„Unprecedented” Steam's Analysis Found 1.8 Million Cases of Extremist or Hateful Content. Study Covered More Than 458 Million User Profiles

Source: Valve

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The administrators of the Steam service aren't known for aggressive moderation. Not everyone likes that. The Anti-Defamation League, an American organization dedicated to combating discrimination, has decided to look into it. The result is an extensive report in which the group accuses Valve of tolerating extremist and hateful content on Steam.

The organization carried out comprehensive research. Over 458 million Steam user profiles, 152 million profile pictures and group avatars, and over 610 million comments on user profiles and groups were analyzed.

1. In total, as a result of these analyses, it was possible to identify 1.83 million unique extremist or hate-filled pieces of content.
2. The number seems very high, but the definition of such content used by the Anti-Defamation League is very broad. It turns out that the most common symbol of extremist and hateful content (accounting for as much as 54.6% of cases) is Pepe the Frog.
3. The organization classified this character as a hate symbol in 2016 due to its frequent use by the alt-right movement. However, the group admitted that most cases of Pepe appearing online have nothing to do with hatred. So it's strange to ignore this in a report on Steam.

The oversensitivity associated with the meme frog doesn't mean that Valve doesn't have a problem. During the research, many other symbols were found, which are undoubtedly extremist. For example, 9.1% of them were swastikas and it's not about screenshots from historical games. References were also often made to terrorist organizations such as ISIS or Hezbollah, or images of racist murderers were used, including Brenton Tarrant or Anders Breivik, as well as their ideology was promoted.

The report criticizes Valve for not having a moderation policy that bans extremist and hate-spreading content. Here however this isn't true. The Steamworks documentation specifically prohibits publishing on Steam:

The Anti-Defamation League highlights that Valve has demonstrated its ability to moderate effectively. However, the company does this in specific situations, and there are no systemic solutions that would limit the publication of this type of content on Steam. So far, Valve hasn't responded to these allegations.

However, this isn't the first time the company has had to deal with something like this. So far, Steam administrators haven't decided on any strong actions regarding this matter. This isn't particularly surprising - Valve has always approached this topic quite loosely, partly because in the gaming community, many of these controversial symbols often appear as trolling or jokes, rather than being an authentic manifestation of user extremism.

Distinguishing such cases from something truly dangerous isn't always easy, especially since the company doesn't have many moderators. Valve employs only around 300-400 workers, but the majority of them are involved in other activities.