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GabeN: There is nothing you can say to stop me from selling Furry Hitler
So, I guess the quick version is that the fun police are upset because of the gamer word. You know, the one used on Xbox live, a lot…
Oh, it’s a threat from the left. I was more worried about one from the right.
What the left says can be completely ignored right now.
What do you mean “the left”? It is from the US so at best it is from the “slight less extreme far right”.
The relative left.
Hitler My Friend is a 99 cent game on Steam with an 8/10 positive rating.
A 3D shooter that will change your ideas about alternative history! In this game you will climb into the boots of the unforeseen Adolf Hitler.
There’s more, but I’m not sifting through more dog shit. This is a good thing.
ADL report
Opinion discarded. Those ADL fucks lie about damn near everything.
You guys can’t even keep nazis out of government. Why should it be steams responsibility to keep them from playing a game?
That’s the whole point. Sure there’s Nazis in the government but look over there, a Nazi! Look over there a Nazi! It’s Nazis from top to bottom. Wanna let us censor the Internet to stop them? No? You’re a Nazi sympathiser then.
Well it’s a nazi country founded by literal slave masters. What do people expect?
What comes to my mind is Battlefront 2, which is sold by Steam. I think I paid $5 for it since I boycotted it back when it first came out to due to loot crates… anyway, I regularly see the n-word used in this game every. single. night. It’s used specifically to denigrate people of color, in violent and extremely racist ways.
I don’t understand how players with maxed out accounts are able to keep them when they are saying this stuff. How is that not flagged for immediate review? EA is a trash company, and Steam may want to stop selling their games if they can’t do the BARE MINIMUM to combat this sort of behavior.
To be fair, it is full of racist and fascist stuff. You can report them but Valve doesn’t do anything.
Is it worse then twitter or facebook? Also, can we stop infantilizing “young adults”? They’re trying to discredit anyone’s opinion who isn’t a senior citizen.
Yes, it’s worse. It is.
Did the Steam forums plot to over throw the US election? Are there private Police Union communities on Steam?
Translation: Our corpo overlords don’t like that you can review bomb our shitty games and force us to take losses when we do shitty corpo things. Appease my bosses or they’ll make me be bottom again with no lube.
Yes, moderate all of that shit off every mass social media system steam, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blue sky, tiktok, YouTube, etc. Debate and compromise on a common set of standards, one for kids spaces and another for adults, and enforce the same rules to everyone with penalties tied to annual revenues so they can’t report one set of numbers to shareholders and another when it comes time to pay for the damages they caused by ignoring regulations. That is what regulating and building new markets should look like when you don’t have a corrupt oligarchy filled with bribery and regulatory capture.
Where? Where at tho? I’ve been using steam and playing valve games for like 16 years or something like that and I don’t see it anywhere. Maybe the one troll in user made guides but that usually goes away just like any other platform
Short version is that for the most part forum moderation for each game is left up to the devs or whoever they appoint, and users can create user groups and curators without much if any restrictions and they don’t particularly give a shit what content the game you want to sell has. The only real exceptions are if it’s illegal in the US, which applies to very little (for example no CSAM).
I find it interesting that the federal government threatening a private entity with legal repercussions if it doesn’t restrict the speech of it’s users isn’t such an obvious violation of the first amendment that lawyers aren’t climbing over each other to fight this one.
And if you don’t see the problem with it, imagine we agree that the federal government should be allowed to restrict what expression can go on on internet platforms content-wise, then imagine Trump and his cronies deciding where the borders lie. They already want to revive the Comstock Act.
Welcome to Commiefornia
The Comstock Act was created by a right wing Christian puritan, and has been fought against by leftists, and supported by conservatives, throughout it’s history. But commies are to blame, sure.
you can go through the community hubs/reviews of basically any WW2/military shooter or strategy game and see multiple people with Hitler avatars, swastikas, black suns, anything you can think of. it’s extremely prevalent.
hell, just going through the HOI4 community hub and in the first 30 seconds of scrolling I’ve come across at least 3 nazi posts. the forums are completely unmoderated, going through the discussions and I’ve already found multiple instances of straight up holocaust denial/glorification. it’s absolutely rampant.
Honestly its not just any WW2 game, but any remotely popular game’s updates pages, when steam points & awards got added, several people set up bots to spam every update post on large games to say “Add pronouns and rainbow flags” banking on the conservatives giving them the jester award, others have it set up to spam “Dont give into woke and add (whatever buzzword is currently popular)” so they can get other awards, and like the morons they are, conservatives keep falling for both, giving awards and reacting in the comments.
LGBTQ+ people and allies have mostly stopped opening the comments on updates due to this, so there are multiple instances of people just openly calling for the extermination of anyone LGBTQ+ that never get reported or removed on the updates pages of otherwise not rightwing games.
Forums are supposed to be moderated by the company that makes the game, this means that if someone makes a nazi post and the company has no moderators, or has moderators that are also nazis, reporting it does nothing, even if it’s blatantly against Steam’s TOS.
Something seriously needs to be done about it.
Oh damn okay. I just didn’t see it because I don’t play those games
Once again, a clueless boomer blames games.
How about YouTube? Why aren’t we going after Google?
What about Twitter? Musk’s platform is filled with extremist hate.
Plenty of extremist diarrhea spewing from the mouth of a President Elect.
It’s almost like this kind of content on Steam is a symptom of a bigger problem.
Steam honestly has it really bad. You don’t see blatant hate speech in play store reviews but you certainly do on steam. The same goes for their forums, which are almost totally unmoderated. Totally agree tho that this is a symptom of a larger problem and am always wary of the government seeking to impede free speech, even if it’s speech I despise. If there are calls to violence and stuff I’m totally cool with that being prosecuted ofc.
Yes, agreed, it definitely needs moderation. But I don’t think it needs singling out (again, not saying don’t moderate).
The bigger picture is a proliferation of online extremist speech in general. And yes, Google may have done well to moderate play store reviews (anecdotally), but they certainly haven’t done well with YouTube.
But I would suggest that focusing on any one online forum / store / outlet / etc. will naturally miss an important trend, and the reasons for that trend should be understood – while concurrently doing everything possible to limit this kind of hate online.
I was going to add, as a user of both Steam and YouTube, I have seen far worse stuff in YouTube comments than I ever have on a Steam forum.
I think part of this comes down to the fact that disgusting, hateful comments will pop up on almost any YouTube video in the comment section, but you actually have to navigate to Steam forums with this content.
So, YouTube comments are thrown in your face and hard to not see, as they are right below the video, but Steam forum comments are at least hidden behind a few layers of clicks.
I agree that singling out Steam as if it’s the main problem, isn’t going to fix anything, at all.
Absolutely those platforms are a bigger problem, but your argument isn’t a very good one. Yes, we should go after those platforms. Yes, we should also go after Steam. Whataboutism never solved any problems.
I think you missed the first sentence of my comment. Games have been blamed above other media for years and years and years. That is not whataboutism.
Edit: or the last sentence for that matter.
It’s almost like this kind of content on Steam is a symptom of a bigger problem.
I never suggested that Steam doesn’t need improvement. There is extremist content being posted. But it is definitely part of a larger (frankly, much more obvious) problem. Calling attention to a root cause is just not whataboutism.
From another article talking about this:
For years, Sen. Warner, a former tech entrepreneur, has been raising the alarm about rise of hate-fueled content proliferating online, as well as the threat posed by domestic and foreign bad actors circulating disinformation. Recently, he pressed directly for action from Discord, another video game-based social networking site that is hosting violent predatory groups that coerce minors into self-harm and suicide. He has also called attention to the rise of pro-eating disorder content on AI platforms. A leader in the tech space, Sen. Warner has also lead the charge for broad Section 230 reform to allow social media companies to be held accountable for enabling cyber-stalking, harassment, and discrimination on their platforms.
The linked Section 230 Reform details
He’s targeting all kinds of social media, not just gaming platforms.
Then, good. I just hope they’re being tackled by order of affected users.
You literally said “what about” in your comment. You specifically argued that the problem lay elsewhere, and Steam is just a symptom. Attempting to absolve Steam of culpability in the problem because “games get blamed above other media” is absolutely whataboutism. It’s a bad argument.
You literally said “what about” in your comment.
Do you legitimately think that any use of the words “what about” makes something whataboutism?
You specifically argued that the problem lay elsewhere
Again, you seem to have missed the point of the comment. I did not deny that Steam needs improvement. Things can be symptoms of larger problems, and calling that out is not whataboutism (to the contrary, the purpose of whataboutism is to suggest that there is no problem with item X – not that item X is a symptom of item Y).
Edit: clarity
Do you legitimately think that any use of the words “what about” makes something whataboutism?
No, that’s not what makes it whataboutism. That’s just a funny bit of your comment. What makes it whataboutism is your continued insistence that the problematic behavior is sourced from elsewhere. That’s not how things work. The right-wing extremism on Steam isn’t a symptom of extremism elsewhere. It isn’t sourced from elsewhere. It’s there on Steam, because the source for it is the same on Steam as it is on Twitter, right-wing extremist users. Suggesting that it is derived from the other sites implies that Valve is less responsible for it than other sites, which doesn’t make any sense. Furthermore, your argument in your comment is based on your perception of victimhood of video games by other media, which isn’t relevant to the conversation at all.
And finally, the fact that Steam supposedly has, by your estimation and without any supporting evidence, less right-wing extremism than other sites doesn’t make the problem better or worse for Valve. It’s still a problem, and it’s one they have to deal with. Not twitter, not Facebook, and not anyone else.
your continued insistence that the problematic behavior is sourced from elsewhere
So you’re suggesting that Steam is the source of the extremist behavior we see across a broad spectrum of other media?
For someone literally arguing about argumentation, it sure is hard to see your point.
No, you just don’t seem to be understanding what I’m saying, or the point of the article linked. The source is the users, of course. What I’m saying is that they didn’t come from twitter. They’ve always been on Steam, just as they’ve always been on twitter or facebook.
And so, it logically follows that if you blame twitter for not dealing with users like that, then you must, by necessity, blame Valve for not dealing with them either.
Kinda stretching it aren’t they?
Google says Steam has 132 million monthly active users. Even if you count Pepe (which is absurd, the vast majority of use of it has nothing to do with anything hateful), that’s still far under 1% of users.
But that number would belittle the fake outrage and the side payments would stop.
Pepe is a beloved internet meme, not a symbol of hate. Rightoid asshats need to leave pepe and doge the fuck alone. >:(
I thought it came from 4chan, but it actually comes from Myspace. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_the_Frog
Wtf pepe is considered alt-right because alt-right uses them sometimes??? I hear they also use English! Maybe English needs to get banned!
They didn’t just use it sometimes, they were using it as an intentional dog whistle, that is the difference. Part of dog whistling is choosing something that, otherwise, has had no real relationship to the thing it is being used as a dog whistle for.
so they can choose anything and we just have to stop using it because its their dogwhistle now?
No, but you have to understand that it now comes with the context of being a WP dog whistle. The symbolism of the Nazis weren’t anything to their ideology before hand. They had widespread use for thousands of years. Now they, especially the primary one, is all but verboten in the west, and people who use things, like the swastika, as religious symbols, even know to tread with caution using it in the west. White hoods, and robes, have been used in cultural/religious regalia forever. However, you don’t use them in the US unless you consider being mistaken for a klan memeber.
Can we reclaim pepe? Probably, it was minor compared to the aforementioned things, and the creator has done a lot to kibosh the commercial use of it from right wing people. However, it was that, and that context doesn’t just disappear because you don’t like it.
There’s a whole documentary about reclaiming pepe called “feels good man”
The more we discourage people from using pepe because WP and shitheads, the more they win.
what if they start using this as weapon to deny us things?
to me it’s kind of kind the nazi bar thing. if you’re at a bar with 2 Nazis, and you’re not a nazi, you’re still hanging out at a nazi bar.
they fucking adore this frog. no other group has embraced it as strongly or consistently. I’m quite happy to let an old ass meme die because i find it distasteful now that it’s the favorite meme of nazis.
Except in this instance the bar is the meme and you can’t stop the Nazis from using it no matter what you do. Even if you move on to some other meme they can just as easily follow you, now no one knows what’s acceptable or not and for how long.
Same shit happened to the swastika. It comes from Hinduism, still widely used there, in the West it also used to be a symbol of good luck before the 30’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
The counter-clockwise one would have been the more fitting nazi symbol for Night and the Goddess of Death. Had to think about “Are we the baddies”
Korrekt!
deleted by creator
Wasn’t it co-opted by racists around 2016 or something? They also took the “OK” finger gesture from the circle game, the fuckers.
They did, but I don’t think they still have them.
Pepe is now (or again) a beloved element of Twitch chat, and the OK symbol… I dunno, that was eight years ago. I just don’t hear anybody talking about it, unless it’s to half remember that it’s bad now or something.
The whole OK symbol thing was literally a false flag by 4chan to clown on the news media’s fervor at the time to label things as racist dog whistles, specifically the whole Pepe shit that was going on.
The fucking thread that started it was (paraphrasing): “Hey guys, do you think the news media would be stupid enough to believe the OK hand sign is a white power dog whistle? [Image of WP poorly traced over the OK hand symbol]”
Obviously, if you get your kicks out of pretending to be a fool, you shouldn’t be surprised when you find yourself in the presence of actual fools. That also very much applies to the type of edgelords on 4chan that thought it would be funny to “pretend to be” racists, or at least to have discovered a racist hate symbol. Eventually enough people will take it seriously that the original “joke” (if you can even call it that) will be lost.
They even admit that pepe can be used in perfectly normal ways, yet they show it’s the number one most used one. That’s crazy to me lmao
Wait, is just using a Valknut considered a hate symbol? I was under the impression that it was a pretty common “I like Vikings/Odin/Paganism” type symbol… Same with Tyr tbh.
The issue is that the Venn diagram of people interested in vikings/odinism and racists bigots is almost just a circle
I enjoyed the Vikings tv series, particularly the early seasons with Ragnar. I especially liked when they wove in religion and mysticism into the episodes. A lot of people enjoyed the series at the time, it was objectively popular. Having an interest in something well represented in popular culture does not make you a de facto racist bigot.
There’s a more likely argument to make, that within the population of white nationalist racist bigots, there’s an overrepresentation of interest/obsession with Vikings/Odinism.
This is hyperbole. A large amount of racists and bigots are into norse stuff? Maybe. Almost all people in the norse stuff are racists and bigots? High doubt, and shouldn’t be allowed to be coopted anyway. Loki is one of the few ancient figures with some gender fluid markings as it is.
You’re right, but 100% of the people I’ve encountered that were REALLY into Norse stuff specifically, rather than a general interest in history, were white supremacist.
That’s a really small sample size and small point of view, isn’t it?
Most anecdotes are.
I’m interested in Norse mythology for stories like the time Thor had to wear a dress to get back his hammer. I bet he looked hot in that dress.
This is fair. I am usually not in spaces where I’d see it much but have heard tell. Part of why I say it is to not have people feel shamed if they just generally like the culture/pop aesthetic involved without any baggage and to encourage people to do what they can to counter co-opt attempts
Not sure I believe that for a minute. There’s definitely a group there, nobody can deny that, but Norse mythology is incredibly popular among leftists too - I say this as somewhat of a Norse mythology leftist, whose favorite viking/odinist/pagan band preaches unity and kindness among all people and is fronted by a polyamorous bisexual - there’s a lot to love in the mythos and the factual history, and it appeals to a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons.
What band is that? I’m always interested in checking out new music.
How is the PFLP a hate symbol LMAO
Palistine? Really?
Moon Man? Like the old McDonald’s commercial? How the fuck is that a hateful or extremist symbol? Because anyone who remembers it must be extreme for burgers?
He got reused in the mid 2010s as a very racist meme where people would make him sing some truly heinous shit, actually
Defunctland (I think) did a video on Mac Tonight that mentions it in passing, if you’re curious open a private browsing window and look it up, you can likely find the memes still
Why do mods hate Hindus???
Removed by mod
Til that the gate of the Auschwitz extermination camp is an extremist or hateful symbol.
I’m sorry that you had to find out this way.
NGL, when I first saw Warner making a public fuss over this, I had a bit of a reaction. Like, no one comes after my boy steam, I like my games and I like my platform. And maybe it’s because I don’t engage in many public multiplayer games these days, but I just haven’t really come across this extremist content frequently enough to feel Congress needs to get involved.
But…
I can see from the comments, my anecdotal experiences aren’t the whole picture. And I do get that sometimes in an otherwise free market, regulation is necessary to prevent a situation where a company does the right thing and then suffers financially from the backlash/boycott that ensues. Better to let the government be the ones to take the heat by those that get upset by the moderation.
But I also kind of agree with the sentiment, Congress needs to clean up its own hate speech and ethics, before further legislating what everyone else should be doing.
