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Valve must address swastikas and other hate on Steam, writes US senator in a letter to Gabe Newell (www.rockpapershotgun.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In the letter, Democrat senator Mark Warner argues that Valve's content moderation doesn't meet industry standards, and says he wants Valve to "crack down on the rampant proliferation of hate-based content".

The exact hateful stuff he's talking about was highlighted in that report by the Anti-Defamation League last week. Its many findings include swastikas in profile pictures, antisemitic images such as the "happy merchant", and instances of Pepe the frog, a meme appropriated by the far right that - let's be honest - has never washed the stink off. Steam is "inundated with hate" as a result of these findings, say the anti-discrimination group.

While the simmering bubbles of fascism won't be news to the average Steam user (or average internet user, to be frank) that doesn't mean we ought to get complacent about them. It's proof, says senator Warner, that Valve is lacking good moderation.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yeah, I'm definitely in favor of banning the edgy kids who use fascist imagery on the platform, but Pepe is not and has never been that. Just because some assholes tried to appropriate it for a few months doesn't mean everyone else should just surrender it to them.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Yeah, and Chaplin had the mustache first!

[–] TheFogan 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I get it there... but sadly to my knowledge it is lost. Generally speaking when you see the "SomeoneNew has joined the server" and see a pepe avatar... I already pretype the /ban SomoeneNew command watch the screen for 15 seconds... and 9/10 times they say something blatantly racist within that time-frame.

(and don't think that 1/10 that they don't means 10% aren't alt right... of those that don't manage to break the rules in the first 30 seconds, I don't think I've seen one that's gone a week without doing so)

Point is... Pepe is the modern swastika... For those who don't know, the swastika was a peaceful symbol used by many different cultures for thousands of years. But the fact is, using it now just gives legitimacy to those who have attached it to their hateful messages.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The Pepe doesn't quite have the same significance and weight yet. It's not too late. Make leftist Pepes. Drown their identifiers in false positives until they become useless.

[–] TheFogan 3 points 1 day ago

Well I have to say, off the bat, it needs to be not just leftist/marxist. It would need to have large non offensive use in general discourse.

Again my example of pepe for general discord moderation. It's not trolls that show up in say political discussion groups. It's trolls that show up in random game discords or other non-pollitical locations. IE as a moderator I'd also be auto banning someone bringing up random arguements on how we need wealth re-distribution, not because I disagree with them, but because people are just there to talk about a game, and not have political arguement.

and in short that's generally the thing, IMO Pepe isn't... really that overwhelmingly good of a meme where it's just a universal funny to outside groups. But the alt right is the only ones bringing it into more general average Joe locations, along with their hateful rhetoric.

In short for pepe to be recovered it needs... major mainstream Apolitical usage, which quite frankly I don't see often.