ADL Targets Digital Video Game Platforms as New Frontier for Orwellian Censorship
Shane Trejo
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The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is now targeting popular online video game platforms to spread its Orwellian censorship regime.
Daniel Kelley, who works as the assistant director for the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, told Gamesindustry.biz that his organization is looking to impose controls on video game platforms, which serve as a last bastion of freedom of speech.
“On the one hand, games are media,” Kelley said. “You can talk about hate and harassment in the same terms you talk about it with movies or TV. Whose stories are being told? Who’s being included, who’s being excluded?
“At the same time, online games are social platforms. A comic book is not a social platform, so the fandom that exists around it exists on platforms that are not necessarily run by the comics industry. The game industry is creating social spaces. Online games are social spaces, so the responsibility for the form that hate and harassment take in those spaces is the responsibility of the companies that make those games,” he added.
The ADL is setting their sights on Steam, an online video game platform that features popular games such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike, and Blizzard, a platform that features popular games like Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Hearthstone. They want these platforms to institute censorship and are initiating a pressure campaign to coerce them into bending to their will.
“There is a lot the game industry could learn from the past ten years around hate, harassment, and extremism in social media that could be applied to game spaces as they become more social,” Kelley said, noting that he hopes that gaming platforms replicate the restrictive policies of monolithic tech platforms.
Kelley wants the video game companies to employ social engineering tactics in order to combat wrong-think in its customers.
“If we’re building this interactive space, how do we not just kick out the worst of the worst, but what is that pathway to radicalization, [or] the pathway to reforming folks in these spaces? It’s a super interesting question,” Kelley said.
He added: “It requires more research, and it requires more transparency from the game industry to say, ‘We tried X and it didn’t work. Or it did work, and here’s how you can replicate it in your game.’”
Kelley singled out Valve, the parent company behind Steam, for refusing to bow to the censorship agenda, even though they restrict certain content that is deemed abusive.
He said: “Valve has been actively pushing against this kind of work. At the same time Discord and Twitch were expanding their policies around hate, harassment, and extremism, that was around the same time [Valve] was like, ‘We allow anything except for trolling and illegal content.'”
“From my understanding, there are a lot of efforts going on at a lot of companies, but in my mind, [Valve has] the longest way to go,” Kelley added.
Kelley uses his leftist special interest group’s ginned up studies to reinforce the need for an Orwellian crackdown campaign on digital video game platforms.
“The reason why it’s important to address hate and harassment in these spaces is because of the meaningful experiences people can and do have in these spaces, and the need to democratize or make sure that these spaces are available, safe, and inclusive for all people,” he said.
“The norms that come up in the qualitative research is that women and people of color go into game spaces and just turn off the mic and don’t speak, because they know if they speak, they’ll be identified, targeted, and harassed. That’s just the reality of how they play. But I think it speaks to the power of games that they do continue to play… The work we’re committed to here is changing norms so that everyone has the same chance to have the same deep, social, playful, enriching experiences that folks can have in that environment,” he added.
The ADL will not stop until every aspect of society is controlled and dominated by political correctness. They are the enforcement arm of Big Brother and enemies of mankind.
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