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[homeworkfilms]

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3dzvw/steam-is-full-nazi-racist-groups

To promote this feature and introduce Steam users to new curators they might enjoy, Steam now features six curators on the front page of its store. On Tuesday, Joe Parlock, editor-in-chief of games website Let's Play Video Games, posted a screenshot that showed Steam was featuring a Curator on its front page named "dank memes for faggots."
I've reached out to Valve asking how this Curator ended up on the front page of the Steam Store, but have not heard back.

That the largest digital video game store in the world and the platform that has largely come to define the way video games are played on PCs put a homophobic slur on its front page is obviously not a great look, but perhaps inevitable given the size of Steam's user base, the amount of content users can create on Steam, and Valve's notoriously hands-off approach when it comes to moderation.

What follows is a fairly detailed exploration of various groups that seem to be organized around racism and/or hate speech that are present on the Steam platform and even promoted as curators to other users.

It seems to be yet another example of why Valve and many other platforms for that matter need to hire moderators and curators of their own instead of relying on algorithms and the wisdom of the crowd.

 

[RichiRamjag]

Going to check this out. It’s been bugging me for a while. Steam is a cesspool when it comes to this shit. See the assassins creed origins forum or the fire watch one after the PDP thing.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

Valve is extremely hands off, worships its own algorithms and refuses to fix/curate anything so of course

 

[Blizzard]

I think I've reported one or two Steam groups in the past that have literal racist slurs or whatever in their titles. I guess it's good Valve doesn't filter because it's easier to search and remove...but I'm not sure how fast Valve is at removing them.

Speaking of searching, though, their user search is AWFUL to the point that I've had to jump through hoops on Google to add a friend rather than having the Steam search actually work.

 

[funkystudent]

Once they are buying games Valve dont care unless someone points it out in a story like this.

The offending groups will be removed. New ones will pop up and go untouched until Someone else will point fingers at them again in a few months.

Repeat.

 

[nded]

Yep, shit's gonna happen when you try to offload most of your moderation to volunteers and algorithms.

 

[Sini]

I'm looking forward seeing a certain user coming here to downplay everything like they usually do in such threads.
Just like in last very similar thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1433618

 

[Enduin]

I've really come to loath Valve and Steam as a whole. They just either are painfully slow to address issues or just outright refuse to do anything to really improve and moderate the platform from both shit like this and curation of titles released on the platform.

Unlike other platforms going to shit like Youtube they actually make a profit, likely a very very large one, and that's all they seem to care about it. Meanwhile their platform and the industry it helped to revive not so many years ago gets bogged down by copious amounts of shit.

I don't think I've bought a game through Steam itself for a year or two now and I don't plan on doing so anytime soon. I want as little of my money going to them as I can possibly can and try to buy from other platforms like GOG or Uplay when possible.

 

[prudislav]

i dont know, this feels lik some of those things you must go out of your way to even find on places like steam
... but sure there is always certain percetage of population who are assholes that wants to socializewith other assholes

 

[RichiRamjag]

i dont know, this feels lik some of those things you must go out of your way to even find on places like steam
... but sure there is always certain percetage of population who are assholes that wants to socializewith other assholes

One of the examples was the on the front page according to the article.

 

[ThreePiMatt]

The only curators on my Steam front page are curators I follow... which is how I assume its supposed to be.

 

[jacobeid]

i dont know, this feels lik some of those things you must go out of your way to even find on places like steam
... but sure there is always certain percetage of population who are assholes that wants to socializewith other assholes

Nope. Valve dishes them right up on the front page for you.

 

[Hari Seldon]

The only curators on my Steam front page are curators I follow... which is how I assume its supposed to be.

Yeah I only see the ones I follow, must be a bug.

 

[JetSetRadio]

Smells like steam indeed. Sue the big lad.

 

[TripleBee]

We can hardly expect Valve to afford hiring a small amount of people to do a minimal amount of moderation and curation.

 

[Zia]

I’m sure Valve has a chart in the works, or something farmed out to the community, that will resolve this small hiccup in the ramshackle Libertopian nightmare that is Steam 2017.

 

[Mifec]

I'm looking forward seeing a certain user coming here to downplay everything like they usually do in such threads.
Just like in last very similar thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1433618

Just link to the posts directly no need for this.

 

[WaterAstro]

They are full of paying hate groups, so Valve doesn't care as long as they pay. lol

 

[KarmaCow]

The only curators on my Steam front page are curators I follow... which is how I assume its supposed to be.

Do you follow more than six curators? I don't follow any curators so it shows a selection of six it recommends. I don't pay attention to it at this point but the worst I've seen is some mindless meme shit like a curator who just pretends to be Hodor (so the reviews are just "Hodor" over and over) so it wouldn't surprise me if the system would recommend vile garbage as well.

 

[Lime]

Perfectly normal company that allows this:

Valve is a terrible company

 

[mullet2000]

Anyone who has literally ever gone to the discussions page for any game definitely is aware of this.

 

[Kolibri]

This issue is less to do with Steam and just PC gaming in general.

Nobody likes to hear it or say it, but PC gaming itself attracts a certain demographic that makes up a considerable portion of it's community. There is pretty much nothing you can do about it.

 

[Handy Fake]

Perfectly normal company that allows this:

85 small penises.

 

[andymcc]

Disheartening to see the overall pervasiveness of white supremacy.

My SO’s littlr brother, who is 14, belonged to a group like this on Steam. My SO has been concerned with his behavior. We checked his profile out of curiosity to see how much he is gaming and lo and behold, there’s a confederate flag icon in his groups. Click the group and it’s lovingly titled “I Fucking Hate Niggers”. The group creator, an IRL friend of her brother, has a Trump Pepe avatar. Belonged to tons of “Kek” and Nazi groups.

This is a 14 year-old boy. I shudder at this shit.

This issue is less to do with Steam and just PC gaming in general.

Nobody likes to hear it or say it, but PC gaming itself attracts a certain demographic that makes up a considerable portion of it's community. There is pretty much nothing you can do about it.

It’s our shitty culture. Not just about games.

 

[RedAssedApe]

This issue is less to do with Steam and just PC gaming in general.

Nobody likes to hear it or say it, but PC gaming itself attracts a certain demographic that makes up a considerable portion of it's community. There is pretty much nothing you can do about it.

Plenty you can do about it but they probably won’t because they are too afraid of losing money in the short term.

 

[eot]

I've really come to loath Valve and Steam as a whole. They just either are painfully slow to address issues or just outright refuse to do anything to really improve and moderate the platform from both shit like this and curation of titles released on the platform.

Unlike other platforms going to shit like Youtube they actually make a profit, likely a very very large one, and that's all they seem to care about it. Meanwhile their platform and the industry it helped to revive not so many years ago gets bogged down by copious amounts of shit.

I don't think I've bought a game through Steam itself for a year or two now and I don't plan on doing so anytime soon. I want as little of my money going to them as I can possibly can and try to buy from other platforms like GOG or Uplay when possible.

I've had a grudge against Valve ever since they listened to a whiny forum rant incorrectly explaining game mechanics, and added a weapon switch firing delay to the AWP in 2004

/hipster

No but seriously, Valve has been doing a lot of questionable things for a long time, it just took ages for public opinion to catch up (if it even has).

 

[jacobeid]

Disheartening to see the overall pervasiveness of white supremacy.

My SO’s littlr brother, who is 14, belonged to a group like this on Steam. My SO has been concerned with his behavior. We checked his profile out of curiosity to see how much he is gaming and lo and behold, there’s a confederate flag icon in his groups. Click the group and it’s lovingly titled “I Fucking Hate Niggers”. The group creator, an IRL friend of her brother, has a Trump Pepe avatar. Belonged to tons of “Kek” and Nazi groups.

This is a 14 year-old boy. I shudder at this shit

The shit stain in the White House made this behavior ok. Before it would have been reprehensible but they're all just open about it now.

Fucking sick. That kid is going to have a shitty time in life with views like that. Do what you can to be a good influence.

 

[mephixto]

Perfectly normal company that allows this:

Valve is a terrible company

Can you put the link to the group?

edit: nvm found it

 

[fuzzyset]

This issue is less to do with Steam and just PC gaming in general.

Nobody likes to hear it or say it, but PC gaming itself attracts a certain demographic that makes up a considerable portion of it's community. There is pretty much nothing you can do about it.

What? You're posting on a gaming enthusiast forum that isn't a cesspool because it's heavily moderated. There's plenty they can do. It's been pretty apparent for a while that Valve doesn't want to invest in community management or customer service.

 

[Chris_Rivera]

Maybe they should....remove that? Would that be sufficient? Or do people really think this was some intentional act by the Valve Corp as a whole? I’m not reading the article.

Clickbait title. The world is full of hate groups.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Yep. It's a travesty, and Valve just lets everything slide, because all they're concerned about is their bottom-line.
So what if there are hate-groups? Can't shut them down and ban the offending users, because then they'll probably stop spending money on Steam.

 

[EndersAres]

Yeah its really annoying seeing that stuff. I used to report that stuff night and day but they never did anything about it. The artwork section is full of all kinds of horrible stuff, from racist memes to lolicon/porno. I just don't see a real justification for any of these things existing. Discord pretty much replaced steams community for myself and my friends. They should just axe those things if they aren't going to monitor them. I feel like they devalue steam at this point. I feel like I never buy anything on steam anymore either and I don't feel bad about it because of stuff like this. It's just become another launcher to me instead of what it used to be.

 

[jaxpunk]

This issue is less to do with Steam and just PC gaming in general.

Nobody likes to hear it or say it, but PC gaming itself attracts a certain demographic that makes up a considerable portion of it's community. There is pretty much nothing you can do about it.

Please go on, I'd love to hear your bigoted views on a group of people.

 

[Alucrid]

I've reached out to Valve asking how this Curator ended up on the front page of the Steam Store, but have not heard back.

that sure sounds like valve

 

[Swarna]

This issue is less to do with Steam and just PC gaming in general.

Nobody likes to hear it or say it, but PC gaming itself attracts a certain demographic that makes up a considerable portion of it's community. There is pretty much nothing you can do about it.

Yeah, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that end users can't do jack shit on consoles without every little thing being moderated, filtered, or pre-approved by the company that made your box giving you the false perception that the user bases using those products are angels in comparison.

Please, start a Patreon or something I can subscribe to so that I can access this treasure trove of valuable and nuanced social commentary that only you can provide.

 

[andymcc]

The shit stain in the White House made this behavior ok. Before it would have been reprehensible but they're all just open about it now.

Fucking sick. That kid is going to have a shitty time in life with views like that. Do what you can to be a good influence.

Without airing too much familial stuff, the mom definitely emboldens him and encourages him to ignore MSM and has a 14 year-old frequenting the_donald.

 

[benicillin]

Valve has left Steam to be an unmoderated platform full of garbage, yeah. I remember the last game of Friday the 13th I played was with an actual white supremacist who spent the whole time shouting racial slurs into chat, was a member of several Swastika-promoting steam groups, and as far as I can tell was not affected at all by me reporting him.

 

[wrowa]

Maybe they should....remove that? Would that be sufficient? Or do people really think this was some intentional act by the Valve Corp as a whole? I’m not reading the article.

Clickbait title. The world is full of hate groups.

How about not giving racists, homophobes, white supremacists and all of the other hateful shit heads a plattform in the first place? The world being full of hate groups doesn’t mean that a platform like Steam has to be so too.

 

[Maintenance]

This issue is less to do with Steam and just PC gaming in general.

Nobody likes to hear it or say it, but PC gaming itself attracts a certain demographic that makes up a considerable portion of it's community. There is pretty much nothing you can do about it.

Please go on, I do love the smell of bullshit in the morning.

 

[Kolibri]

Please go on, I'd love to hear your bigoted views on a group of people.

From personal experience (Gaming for over 30 years), I find that PC gaming seems to attract more "Teenage edgelords" than other mediums. I have no explanation why, it's just something I've observed.

It could just be because they are more vocal on the net. But either way, the worst game communities I have been part of over the years are all PC-exclusive games.

 

[Lain]

I don't have random Steam Curators on my Steam frontpage. The only curators recs I get are also from the few I follow.

That said, curators need a deeper level of scrutiny from Valve, at least for their names. Same goes for groups.

 

[tuxfool]

From personal experience (Gaming for over 30 years), I find that PC gaming seems to attract more "Teenage edgelords" than other mediums. I have no explanation why, it's just something I've observed.

It could just be because they are more vocal on the net. But either way, the worst game communities I have been part of over the years are all PC-exclusive games.

Turn on voice chat in COD on any platform, to verily disabuse that observation.

 

[RichiRamjag]

The shit stain in the White House made this behavior ok. Before it would have been reprehensible but they're all just open about it now.

Fucking sick. That kid is going to have a shitty time in life with views like that. Do what you can to be a good influence.

I dislike trump with a passion, but I check my kids shit daily (including Xbox messages) and he isn’t even allowed to have a PC in his room privately. While trump’s victory has emboldened some, parents still need to parent.

 

[Sad Affleck]

This issue is less to do with Steam and just PC gaming in general.

Nobody likes to hear it or say it, but PC gaming itself attracts a certain demographic that makes up a considerable portion of it's community. There is pretty much nothing you can do about it.

What exactly are you trying to say here?

Edit: Saw your post. I can't believe that you are actually claiming this for real.

 

[Vamphuntr]

Not surprising Valve simply refuse to moderate or control anything unless someone complains. With the amount of money they make out of transactions you would think they could have some employees at least check groups and games for offending content.

 

[jaxpunk]

From personal experience (Gaming for over 30 years), I find that PC gaming seems to attract more "Teenage edgelords" than other mediums. I have no explanation why, it's just something I've observed.

It could just be because they are more vocal on the net. But either way, the worst game communities I have been part of over the years are all PC-exclusive games.

So your saying, just for the record. That there is a pc gaming community that is more toxic than console war fanboys?

While I also have been gaming for more years than I care to admit. I've always walked away from shit communities, that's the nice thing about the internet. You can find communities without shitbags anywhere. But if you want your terrible thoughts on something confirmed, well there are abundant hives of scum and villainy for you to point at and go SEE!

 

[VariantX]

I'm sure Valve is furiously working on an algorithm or a crowd sourced venture to take care of that instead of actually paying someone to actually clean up their communities.

 

[Alucrid]

scrolled through a few.

nazi group? check
homophobic language? check
gamergate group? check
milo yiannopoulos? wasn't expecting that but check i guess

 

[Blam]

This is literally all random. Your previous search results play into what shows up, and what games you've played.

That group shows up because they have reviewed or played games you've played and then therefore are in the list of groups that could show up when you're on the storepage.

 

[RichiRamjag]

This is literally all random. Your previous search results play into what shows up, and what games you've played.

That group shows up because they have reviewed or played games you've played and then therefore are in the list of groups that could show up when you're on the storepage.

I don’t think the author takes issue with how they’re displayed tbh. I’d question why they’re even allowed.