Anti-Defamation League, a US organization that aims to combat antisemitism and support Israel
I can tell they are trying to shut down more Pro-Palestine community again
Many of us have been saying the ADL is shit for decades now.
Pepe the frog and swastikas are the most common extremist symbols found on Steam, according to the report, respectively representing 54.6% and 9.1% of detected symbols.
So more than half of the “extremist” symbols are a meme that a tiny fraction of conspiracy theorists think is a dogwhistle for racism.
Game mods are also touched on in the report, which claims to have found hundreds of mods for games, most notably Garry’s Mod, “that specifically reference mass shootings.”
Who even thinks this is a big deal? This screams boomers being upset about violent video games all over again.
Are you sure they’re not just pissy about the DEI Detected community and want to force steam to shut it down?
Whenever I see a pepe, I assume it’s someone who at least doesn’t mind being confused for a terrible fucking person.
Where did you go for it to be associated with terrible people? It is one of the most used twitch emojis.
Ah, that bastion of social responsibility. If the only thing I know about someone is that they are on Twitch, I’m probably not motivated to learn a second thing about them. One can say Twitch > 4chan > Stormfront, but it’s a pretty shallow gradient.
I had some other thing I was gonna say but you blindsided me there; why the living hell would it be bad for Steam to shut down a community that makes list of games featuring diverse characters so they can boycott them and spread ignorant hate about their developers? Yadayadayadablahblah the first amendment guarantees the right to freedom of speech. But Valve aren’t an arm of the federal government, so it truly would be fine for them to nuke these groups. High past time even.
Fuck the ADLs censoring of Palestinians but I gotta ask, what is even the relation here?
Because both the Palestinian communities and anti-DEI communities have legitimate core messages, and both have members that spread hate.
If you’re willing to let any community get taken down despite them breaking no rules or laws, accept that it also can happen to the communities you support. It is as simple as that.
Diversity Equity Inclusion
If you’re against those things its because you bought the fucking timeshare like a real tool. You bought the monorail, you’ve been sold a bill of goods. You’re being grifted by people trying to collapse the social order for a quick buck. From the Youtubers who don’t brush their teeth to big money investors setting the decades long culture war agendas to the anonymous state actors pushing it all for geopolitical gains, you’ve been fucking HAD into repeating Nazi talking points. For over ten fucking years now.
Whats the DEI group doing? Making lists of games including blacks, browns, queers, etc etc, then declaring WE BOYCOTT THESE GAMES BECAUSE WE DO NOT LIKE ANY DIVERSITY. Then you raid the review page and leave hatespeech on it and flood 4chan with a bunch of schizoposts about a random sensitivity reading company. The Shadow Government that controls this tiny sensitivity reading outfit apparently wants to ruin specifically video games even though they are the most devastatingly wealthy private investment group coupled with a private military on this planet and could do just about anything in this world built for and run by rich men.
The DEI censoring groups are right wing extremists trying to train gamers into hate crime afficianados. And they are all ultimately pawns for the real goal of the movement which is to put all non-whites and non-males back in the fucking box even in our own realms of fictive escape.
Drop this horse shit about freedom of speech on the world wide web. These debates over online censorship brought us Trump, again. He will proceed to advance this agenda of censorship of non-white and non-male media because he is a funny veneer of a real Nazi working for hardcore bonafide serious Nazis with blood gold coffers. To do business in North America, Steam will kowtow to that agenda, because they are, after all, only a business. So there is no debate about censorship because we’ve left the realm of hypotheticals. Were you about to call me out on advocating for censorship by a private corporation over their own fucking forums? Don’t bullshit me. The mass hatred of the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace AND in society, even if they were coopted by corporate brainwashers to advertise themselves as desireable to work at, signals only one thing; and that is mass murder on the horizon, machete murdering your Tutsi neighbors growing as a positive vibe in the American noosphere if you will. Your movement is a Nazi radicalization pipeline, AGAIN. Enjoy living in denial while you facefuck the fun out of your own hobby and lose whats left of your mind to the dulcett tones of the new generation of unwashed Goebbels imitators.
I’ll have to make 3 major points here.
1:
I’m against DEI because it fundamentally goes against my core belief that everyone deserves the same opportunity. That we have equality. As long as we have equality, inclusion comes naturally. Diversity doesn’t necessarily, because gender and culture influences preferences, so groups will naturally flow towards certain professions and there is nothing wrong with that. The idea that there is a patriarchy gatekeeping professions is a conspiracy theory with no evidence.
DEI are corporate goals made so they can collect government funds and get tax breaks. Do you think these corpos give two shits about you? Equity is fundamentally discriminatory and labelling people based on their skincolor, gender, sexuality, and I’m very much against discrimination and this stereotyping mindset.
If I had the power to do so, I would enforce a blind equality policy that forbids corporations from asking or looking up the ethnicity, gender and sexuality of their candidates for jobs, and I would implement a central job hunting system where you take interviews and fill application without revealing anything about yourself that could be used to discriminate against you. A pure skill and vide testing system. That is equality. That is fair.
2:
Now about why DEI in games is considered bad. It really isn’t. But being preachy and focusing on it over the quality of the game itself ruins the fun. No one wants to be lectured about trans rights and feminism when they’re playing games. no one wants political agendas shoved down their throats, and that’s what the DEI detected group looks for.
Sure, there are some members going on some unhinged rant about how this one character is female, therefore game bad. As I said, there are hateful people in these groups too, but it’s not the core message. It’s the talking down to players, and presenting a one-dimensional ultimate truth or be racist kind of mentality that pisses people off.
BG3 has a diverse and inclusive story, but it isn’t DEI or woke, because it doesn’t preach it like the Bible at the expense of gameplay and writing quality like what the veilguard and Concord did.
3:
Finally about freedom of speech. Only someone who has never had their freedom of speech taken away would be against freedom of speech. Of course freedom of speech is fundamental. Of course there is no question whatsoever that we should have it, and of course freedom of speech will allow clashing ideals, that’s the point.
You cannot have an entity decide what the absolute truth is and label everyone against it a fascist or Nazi or sexist. That is what radicalizes the left and right. Twitter before Elon bought it radicalized the right, not X. X is the result of the radicalized right.
You think free speech brought Trump? Censorship brought Trump. The one-dimensional “my way or you’re a Nazi” camp brought Trump, and the radicalized right grew larger by being silenced. Now that they’ve grown so big that you no longer can silence them, Trump wins, and we will need free speech to defeat the far right.
I’m not far-right, I’m a social Democrat who grew up in Sweden. We are essentially on the same side but with different ideas on how to get to the same goal. Censorship ain’t it, fact-checking and calling out misinformation is. Steam doesn’t need moderation as much as it needs something like community notes, and the internet is in dire need of a platform that allowes users to easily call out misinformation and reward people who do, but for that we also need a platform that has all the facts and can link facts to arguments and help users come to a logical conclusion, and then we need a browser plugin that can reference these facts and warn users when misinformation is found. That is how you defeat the far right.
Who even thinks this is a big deal? This screams boomers being upset about violent video games all over again.
While its not a big deal, at least for Gmod specifically, they really could use some further moderation. I’ve seen some pretty reprehensible stuff there. The most recent example that comes to mind is “Burning Ukrainian Soldiers” on the front page (complete with combat footage to compare against and racist description of Ukranians), but that sort of thing is not rare at all.
The Steam Community is a cesspool, and a good part of that is owed to the lack of any centralized moderation. Game communities are moderated by publishers, developers, or their chosen volunteers or employees. If a game is forgotten, its community becomes totally unmoderated, and there’s nothing like Reddit’s auto-bans to prune these abandoned communities.
Also… pretty sure they just let community moderators do anything they want as long as it’s not outright illegal.
I understand Steam not wanting to moderate the absolute flood of user-created content of its thousands of games (on their own), but then, it probably shouldn’t force community forums on every single one of its games when the developers can’t or don’t want to moderate them.
(Also, the ADL doesn’t recognize the ongoing genocide of Palestinians so maybe we should just ignore what they think.)
It’s the same in most gaming related communities, as it’s largely the same people that inhabit them.
