes to what kinds of games can be published on Steam, and this became apparent with a Steam game called Active Shooter where players played, as you can guess, asan active mass shooter. It has also faced other controversies surrounding 18+ games. Valve said that it wouldn’t limit what games could be listed on Steam as long as it wasn’t “illegal” or “straight up trolling,” while also clarifying that it wouldn’t take a stance on games’ politics.

“If you’re a player, we shouldn’t be choosing for you what