You cannot possibly have been alive for the last eight years and find that surprising.
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I mean, lol, I guess I rly didn’t expect he was gonna give this guy a real position. Trump often uses ppl without actually rewarding them too. This is a bad move for himself imo cuz it’s only a matter of time b4 they find a proverbial (or literal) (probably underage) dead hooker in this guy’s closet.
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even the republicans are “baffled” by this decision
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You have to remember that, traditionally, an incoming administration awards the various constituencies that got it elected with some sort of representation.
So the tech bros get Elon, anti-vax freaks get RFK Jr, dog killers get Noem, white nationalists get Hegseth, pedophiles get Gaetz…
Plus…Nothing says I’m going to be your protector, like nominating a dude for AG accused of sex trafficking a minor.
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Trump has no loyalty to anyone but himself, but he does have a vested interest in surrounding himself with people who are loyal to him. Cronyism often accompanies fascism, and the most loyal cronies are the ones with something to lose if a system with any semblance of fairness and justice were ever to be restored.
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The ADL is at it again, the “anti-defamation league” decides to defame valve.
Back in 2016 they decided to add Pepe the frog to their list of hate symbols, because memes and retardation, which accounts of over half of the supposed extremism and hatred they managed to find on steam. Consider also the sheer volume of active steam accounts what they’ve managed to do here is throw dire accusations at Valve over 0.1% of active users, achieved only by painting with the widest brush they could possibly find.
They are an absolute joke of an organization and why anyone takes them seriously is beyond me.
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Talk about an extremely bad faith take on that article - did you even read it, or did you just decide to become preemptively outraged? Nobody defamed Valve. I can’t speak to any of their past action, but in this case the ADL simply found an increase in online hate, racism, etc. (true) and suggested that Valve and policymakers try to think of some ways to reduce it (reasonable).
This is not some unhinged conclusion. Steam provides a huge, lightly moderated collection of forums. Five minutes and you should have no trouble finding the sort of vitriol they’re referring to.
The world is seeing a resurgence in pro-fascist ideologies, exemplified by Trump’s fascist party just being elected into office by a country that should certainly know better. That Steam’s forums reflect this shift in popular thought is to be completely expected and not at all surprising, no matter how disappointing. Noticing the problem and suggesting that those in power give it some thought is hardly “defamation.”
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No there is no increase in fascism, there is only an increase in what organizations like the ADL classify as fascism. The only rise in any of the isms comes from grouping ever more and more benign and mainstream ideas under offensive labels in order to further demand control and censorship.
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wtf, there’s literally a genocide going on by an apartheid fascist government, fully supported by so-called “free democracies” like the US and Germany, and the extreme right is on the rise almost everywhere, but there’s no increase in fascism???
that’s an insane statement dude
(and it’s not me “inventing” these statements; there are plenty of current Jewish scholars/professors/politicians who state this themselves; you can look it up for yourself)
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You have it absolutely backwards. “Mainstream” ideas aren’t being reclassified, fascism is very unfortunately becoming mainstream. Fascism isn’t just some naughty word applied to distasteful things, it’s a political ideology with a well-defined meaning. Being popular doesn’t in any way exclude something from being fascist.
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Just as I was expecting this is exactly how this would progress.
Politicians picked this packet of BS and ran with it in order to demand that steam starts censoring and banning people.
We’re still talking about primarily images of a cartoon frog by the way which was the majority of “extremism and hatred” they were able to dig up. The vast majority of the rest of it is without a doubt simply edgy teens making crass jokes, which I think they should absolutely be allowed to do.
You really think this is reasonable?
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what i’m baffled with is that you somehow are unaware of the amount of neonazi (or literal nazi as a matter of fact) shit as well as blatant racism, antisemitism, and islamophobia that’s going on on steam
I don’t rly get around that much on the social side of steam but i somehow see it quite often so there must be an insane amount of it, and if this (without having looked into wtf is actually going on with this, and i rly dont even care) is what it takes to get rid of it, i welcome it with open arms
i’ve called out a number of ppl myself regarding this shit, one who’s on my friends’ list and one who was in the same lobby as me and joined my stream, and they claim they’re just “joking” or “trolling” but that rly doesn’t excuse any of it imo cuz unacceptable shit is unacceptable shit; it rly doesnt matter why u do it
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I honestly and truly have seen absolutely nothing of the sort. Even if I had, even if it was so rife as to be even 5% of the user base I would never agree that their right to speech should be infringed upon.
How have you lived for the past 15-20 years and not seen how every time we make excuses and allow for speech to be curtailed, the scope of those limitations only ever increase. The limitations to what remains acceptable thought only ever narrowing.
I do not want my freedom of expression further limited, therefor I will argue against anyone coming to attack anyone else’s freedoms.
Edgy teens say stupid shit, they always have. We certainly did back in the 90s, it just wasn’t forever recorded on the internet, nor was it misconstrued as some sort of organized agenda.
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if you break the law u can go to jail
if you break TOS you can get banned
wtf is this horseshit
hate speech (or inciting violence) is both against TOS as well as against the law (in many, many countries, and it should be in all of them imo)
one’s freedom ends where another’s freedom starts
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Once again I have to question if you even read it. I see discussion of swastikas in both articles, not of frogs. Your attempt to generate outrage by continuing to make up a different story than the one being told is… suspicious.
And claiming this has anything to do with freedom of speech is disingenuous at best. It’s a very tired fascist tactic.
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I just opened the article for the very first time now:
I guess promoting and celebrating ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, Swastikas, 1488, white power, etc. all fall under “free speech” and should be ignored.
[in case this isn’t clear for ppl lacking any sense of reading comprehension, this is frikkin sarcasm]
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Well we have a fundamental disagreement in the nebulous term “hate speech” which
whoever finds themselves in power can define however they want. I don’t think any speech should be illegal.
Incitement to violence is a whole different thing, which is perfectly defined, it is not something you can simply change to include whatever you feel like including at any point. To conflate the two is dishonest at best.
I DO actually think people should be allowed to do just that. In fact Hamas has been celebrated an awful lot lately. If you come up against people saying the sort of things you disagree with you can then either argue with them or chose to not associate with them, but you can’t, or shouldn’t be, able to ban them from speaking. People should be allowed to discuss all and any sort of ideas they so desire, even if they are straight up abhorrent.
When you make ideas illegal you do not abolish those ideas, you only make the people who hold those ideas feel like they are in the right and they will point to their actual persecution as evidence. Those people will still organize in secret, they will still spread their ideas to others only now it will be done in shadows and closed rooms where no counter ideas are present.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, by allowing all ideas to be discussed openly and publicly people get to make their own choices armed with insight and information from a greater variety of sources. The only way our society can work is if we trust that the general public given the option to do so will at large lean towards the best ideas.
Alright, so there’s a bit of context you might be missing that I was alluding to in my first post here and that is the list of things the ADL are actually considering hate symbols. Pepe the frog is on that list, so is the “OK” hand symbol and several simple numbers as well as the name for the currency currently in use in Israel. They have never before bothered themselves with considering context when labeling something as hateful, so I assume they have not done so this time either.
OBVIOUSLY it has everything to do with freedom of speech!
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source:
they’re actually talking about the kind of shit u can see here:
maybe yr the one missing context
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As I said, they’ve never bothered with context before. I straight up have no reason to believe them if they claim to do so now. They have been proven to lie, embellish and misrepresent at every point in the past.
However it does not even matter. The whole point of this entire exercise is to cause a shit storm to give censorious politicians a means to attempt to wrestle control over the steam platform.
So far Valve has done nothing and kept winning. I can only hope this trend continues.
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The only one trying to stir anything up is you. And the thing you fundamentally misunderstand (and I suspect willingly misrepresent) about freedom of speech is that it no more gives you the right to say anything you want on Steam’s platform than it gives you the right to stand in Moo’s living room and say anything you want without being shown the door. You can write your fascist manifesto but it’s not censorship when a publishing house refuses to distribute it for you.
At this point I’ve heard quite enough of your rhetoric to fully triangulate your position. Your ideas are banal, your arguments dishonest, and your position both hateful and deeply uncompelling. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have more interesting things to spend my time on.
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