Valve accused of "allowing the proliferation of hate" as report finds 1.8m instances of extremist or hateful content on Steam

The Anti-Defamation League has accused Valve of “allowing the proliferation of hate”, after publishing a report finding over 1.8m instances of extremist or hateful content – including Nazi imagery and support for foreign terrorist organisations – on Steam.

The ADL also claimed to have found 184,622 keywords on Steam used in an extremist or hateful context – including “1488”, “shekel”, and “white power” – adding that 1.5m unique users and 73,824 groups had shared at least one example of potentially extremist or hateful content.

That, then, raises questions around Valve’s enforcement of its policies, as the ADL highlighted elsewhere in its report: “The fact that extremist and hateful content is relatively easy to locate on Steam, raises questions regarding the efficacy of Steam’s moderation efforts.”