In the letter, Democrat senator Mark Warner argues that Valve’s content moderation doesn’t meet industry standards, and says he wants Valve to “crack down on the rampant proliferation of hate-based content”.
The exact hateful stuff he’s talking about was highlighted in that report by the Anti-Defamation League last week. Its many findings include swastikas in profile pictures, antisemitic images such as the “happy merchant”, and instances of Pepe the frog, a meme appropriated by the far right that - let’s be honest - has never washed the stink off. Steam is “inundated with hate” as a result of these findings, say the anti-discrimination group.
While the simmering bubbles of fascism won’t be news to the average Steam user (or average internet user, to be frank) that doesn’t mean we ought to get complacent about them. It’s proof, says senator Warner, that Valve is lacking good moderation.
Steam has had, for a long time already, a massive far-right community. Browse its communities and you’ll see the most deranged racist, transphobic, homophobic posters. The entire SweetBaby harassment campaign started - and as far as I know, is still going - thanks to a huge Steam curator, and there are even more “Anti-Woke” groups explicitly dedicated to harassing minorities. Last year, Hogwarts Legacy had a intense campaign and won the Best Game on Steam Deck award due to the brigading of these “anti-woke” fans - and you most likely can still look into its community to witness their efforts - and there are still those on the Tabletop Simulator communities that are outspoken about the devs “bending the knee” by removing global chat from their game in an effort to reduce harassment against queer people.
Basically, its a cesspool of the worst gaming has to offer, but none of this affects Valve’s bottom line, who continues their usual business practice: Don’t interfere and do the minimum amount of work. Is it illegal? Perhaps not. But their inaction makes it clear that this is a safe spot for hateful conduct.
Also have noticed the “anti-woke” “curator”.
It’s simply amazing. Imagine not buying a game because the protagonist is a woman. If you don’t want to play Control, you’re missing out.
I made the mistake of looking at the Spider-Man discussion board. The entire first page, minus like three posts, was all idiots complaining about pride flags.
What industry standards is he talking about here? Steam code of conduct only says you must engage in lawful behaviour. There’s no American law banning far-right symbols. There’s no doubt Steam has a content moderation issue and I would love to see those things go as well. But unless there’s some kind of law then Valve is just going to ignore this problem like they’ve done in the past.
Well, name another game platform that openly allows swastikas. I think they are saying the rest of the industry largely doesn’t allow this so Valve shouldn’t either.
Roblox. It’s a game but also a platform in a sense. It’s full of kids running around yelling racial slurs, kicking users with dark coloured avatars, and lots of far right content. It is like a grade school run by 4chan.
No other gaming platform has the userbase Steam does. I see this more of a numbers thing than anything else. If 2% of the gaming population is far right then it’s going to be much more noticeable when one company has a userbase of ~100million. I’d be very surprised if the other companies like Ubisoft and EA have this kind of content moderation.
Do American streets count as a platform?
Swastikas, okay. Happy merchant, sure. But how is Pepe an alt right symbol now? I read half of an article about it which seems to conclude that it depends on the context the meme is being used in. If it’s by a nazi in their username, it’s a nazi symbol, wow. To me this feels like “serial killers often ate bread for breakfast, so all of Germany is now a dogwhistle for serial killers.”
Pepe was used as the mascot for all sorts of content on Reddits “the_donald”
Pepe was previously coopted by far-right groups. The usage has died down since the creator of the original comic began suing people, but there are still people who put Pepe in Trump hats and shit.
Pepe has been a dogwhistle/symbol of hate for years already. Richard Spencer’s comical punch in 2017 happened just moments after he was explaining why he wears a Pepe pin. The ADL has it officially registered as a hate symbol.
Maybe it has died down in recent years, but you not being aware of these - frankly, very clear cut - definitions doesn’t make it ridiculous or inappropriate. Nazis take over symbols, that has been their modus operandi since their inception. None of this is new.
I’d recommend some googling about the subject.
You may be willing to cede the cartoon frog to the Nazis for their exclusive use, but many people aren’t. If you assume that everyone you see using it is one you’ll be vastly overestimating the number of Nazis in the world.
I’m not “willing” to do anything, it is a fact. You may as well argue about the origins of the Swastika or the Iron Cross. Pepe is a hate symbol, and while not everyone using it might be a nazi, they are using nazi imagery. The fact that “many people” aren’t willing to drop it, despite its extensive, well documented use by extremists is a well made point, but not the one you think.
And there’s no “overestimating” of nazis in the world. We live in a culture of white supremacy. There’s no point in splitting hairs about how offensive or not a cartoon frog is. The easiest solution is to simply not use it.
Equating a meme that has a variety of potential uses to a swastika is absolutely unhinged
The Swastika interestingly is four right angles, so the symbol occurs all over human society hundreds and even thousands of years before Nazism found it.
People thought any symbol so common throughout history had to be a quasi-good thing. They used it as a general sign of good luck. About the only thing that even comes close to the swastikas ubiquity and thrust of sentiment post-war is the “smiley face” symbol.
The Nazis saw all this and sent scam archeologists around the world to unearth and then piece together a narrative that their Aryan supermen ancestors had been the rightful masters of the earth. From the moment they made that decision, it’s had the stink of human ashes wafting off it ever since. Fire, wind, fortune, ‘North’, Kali’s creative destruction, and dozens more meanings all wiped away. So many cultures and groups robbed of a symbol or perhaps a phoneme even with their own contexts.
Draw the right angles. It is the wheel that crushes now. It means hate. We have a conditioned response as a society to it and each one of us personally has our own gutteral secret feelings about it. But the old meanings are all dead.
One of fascisms best featurs is simply bald faced stealing. They stole that symbol from thousands or millions of people who used it everyday. Pepe at least carries his own eternal chagrinn with him in eternal protest of being used as a dogwhistle, but thats about it. His expressions are your expressions.
Pepe is damaged goods though. He endures well past his relevance and utility as an internet comic character when very similar concepts (rage faces, Polandball) have had their time and slowly lost ubiquity. But Pepe endures not JUST as a Nazi dogwhistle but as a symbol that even if someone is not right wing they still would like to convey a certain unsociable edginess, like a colorful threat display on a jungle animal. The disposessed middle class, the failure to launch kids, the kissless sensitive souls, all find commonality with the frowning frog. And these are the people they target. People use Pepe as a flare to suggest they’re in pain and only feel safe talking about it to other anonynous people on the same boat. Aka the most vulnerable to radicalization. Clinging to Pepe is advertising that you are looking for something that you don’t even know what it is, but normies can’t or won’t give it to you. Pepe is a green light to radicalization.
And like the various versions of the swastikas before they became THE Swastika, Pepe did nothing to deserve this. Just like everyone else under Nazi occupation.
It really does depend on how many those “many people” are. Too many to dismiss them as irrelevant, it appears to me.
Pepe has been sensationalized for a while now in the media as being a hate symbol. I think it’s because you see it largely on 4chan which traditional media demonizes.
I’m not on 4chan, but it seems like it has similar problems to Steam: a large userbase and poor content moderation gives insufferable people a platform to spread hate from. These problems aren’t unique to either platform, but the news likes to latch on to them.
I hate that some people consider Pepe to be a hate symbol. He’s just an expressive frog, dang it
I guess I’ve been out of the loop for pre-hate Pepe (pre-2016), but the only reason I know of him at all is because of all the Nazi/Quon/KKK folks blasting him all over Twitter and everywhere else. I’ve always assumed everyone knew since it’s been almost a decade, and anyone using him these days is doing so in bad faith.
Pepe was and always has been a neutral meme figure. And I’m not going to let some fking nazis take my meme frog!
It was pretty heavily associated with the alt right a decade ago as it was getting more popular. Some alt right meme communities like frenworld and clown world were centered around it, with overtly fascist pepe variants. It’s gotten more popular in a lot of other circles, but if someone identifies enough with it to use as a profile picture I’d at least check their posting history.
If games are art then we shouldn’t censor them
It’s not the games they’re talking about.
Culling out hate speech isn’t censorship.
And the far right using free speech/censorship as a cover for hate speech is always in bad faith.
