Bluesky Post (this was also posted on twitter)
I was hoping to find a statement from the aggressor, but it seems to be too early.
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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And ultimately they're still Valve's responsibility. If you provide a platform, you're responsible for what people do on it.
Actually this is the purpose of section 230, to remove the responsibility of the provider in terms of content. The steam discussion forums would be a form of social media and therefore steam as a whole under at least US law would not be responsible for the content that's posted on it.
Please note that this doesn't mean that they can't moderate their forums, section 230 does allow the owner of the platform to dictate what they want on the forums as long as they're acting in good faith.
In my opinion section 230 is healthy for an environment, because it's primary purpose was to prevent an individual from being able to sue the company as a whole for Content that someone else posted, which in my opinion is fair. If someone produced libel against someone, that's something they need to handle with the person who posted it. It doesn't make logical sense for the person to go after the platform that held the content as they wern't involved in that process.
Valve also does business outside the US. American law doesn't clear them of their legal obligations in other countries. And besides, legality and morality are not always the same. Providing a platform for hate speech is supporting hate speech, and as far as I'm concerned that's unethical regardless of whether or not it's legal.
I don't think it's moral to be able to sue a third party for something that another user did though. Like I definitely agree they should have some sort of reporting system active which they do, but it's not ethical to sue someone who isn't involved for Content that someone else did.
Let's look at it from a hypothetical scenario. you've decided you want to run a lemonade stand, you become popular everyone in the neighborhood comes to visit your stand. Your town unfortunately has a quite racist sector, knowing this you have put up signs saying please be respectful , we hold the right to refuse service to anyone, and not surprisingly this group decided to come visit as well, a fight breaks out between that section and another group that's attending your stand. People are hospitalized, instead of them suing the people who caused the injury they're now suing your lemonade stand because you never stopped people of that group from showing up in the first place.
This is comparable, steam provided the environment to allow for the posting(the stand), they provided a terms of service / guideline of usage for the platform(the signs), they provided a reporting system to be able to report the misconduct to get people banned by both forum mods and official mods(the right to refuse service), people ignored the last two systems and did it anyway, and now people are saying that they should be responsible for people ignoring the rules and doing it anyway.
Ethically, they have done enough that the system practical and should work, if people use the tools that are provided
Morally they are not responsible at all since they're in independent third party they only provide the infrastructure and they have put practices in place to help avoid a situation like that happening, while also abiding by US federal laws which is where steam is HQ'd
Oh for the love of fuck. Americans. Your country isn't the centre of the universe. It doesn't matter where a company's headquarters are. If you are doing business in, for example, Germany, you have to abide by German laws. Being American isn't an excuse and it doesn't shield you from consequences for breaking the law.
Also, the big issue is that Valve isn't actually using their right to refuse service. People can spread all sorts of bigotry via Steam's discussions and groups without Valve acting on it. They're providing a platform for hate speech and that is inherently immoral, regardless of what the law says.
I wanted to preface by saying you are the one juxtaposing the American centralization. I clearly specified US in my post to avoid the confusion of different country laws. Obviously each country has its own laws regarding it but, I'm using the US as a default, as it is a US based company. When it gets into other countries it gets sticky, obviously they need to follow other countries laws to operate, but only so much can be done. Thankfully most countries either have an equivalent to section 230, or rely on a takedown style system (including Germany), which absolves responsibility as long as it's taken down when reported.
As for whether or not steam is using the right to refuse service, they do, but they do so when it's reported(they even specify that in their TOS). Their content moderation system is very passive, I don't believe the ADLs report at all because of the faulty data set it uses such as the ideology that since pepe was linked to some hate posts it can be used as a hate post detector, then directly contradicting themselves by saying that they acknowledge that Pepe is not a hate symbol in most uses and that you have to be aware of the situation.
Reading the ADL report, there's a lot of it that I agree steam could do, but there's things that ADL is just falsely seeing as wrong. Such as their claim they have no policy prohibiting hate and extremist groups (incorrect it's in their main TOS) for example.
They state that steam is not doing enough for detecting the stuff, then proceed to give examples of exactly how steam is doing to protect against, such as having a Content report system, having content filters which are very clearly blocking hate and terrorist symbols, then they complained at the fact that steam had the audacity of giving the user the choice to turn off the moderation system, which is a client side setting.
Additionally I noticed they never tried to report anything, A quick Google search of other news companies reporting on the issue explains why I found. Because when it's reported steam actually takes it down. The system works as intended, it's just nobody in those groups want to report the group, and others haven't bothered it seems.
Personally though, I have never not had someone who had clear hate or a terrorist symbols in their name not get banned within a day or two of reporting them. It's only happend a handful of times, and usually it's regarding a clear bullying case, but they almost always at the very least get community banned.