Valve accused of hosting millions of ‘extremist and hateful’ posts on Steam-Adam Starkey-Entertainment – Metro

Steam is Valve’s big money maker (Valve)

A report has accused Valve of ‘allowing the proliferation of hate’ on Steam, including Nazi symbols and other extremist imagery.

After being on the receiving end of a lawsuit, over claims of overcharging players earlier this year, Valve has now come under fire for allegedly allowing extremist content on its digital storefront, Steam.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organisation founded to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination, conducted an investigation into Steam which spanned over 458 million user profiles, 152 million profile and group avatar images, and over 610 million comments on user profiles and groups.

In its results, the ADL claims it identified 1.83 million unique pieces of extremist or hateful content, and 1.5 million unique users and 73,824 groups who used ‘at least one potentially extremist or hateful symbol, copypasta or keyword on the platform’.

According to the published investigation, this hateful content includes antisemitic symbols, Nazi imagery like the Totenkopf and swastika, and ‘tens of thousands of instances’ where users expressed support for terrorist organisations like ISIS.

It’s also claimed over 1.18 million unique instances were discovered of ‘potentially extremist and hateful copypastas’, which are blocks of text copied and pasted to the internet, usually for use in viral memes. The most popular copypasta is said to be variations of the swastika.

The investigation identified 827,758 user and group profiles with avatars that contained extremist or hateful symbols, including white supremacist skull masks, variations of the Pepe the frog meme, and the Nazi eagle.

While Steam does have rules to prohibit hate speech and discrimination, the ADL is critical of Valve’s attempts to moderate the platform. The report notes: ‘The fact that extremist and hateful conduct is relatively easy to locate on Steam, raises questions regarding the efficacy of Steam’s moderation efforts.’

The ADL adds: ‘While Steam appears to be technically capable of moderating extremist and hateful content on its platform, the spread of extremist content on the platform is due in part to Valve’s highly permissive approach to content policy.

‘In rare notable cases, Steam has selectively removed extremist content, largely based around extremist groups publicised in reporting or in response to governmental pressure. However, this has been largely ad hoc, with Valve failing to systematically address the issue of extremism and hate on the platform.’

The ADL is calling for Valve to adopt and enforce policies to prohibit extremism on Steam. ‘Valve needs to take greater responsibility in enforcing their policies on Steam, once expanded, and do so accurately at scale,’ the ADL concludes.

GameCentral has reached out to Valve for comment.

Earlier this year, Roblox was also accused of exploiting children and failing to stop illegal content from circulating on the platform, claims which the platform denies.

Valve also makes games like Half-Life: Alyx (Valve)

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