1.83 million cases of extremist and hate-inciting content were discovered on Steam
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has examined the content shared by users on Steam. They found a significant amount of unacceptable material on the Valve platform.
As part of the study, ADL analyzed 1.2 billion unique pieces of content on Steam, including 458 million user profiles, 152 million avatars, and 610 million comments. They utilized an artificial intelligence tool called HateVision for this analysis.
Findings from ADL's study:
- ADL found 1.83 million unique pieces of extremist and hate-inducing content on Steam. This included Nazi symbols and content supporting terrorist organizations;
- 1.5 million users and 73.8 thousand groups on Steam have posted such content at least once;
- Various kinds of copy-pasting, including ASCII art, are popular methods for spreading inappropriate content. ADL counted 1.18 million instances of such posts. 51% of these were variations of swastikas;
- Extremist and hate-inducing symbols were found in 827.7 thousand user and group avatars on Steam. In some cases, avatars featured photos of criminals who committed mass shootings.
ADL has urged Valve to address this issue and tighten moderation on Steam.
