Steam accused of 'normalizing hate and extremism in the gaming community' in new ADL report
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 said its report is based on what it described as an «unprecedented, platform-wide» analysis of public data on Steam, including more than 458 million user profiles, 152 million profile and user group avatar images, and 610 million user comments. 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 clear gaps in Steam's moderation of this content inflict harm by exposing untold users to hate and harassment, enabling potential radicalization and normalizing hate and extremism in the gaming community,» the ADL wrote. «Understanding the extent of extremist and hateful content on the platform is key to fighting the proliferation of hate online.»
Pepe the Frog and swastikas are the most common extremist symbols found on Steam, according to the report, respectively representing 54.6% and 9.1% of detected symbols. 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, and others. Hundreds of accounts were found using photos of white supremacist mass murderers Brenton Tarrant and Anders Breivik as their avatar images.
Game mods are also touched on in the report, which claims to have found hundreds of mods for games, most notably Garry's Mod, «that specifically reference mass shootings.»
The report says «Steam's
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