eh taj steam! 🙂
The organization found 1.83 million unique pieces of “extremist or hateful content” from 1.5 million unique users in 73,824 groups. The content included “explicitly anti-Semitic symbols” and “tens of thousands of instances” of users showing support for foreign terrorist groups. The online gaming community even included an alarming number of “copypastas,” more than half of which were variations of Nazi swastikas.
The report also found a “significant number” of Steam avatars with hateful symbols. Investigators uncovered 827,758 users with extremist or racist-signaling avatar images including the cartoon character Pepe the Frog in Nazi regalia or adorned with stereotypical tropes and looks, swastikas, the white supremacist skull or “siege” mask and the Nazi Eagle. Another 15,129 avatars contained images of flags, emblems or logos of terrorist groups, the majority of which referred to the jihadist group ISIS.
The ADL even uncovered images that “glorify violent extremists” and violent hate crimes. The report found references to and stills from tragedies like the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand shooting and the stabbing of five people in Eskisehir, Turkey committed by an 18 year old wearing neo-Nazi imagery.