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Steam-Powered Hate: Top Gaming Site Rife with Extremism & Antisemitism

tommib

Gold Member
Have people read the article? It’s filled with Nazi imagery in Steam. FILLED. It’s actually insane. I had no idea it was this bad. What a shitshow for a much beloved platform. Can’t people just use Twitter for this shit like everyone else is doing these days? It’s a fucking gaming platform.

Repulsive shit.
 

Zathalus

Member
The article has some pretty clear examples of Pepe images that most would find distasteful. I don’t really have a problem with those specific ones getting banned, they wouldn’t fly on this forum for example. I’m not sure how anyone can look at those Pepe images and not conclude it’s obvious Nazi imagery.
 
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Gideon

Member
Steam discussions are cancer every page is the same old "Is there LGBTQ representation 🏳️‍🌈?" Or "Is there woke in this game" they need to remove politics from it and it would instantly be 10x better.
 
Steam discussions are cancer every page is the same old "Is there LGBTQ representation 🏳️‍🌈?" Or "Is there woke in this game" they need to remove politics from it and it would instantly be 10x better.
they should remove those kind of politics from games/Marketing/PR first. is not the other way around. and even so it's going to take a while...we are fucked anyway
 
Have people read the article? It’s filled with Nazi imagery in Steam. FILLED. It’s actually insane. I had no idea it was this bad. What a shitshow for a much beloved platform. Can’t people just use Twitter for this shit like everyone else is doing these days? It’s a fucking gaming platform.

Repulsive shit.
X5e9egJ.jpeg
 

Killer8

Member
If you read the methodology of the research, they relied on AI to detect the images. Given how commonly used Pepe is by everyone online who isn't trapped in 2016, trusting an AI's interpretation that Pepe avatar = hateful content is just astonishingly stupid.

They're just reporting the big numbers of what the AI detected so it sounds like a major issue and are then showing the worst of what they found when manually reviewing that. It's classic sleight of hand that researchers always pull to make their results show something they don't.
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
The pepe stuff is dumb but finding 90,000 swastikas on a forum isn't great lol
And from only 1 000 000 000 registered / 132 000 000 maus, oh no!

How dare people post screenshots from Wolfenstein, and how dare developers shoehorn these hateful symbols into videogames, it's basically indoctrinating children, and no one seems to care.

Nazism is spreading like wildfire among gamers these days! And not only gamers, here the other day I even found a bunch of swastikas on Wikipedia and on the Holocaust Encyclopedia! How depressing is that??

Crazy times!
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
And from only 1 000 000 000 registered / 132 000 000 maus, oh no!

How dare people post screenshots from Wolfenstein, and how dare developers shoehorn these hateful symbols into videogames, it's basically indoctrinating children, and no one seems to care.

Nazism is spreading like wildfire among gamers these days! And not only gamers, here the other day I even found a bunch of swastikas on Wikipedia and on the Holocaust Encyclopedia! How depressing is that??

Crazy times!
Why are y'all ignoring all the examples of actual nazi garbage and acting like it's all just screenshots of videogames?

I'm not saying to shut the place down or anything.. hell leave it exactly the same, I don't care, but I've even personally run into dumb edgy nazi shit on Steam, it's not some totally false reporting.

People can remark about it being bad there's nazi shit on Steam forums while not fully agreeing with the ADL.
 
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Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
So, do you like Cinnabons?
Yeah! There aren't any closeby, but I was able to get some a few times after that chat. The stereotype's true.
I'm fine with Steam being the wild west. I like it that way. Words don't hurt my feelings.
Yeah, I think the wild west of the Steam Community is part of what makes it one of the best social platforms on the internet. It feels less modern, more alienating to the tech averse who stick to sanitized apps.
 
Steam forums are a weird place. The only time I encounter them is when I'm searching for a technical problem and Google directs me there. Most boards are eerily vacant, which kind of defeats the purpose of a forum to begin with.
 

Branded

Member
Have people read the article? It’s filled with Nazi imagery in Steam. FILLED. It’s actually insane. I had no idea it was this bad. What a shitshow for a much beloved platform. Can’t people just use Twitter for this shit like everyone else is doing these days? It’s a fucking gaming platform.

Repulsive shit.
Cry me a river. Next we'll get the DEI police who are more than eager to throw their hat in the ring. After that we'll get another organisation to restrict freedom of speech even further. Yes it's cringy edgelord shit at best, repulsive at worst but free speech doesn't suddenly end when you are offended. It's an unfortunate side effect, I know.

Social interaction is already heavily monitored in games and is only going to get even more aggressive over time. Political agendas are heavily pushed in this industry right now. Overall quality is seemingly held in less regard. And the list goes on and on. Next thing you know teabagging in multiplayer games will be illegal lol. The ADL and their petty grievances should be the least of our worries atm.
 
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JayK47

Member
Steam forums are a weird place. The only time I encounter them is when I'm searching for a technical problem and Google directs me there. Most boards are eerily vacant, which kind of defeats the purpose of a forum to begin with.
I use them all the time for technical support. I rarely post on them. They really do not need forums for off topic discussions. Should just stick to the games.
 

neocycle

Member
Discord is full with muslims being VERY openly anti semitic. Sometimes they get muted for a few hours by the server mod.
 

ShadowNate

Member
I don't think I've ever used it (but then again I don't frequent the Steam offtopic forum -- I didn't even know one existed) but I just checked and anyone can:
- Report a post
- Block a user
directly from the options for each post in each thread. (I think a few years ago maybe blocking a user was more cumbersome, because you had to go to their profile and do it from there(?))

So is the issue here that the offending posts were reported but Steam moderators did nothing, or ADL doesn't know anything about any reports and just discovered that there are retarded folks and trolls in the Steam forums? I don't even think you have to do an full analysis to prove that. Take any subject and an arbitrary long enough timespan and you'll likely find many idiots posting baits / offensive memes / offensive "jokes" / and other stupid shit.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
I mean, the sky is blue. Any kind of forum/board will typically go the route of being a hot mess, especially if it's not curated accordingly, or there's no moderation.

Each board is typically moderated by the developers/publishers/third party. Some are able to do it better than others. Off topic stuff is probably hardly moderated because Steam have more important things to do. But if this stuff were to ever become a serious issue, I'm sure they'd just remove off-topic and adjacent boards.

Like others have said, the forums have just become a hot mess in general. The decline is very noticeable, just depends on the game. I was enjoying SH2R a great deal when it dropped and I checked out the forums periodically to see how people felt about it too and it was just overflowing with threads saying the game was woke. Or other false accusations. Really sucked honestly.

If it's really because of the use of Pepe, come on man, we should be so far passed that at this point, lol.
 
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