While playing an online game on Steam, you may have already come across profiles inciting hatred, via images or frankly borderline pseudonyms. Often this is also accompanied by shocking words via voice chat. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is far from isolated on the Valve platform, where it is not necessary to search for long before coming across this kind of content. A few keywords in the Steam community search bar or matchmaking on Counter-Strike do the trick. But why is it so easy to come across such images, symbols and words?
This is the question asked by the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), an American non-governmental organization seeking to fight anti-Semitism, discrimination and extremism. In a report published on November 14 on its site, the organization reveals the results of in-depth research aimed at denouncing the spread of hatred and dangerous ideologies on the platform. After discovering more than 1.83 million extremist or hateful elements – such as Nazi and terrorist symbols, among others – the ADL accuses Valve of not taking enough action against “to the proliferation of hatred“.
Rules not applied?
Still according to the organization’s report, this is a unique case among large legal community platforms. The 1.83 million hateful items discovered by the ADL can be found on more than 458 million profiles, in more than 152 million profile and group images as well as in more than 610 million comments. Steam’s Community Guidelines prohibit many types of problematic content, such as depictions of violence, incitement to violence, and harassment. But incitement to hatred, terrorism and other extremist behavior are not directly mentioned. The code of conduct is vague and this is what the American organization criticizes the video game giant.
“While Steam appears technically capable of moderating extremist and hateful content on its platform, the distribution of this content is due in part to Valve’s very permissive approach to content policy. In rare cases, Steam has selectively removed extremist content, primarily around extremist groups made public following instances of government pressure. However, these measures are rare, as Valve does not systematically tackle the problem of extremism and hatred on its platform” explains the ADL.
This report is sounding the alarm and starting to cause a stir, but Valve has not yet wished to comment or respond to the organization’s accusations. It remains to be seen whether further measures will be taken in the future, but nothing is less certain.
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