Extremism finds fertile ground in gamer chat rooms

There are rules that people must agree to before joining Unloved, a private discussion group on Discord, the messaging service popular among video game players. One rule: “Don’t disrespect women.”

For those within, Unloved serves as a forum where about 150 people embrace a misogynistic subculture in which the members refer to themselves as “incels,” a term that describes those who identify as involuntarily celibate. They share some innocent memes, but also joke about school shootings and debate the attractiveness of women of different races. Users in the group – known as a server on Discord – can enter smaller rooms for voice or text chats. The name for one of the rooms refers to rape.

In the vast and growing world of gaming, such views are easy to find both within some games themselves and on social media services and other sites, such as Discord and Steam, used by many gamers.

The leak of a trove of classified Pentagon documents on Discord by an Air National Guardsman who held extremist views led to renewed attention on the fringe of the $184 billion gaming industry and how discussions in its online communities can spill over into the physical world. manifest.

a reportreleased Thursday by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, underscored how entrenched misogyny, racism, and other extreme ideologies have become in some video game chat rooms, and offered insight into why people who play video games or socialize online seem to be particularly susceptible to such views.

The people who spread hate speech or extreme views have a far-reaching effect, the study argued, even though they are far from the majority of users and occupy only a fraction of these services. These users have built virtual communities to spread their harmful views and recruit impressionable young people online with hateful and sometimes violent content – ​​with relatively little public pressure that social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have faced.

The center’s researchers conducted a survey across five of the world’s largest gaming markets – the United States, Britain, South Korea, France and Germany – and found that 51 percent of those who played online said they opposed extremist statements. come into multiplayer games during the past year.

“It may be a small number of actors, but they are very influential and can have a huge impact on gamer culture and people’s experiences in real-world events,” said the report’s author, Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat.

The video game world, traditionally male-dominated, has long struggled with problematic behaviors such as GamerGate, a long-running harassment campaign against women in the industry in 2014 and 2015. In recent years, video game companies have pledged to improve their work culture and hiring processes.

Gaming platforms and adjacent social media sites are particularly vulnerable to the reach of extremist groups because of the many impressionable young people who play games, as well as the relative lack of moderation on some sites, the report said.

Some of these bad actors speak directly to other people in multiplayer games, such as Call of Duty, Minecraft, and Roblox, using in-game chat or voice features. Other times, they turn to social media platforms, such as Discord, which first gained prominence among gamers and have since gained wider appeal.

Among those surveyed in the report, between 15 and 20 percent who were under the age of 18 said they had seen statements supporting the idea that “the white race is superior to other races,” that “a particular race or ethnicity must be be banned or eliminated’ or that ‘women are inferior’.

In Roblox, a game that allows players to create virtual worlds, players reenacted Nazi concentration camps and the massive re-education camps the Chinese communist government built in Xinjiang, a predominantly Muslim region, the report said.

In the World of Warcraft game, online groups called guilds have also promoted neo-Nazis. On Steam, an online games store that also has discussion forums, a user named himself after Heinrich Himmler, the chief architect of the Holocaust; another used Gas.Th3.J3ws. The report revealed similar usernames associated with players in Call of Duty.

Disboard, a volunteer-run site that lists Discord servers, includes some that openly advertise extremist views. Some are public, others are private and invite-only.

One, called Dissident Lounge 2, bills itself as Christian, nationalist, and “based,” slang meaning it doesn’t matter what other people think. His profile picture is Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character appropriated by white supremacists.

“Our race is being replaced and shunned by the media, our schools and media are turning people into degenerates,” reads the group’s invitation for others to join.

Jeff Haynes, a gaming expert who until recently worked at Common Sense Media, which monitors online entertainment for families, said “to manipulate, to broadcast the same kind of blatant language and theories and tactics to other people.”

Gaming companies say they have cracked down on hateful content by banning extremist material and recording or storing audio of in-game conversations for use in possible investigations. Some, such as Discord, Twitch, Roblox and Activision Blizzard – the creator of Call of Duty – have introduced automatic detection systems to scan and remove banned content before it can be posted. In recent years, Activision has banned 500,000 accounts on Call of Duty for violating its code of conduct.

Discord said in a statement that it was “a place where everyone can belong, and any behavior that goes against that is against our mission.” The company said it banned users and shut down servers if they showed hate or violent extremism.

Will Nevius, a Roblox spokesperson, said in a statement: “We recognize that extremist groups are turning to different tactics in an attempt to circumvent the rules across all platforms, and we are committed to staying one step ahead of them.”

Valve, the company that runs Steam, did not respond to a request for comment.

Experts like Mr. Haynes say the fast-paced, real-time nature of games creates huge challenges in monitoring illegal or inappropriate behavior. Nefarious actors are also adept at dodging technological obstacles as fast as they can be pulled up.

Anyway, with three billion people playing worldwide, it’s virtually impossible to control what’s happening at any given time.

“For years to come, there will be more people gaming than there are people available to moderate the gaming sessions,” said Mr Haynes. “So in many ways this is literally trying to put your fingers in a dike ridden through holes like a huge amount of Swiss cheese.”