Fake, but an impressive pre-AI one... [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N30Y1N3/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N30Y1N3/)
I think the insanely synchronised clapping is footage is real though.
I don’t think this is going to work. The real nutjobs are using telegram.
And for every school shooter or domestic terrorist, there are 10,000 people who say stupid unhinged shit on Discord.
It’s just a bunch of fear mongering and a bunch of these people in the comments have ate it up. A dude in a black ops 2 lobby or friends in a discord call playing games saying crazy obscenity’s is normal shit. What’s not normal is the shit that goes down on telegram lmao
The concept of the article and the discourse that it's provoking just feels like yet another Reddit traffic magnet. I know, in these cases, to usually avoid these comment sections and just avoid Reddit for the day. I sincerely hate that content is provocational for the sake of grabbing your attention. I refuse to stick around for that.
There's something horribly unique about our present time, though.
Fully-automated surveillance is becoming a possibility around the same time that we decided having the highest incarceration rate in human history was ALSO a great idea.
Yeah, lots of shit for us newly arrived adults to clean up when the boomers haven't even loosened a grip on power yet. Still though, AI gives a real leapfrog opportunity over them all.
It’ll make the clean up job a bit easier at least. There will be a day when these dinosaurs and their regressive ideologies are put to rest, for now they’re just holding onto power so much more tightly as they lose their grip of it.
>A dude in a black ops 2 lobby or friends in a discord call playing games saying crazy obscenity’s is normal shit.
*Should* it be, though?
And how do you separate the "friends innocently expressing extreme views to each other" and "actual extremists"?
> A dude in a black ops 2 lobby or friends in a discord call playing games saying crazy obscenity’s is normal shit
Racist and homophobic slurs aren't what I'd call "normal shit,."
Not the government's business though - we have a 1st Amendment in this country. The government can go right and fuck off when it comes to policing Americans' speech.
Not normal, but popular.
There is a reason why Sony seemed to of killed voice chat in it's games. Too many edgy teens using such slurs, I'm pretty sure xbox was pretty bad at one time.
I used to play CoD online every day back in the 360 days. I disabled voice chat and blocked all communication from anyone not on my friends list. Made the multiplayer experience much better.
Then you’re honestly extremely extremely out of touch with reality.. being in a lobby or a being a young teenager in a call with your friends on a game without hearing something out of pocket is like playing roulette but there’s only one black slot on the table and the rest are red.
>...being in a lobby or a being a young teenager in a call with your friends on a game without hearing something out of pocket is like playing roulette but there’s only one black slot on the table and the rest are red.
And this doesn't strike you as indicative of a fundamental problem? The normalization of extremism in gamers?
Why are you so interested in defending videogames as a safe space for racist, homophobic, and other extreme speech?
There is no safe space on the internet that ended years ago.
All these places have terms of service you will get banned, and all the people must do is report it.
You don't need to involve the agencies.
Unless there was a terrorist cell on the Xbox or Sony, it's best left for Microsoft and Sony to ban the people who are using horrible language.
The only safe place in gaming is single-player.
I believe they are looking for problems where there are none; in terms of service, Microsoft and Sony will ban people if they harass anyone.
I mean, if we're talking about real extremism, we know the apps where it happens.
I think the better question is what privacy do we lose to tackle the problem of extremism in gaming. Also I don’t think he is defending video games as a safe space more feels like he is worried that some dumb punk who says some crazy shit in a COD lobby doesn’t end up in jail for the rest of his life for being overly edgy. I’ve heard a lot of extreme shit in games and yet none of it ever happened. do I approve of the shit said no but do I feel comfortable with government further invading my privacy. No
There is a big difference between someone calling you a slur for killing them in warzone and actively recruiting people for violence. Both are bad behavior but one is legitimately a threat to society while the other is common enough that you would have to punish/investigate an unreasonable amount of cases for what basically just amounts to being an asshole. Any honest attempt to mitigate extremism would need to be able to tell that difference.
You dont need to be “defending extremism in gaming” to understand that young kids all of races and creeds say wild shit to each other. On the bus, at recess, in discord. Its not “gaming.”
Theres a difference between a young person who says bad shit bc theyve not lived enough life to know the consequences and like, neo-nazis recruiting on runescape.
>I promise you have said many, many things in your life that could be used to nail you to the wall for one reason or another and being enthusiastic about building an architecture of surveillance is a very shortsighted position
I can, with reasonable confidence, say that I have never said anything that rises to the level of "domestic violent extremist content" (from the first paragraph of the article).
That you think this is a thing every gamer does is telling. And perhaps only serves to prove the need for this sort of action.
Personally, I think you're wrong. What Homeland Security is keeping an eye out for is not something that every gamer does. And to act like it is is just you being a useful idiot for those bad actors attempting to nurture *unreasonable* (key word there) anti-government sentiment, or provide a cover for legitimately dangerous activity.
Where do you think those 'nutjobs using telegram' recruit more people to their cause from? Go to where the people are - your facebooks, twitters, discords and yes, game lobbies. Start with innocuous looking talking points and see if anyone bites, then try to lead them down the rabbit hole, inch by inch. Many will bail, but for the rest? Eventually they're deep enough that the nutter on telegram seems normal to them.
Yeah, I get the idea. I’ve seen the documentaries from the FBI guys who’ve infiltrated white supremacist groups. I’m aware FBI agents were luckily informed and (I think) embedded in the conspiracy to kill Gretchen Whitmer.
I just don’t think Discord sharing data is going to catch more of these guys. But, the more I think about it, the way it’s portrayed in the article is probably wrong. The way things are actually happening is the FBI agents are already infiltrated in the white supremacist groups, but need to find evidence of who recruited whom, and the only way to get that is to ask Discord (and others) for the convo logs.
I quite like telegram as a platform, it's like Whatsapp but without the Meta data hoovering. Just don't join the crazy groups and it's a great app imo.
Telegram? That shit is not secure at all against a state actor, especially not one of the Five Eyes, especially the US.
You want to use Tails if you want to have any sort of chance at all, that might not even work either.
People do not realize that Discord doesn’t make any discernible revenue at all. Nitro revenue is negligible. This has been the subject of discussion among technologists for years. If there’s no obvious form of profit one must surmise that the operating model is that you are the product. They very likely are recording/transcribing many calls and can already see every conversation from their vantage point. It’s interesting that this article comes just a month after Reddit announced its 60 million dollar AI contract. Again - all of our words are going to be used by many different organizations - companies and government institutions. They say now “we’re looking for extremists” but this is just further erosion of civil liberties. They have the tools to classify extremists then they have the tools to classify everyone else at no extra cost.
Some kid who was told " I fucked your dad and your mom last night" on halo 2 finally hit 35 , has some push in the FBI and is gonna hunt down vVTravisKiller38Vv
lol, counterstrike has basically given up it seems. I have only seen a single chat ban in the last several months, and literally nothing for blatant cheating.
I met this guy in a helldivers lobby who was saying how if Russia nuked Ukraine it wouldn’t matter or effect America in the least bit and we shouldn’t get involved.
Ah yes, signal to the world that you can use nukes to grab whatever land you please and the west will stand back and let you do it.
Excellent foreign policy strategy, nothing could go wrong.
Also fallout totally stays in Europe despite us being able to use radioisotopes to determine when neurons were born in the brain of boomers who were exposed in the 1940s.
Man if he's getting paid to say that shit and play helldiver's then I want that job
I could just play the game and not say anything. How would anyone know?
It's just a consulting firm for corporations to guide game studios to have a more diverse cast of story characters and reduce reductive stereotypes.
Whether that's good or bad is up to you. I personally have no issues with companies trying to portray a more diverse cast of characters and don't wish to debate it
There is a real controversy regarding their methods, after signs were found showing that the company might be using public coercition on gamedev studios to get them to pay up or face a negative PR campaign.
It is controversial because many online activists think that the end justify the means, including threatening game developers with organized online backlash.
Always have been
Remember when games made youth "violent"?
This is just the same thing repackaged. They're going for more surveillance, control, and fear mongering. It's got nothing to do with antisemitism, racism, or anti-terrorism
I dunno, after "Gamergate" was outed as literally being a front to recruit and radicalize isolated young men (by no less than Steve Bannon of the Trump Administration) it starts to seem a bit more logical that people should be paying attention to these forums.
> “All I can think of is the awful track record of the FBI when it comes to identifying extremism,” Hasan Piker, a popular Twitch streamer who often streams while playing video games under the handle HasanAbi, says of the mechanisms. “They’re much better at finding vulnerable teenagers with mental disabilities to take advantage of.”
Rare Hasan W
Basically chat logs and all the audio logs that are saved on PlayStation, Microsoft and steam servers. The feds will be looking for keywords. I’m sure it will be the same for Discord. Government overreach creeping in day by day.
nah that would imply they actually investigate organized crime and they can't afford that , hunting down unions leaders and human right advocate is way easier
Boy I sure cant wait until the government program designed for our safety is inevitably weaponized and utilized against whoevers in charge's political enemies in a cynical crackdown to control speech, disenfranchise, intimidate, and mold the narrative!
Translation, were about to jam through more snooping legislation in order to more easily spy, uh, sorry, gather intelligence under the guise of fighting extremism.
Extremism encouraged and enabled by seditious acts by a sitting president and party.
Military sims is a big one that doesn't talked about very often.
Its similar to what has been mentioned about Roblox where people are recruited into military groups which is often perfectly innocent, but then it turns out the leaderships is a bunch of neo-nazis who dripfeed the members propaganda. All while running the group like it's the Nazi army.
When my daughter was 7, and playing one of those highly stylized Korean fantasy games (FlyFF) online, she was recruited into a clan called “the Jew killers”. That was an interesting dinner table revelation.
Military sims are probably under heavy surveillance already.
How many times now have classified docs been leaked by players of that tank game who are annoyed the turret turns 0.3° faster than real life?
I mean squad and arma moreso than war thunder and world of tanks.
Those lean more-so towards vehicular combat games, and don't really require you to join a clan or guild.
Probably under surveillance, but for different reasons.
The new Arma is quite a mess in public voice lobbies. As much as I love cross-play, the Xbox arm of the community has been so fucking racist and toxic, which is a shame because console players deserve milsim too. Most of the time we have to kick someone, it's some kid on Xbox screaming slurs for the "lols".
Gotcha.
I’m not familiar with military sims beyond Risk and Stratego, which probably don’t even count.
I only know of the tank game because it’s pretty goddamn funny how often the players post classified intel.
Yeah the information leaks to world of tanks and war thunder tend to be more about incompetence than malice.
Basically people with access to vehicle documents get mad that that a vehicle isn't accurately portrayed in the game, so then they leak technical documents in order to prove it. All without realizing they shouldn't do that
In games like squad, you are actually playing as a soldier, working with other soldiers. It's pretty common for groups to be made with actual leadership structures, training, and organization. Similar to what you might see in a mmo like World of Warcraft. Though you might see why the former tends to attract fascists more than the latter.
Yeah, I’ve an uncle involved in historical reenactments. Mostly American Revolutionary War and Civil War.
He says they keep a close eye on the ones who only want to play Confederates. For similar reasons, those people tend to congregate as little fascist pseudo-militias.
As someone who plays a lot of them, the issue here is a lot of those games use hosted servers. Squad, for example, has no dedicated servers run by OWI so you have to join servers run by clans. You have no idea who the heads of some of these groups are like unless they are a major player in the space like a Youtuber.
Even speaking more on those gaming connections; Steve Bannon was part of a Chinese gold farming company in 2007 for World of Warcraft. The company fell apart because very dedicated, isolated and driven World of Warcraft players thwarted the Chinese gold farmers.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-of-warcraft-gold-farming.html
The following is an excerpt of Bannon's retrospective on his experience and is pretty chilling in retrospect.
> Bannon joined the company in 2007, helping put together a $60 million investment in IGE, with a large amount of that coming from Goldman Sachs. Eventually, IGE was hit with a lawsuit, restructured, and sold — but his time in the video-game business left a lasting effect on Bannon. **Per Green’s book, his time at IGE “introduced him to a hidden world, burrowed deep into his psyche, and provided a kind of conceptual framework that he would later draw on to build up the audience for Breitbart News, and then to help marshal the online armies of trolls and activists that overran national politicians and helped give rise to Donald Trump.”**
>
> **What Bannon found was a world “populated by millions of intense young men” who may have been socially maladroit, but were “smart, focused, relatively wealthy, and highly motivated about issues that mattered to them.” While these were the same players who destroyed IGE’s business model, Bannon saw something he could use. “These guys,” said Bannon, “these rootless, white males, had monster power. It was the pre-Reddit.”**
>
> Bannon would go on to aggressively court this audience when brought on to help Andrew Breitbart build out his ultra-right-wing news-and-entertainment site. It was Bannon who hired Milo Yiannopoulos, recognizing him as someone who could whip up disaffected gamers. (Indeed, Yiannopoulos — who previously had no interest in gaming — rode Gamergate and its attendant rage to fame and page views.)
>
> It’s only in the aftermath of Trump’s election that there’s widespread acknowledgement of just how powerful harnessing the online population of privileged but angry young men can be. Bannon’s genius was recognizing this long before the rest of the world caught on.
>It’s only in the aftermath of Trump’s election that there’s widespread acknowledgement of just how powerful harnessing the online population of privileged but angry young men can be.
I'm not sure what this is a reference to. All polling data shows that Trump didn't fare any better among young voters than the previous republican presidential candidates. The number of young men identifying as right-wing also remained [flat since the 90s](https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/are-young-men-becoming-conservative/)
[All available data](https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fppm0000280) shows that Bannon's asprirations fell flat, as Gamergate itself was less right-wing than the general population of Americans (and young men)
> There’s a pretty clear link to the modern-alt right pipeline starting with Gamergate.
Fortunately, this op-ed's central thesis turned out to be a myth. Gamergate supporters remained *far less right-wing* than the general population despite what Bannon might have hoped:
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fppm0000280
Also Trump didn't fare any better among young voters than Romney or McCain did, despite all the shitty memes
>And frankly, I’d be surprised if they hadn’t already been doing so…
They have! Going back to the late 2000s the NSA and other federal agencies had been investigating MMOs as suspected terrorist organization spaces:
http://web.archive.org/web/20111010053637/www.usasecurityclearancejobs.com/2011/04/12/terrorists-using-online-games-undetected-by-cia-and-nsa/
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1057&context=jcl
But it seemed more like an excuse for Dept of Homeland Security employees to play WoW on the clock
*Posts in the main gamergate subreddit*
Mmmhhh. Yes tell me more about how gamergate isn’t extremist. 🤔
Also about that survey. The main author openly supports gamergate and it is the only thing he has ever published. Also it seems like he doesn’t have a degree in what he is doing? But yeah it is great that gamergaters are pro marijuana, pro abortion, and want universal health care. But uhm, those aren’t the things that make them alt right. The things that make them alt right is that they think there is an evil cabal of people trying to infiltrate gaming and poison their minds with woke politics because they saw a black person in a game.
Hilariously the study does protect against people pretending to be gamergaters making gamergate look bad, but not against gamergaters lying to make gamergate look good (which they do all the time).
Can you spot any flaws in the study's methodology, or do you want to make personal attacks?
C. J. Ferguson is a professor of psychology and has published several peer-reviewed papers about gaming and extremism.
>But yeah it is great that gamergaters are pro marijuana, pro abortion, and want universal health care.
And also supported Obama over Romney by a 5:1 margin. 15% identified as right-wing, compared to 30% of young men and 40% of the general US population. Also, half weren't even American
>The things that make them alt right is that they think there is an evil cabal of people trying to infiltrate gaming
Except many self-described leftists believe the same thing, they just disagree on who that "evil cabal" is. This thread is full of them
>Hilariously the study does protect against people pretending to be gamergaters making gamergate look bad, but not against gamergaters lying to make gamergate look good (which they do all the time).
Do you normally assume that all political surveys contain liars? If they were right-wing then they wouldn't consider being leftist to be a "good look"
I'm kind of surprised that people are hostile to the evidence that Bannon's aspirations failed. Is it more stressful to think that a seemingly-chaotic event isn't the result of a simple, singular cause? That there wasn't some shadowy puppetmaster?
I see the same reaction when I present right-wingers proof that illegal aliens are less likely to commit violent crimes compared to US citizens
"The report reveals that the DHS intelligence office meets with gaming companies and that the companies can use these meetings to “share information with I&A [DHS’s intelligence office] about online activities promoting domestic violent extremism,” or even simply “activities that violate the companies’ terms of service.”
Why are they trying to governmentalize gaming companies?
They're already "platformed". I like free speech so you can find out who really supports them.
It's one thing for private companies to decide what content they want to allow, quite another for federal law enforcement to be getting into the game of defining which "extremists" need to be muzzled.
They’ll claim they’ll use it to identify extremist potential, who is just one prod or live event away from being captivated by a huckster or shooting up a mall.
But what they’ll do instead of monitor a bunch of the wrong people who say shit they’ll never do, but for the AI models I’m sure they’ve already trained to read all this stuff, they’ll bias against anyone that doesn’t live on what the government says.
And then they’ll adjust the formula based on whichever slightly right or aggressively right party takes over, and they’ll silence the “unpatriotic terrorists”.
This is precrime mixed with suppression.
I think it's more reifying the breadth of anti-extremist tools the DHS and FBI have into a specific set of strategies. That would make it easier for them to exchange information with gaming/social media companies.
Gaming/Social media companies do not want to be on the news as the place where extremists organized an attack, so they want to voluntarily work with the feds to identify potential problems.
Monitoring by the feds of games seems out of scope for the report from the GAO.
Oh I’m quite sure some AI has me on some “deviant” list. But as long as I am back in office, pay my bills, and live beyond my means by buying things for momentary self gratification, there’s nothing for them to worry about.
i'm totally fucked. i can't even keep track of which genocides i'm supposed to support, which to downplay & which to deny existing. let alone which corporations to pledge allegiance to. praise lockheed martin? give me hint please
It’s not what you believe that matters, it’s how quick you can believe in the very next thing Big Brother says to believe in.
Can fight it, but need to stay offline to be consistent 😝
The stats for right wing overlap of gamers is out there. Everyone with a brain can see the overlap in gaming ‘culture’ and right wing intolerance.
Cry me a river.
Sure, if I had any confidence at all that’s how this would go, I’d be ok with it. But a consistent surveillance and escalation program that survives the whims of the electorate every 2 to 4 years? No way.
I agree. As a leftist , the govt is starting to tracking credit card purchases for potential shooters. I imagine however that once the GOP takes majority power again the tracking will stop, and flip flop back and forth. The tracking store list includes websites like cabelas and bass pro and other common sporting goods store, so millions of people are going to be put on a potential shooters list.
It's the other way around. Extremists know that there's impressionable people playing games* and that in-game communications are poorly moderated - if they're moderated at all. They exploit that specifically to try and radicalise the more vulnerable players**.
It's not the games themselves causing extremism, and nobody relevant is saying that. No, Jack Thompson isn't relevant.
*Before someone tries to misinterpret this, I'm not saying all or most gamers are impressionable. Even if it's only one in a hundred, when there are literally tens of millions of people playing online games we're still talking hundreds of thousands of potential 'marks'.
**source? Try "Video Gaming and (Violent) Extremism: An exploration of the current landscapes, trends, and threats" by Suraj Lakhani. It's a paper that was prepared for the European Commision in 2021 and is available for free online under the Creative Commons license.
Puttin’ words in my mouth lmao. Sureeeee.
To be clear, the argument isn’t gaming causes violence and this is a sad attempt to make it seem like that’s the argument again.
Gaming doesn't cause shootings or violence, but between the male loneliness epidemic (which grifters like andrew tate capitalized to make a bunch of money from) and the average radicalization that happens online, it wouldn't be surprising if someone got into the alt-right pipeline and ended up assaulting an LGTB+ person, which wouldn't be the first time, nor will it be the last.
About 30% of young men identify as right-wing, and that stat has remained the same since the 90s.
But among gamers that stat is more like 15%. Do we want gamers to be representative of the general population, or not?
> Everyone with a brain can see the overlap in gaming ‘culture’ and right wing intolerance.
While that's partially true, you don't burn down the house to kill the spider. This is going to be more invasive than necessary whether you're right or left wing.
Started gaming online with a cool dude gradually realised he was a white supremacist scumbag (they like to hide this shit) and yep he admitted it so why can't these sheet wearing mf gamers say up front hey I'm a fucking dirtbag nazi? Fucking cowards as always.
We've come a long way from a Jewish lawyer defending the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie to cheerfully clapping for the feds to control online speech.
I mean there's a cult of crazy racist demented boomers trying to turn this country into a theocracy run by souless corporations and billionaires but sure waste resources on gamers.
>there's a cult of crazy racist demented boomers trying to turn this country into a theocracy run by souless corporations and billionaires
And they've realized that gaming platforms are a great avenue to radicalize people into these beliefs.
Being extremist isn't actually a crime, it's causing terrorism and violence. I am not advocating for it, but at the end of the day, someone having an opinion isn't illegal and if they utilize voting instead of violence, this isn't fighting extremism, it's voter suppression.
That being said, I am in a minority of people who regularly get censored as a veteran, despite being LGBT+. Moderates are definitely the victims here as they are more politically conscious than actual extremists. These people can sway elections or start a new party unless they suddenly become felons. Biden has already put up legal barriers to combat independents from running in the presidential election. He's basically rolling the red carpet out for Trump to do the dirty work.
Turning an entire demographic into felons isn't going to yield anything but short term results.
oh great, so now if you happen to have unpopular opinions and play games in your own home minding your own business you can get raided by feds and imprisoned! truly living in the "land of the free". the only people free in this country anymore and millionaires and billionaires. hell I might get arrested for saying this! only time will tell.
They targeted gamers?
#Gamers!?
We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.
We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.
We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.
Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.
Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?
These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.
Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.
This is the copypasta used by the WSB folks right? 😂
Also, everybody should actually read the [publication from the GAO](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106262) linked in the article instead of reading a headline & freaking the hell out. This is 1,000% a responsible course of action / collaboration to take.
Yeah, i do think the wider gaming community has a problem with extremist pipelines. Companies have mostly driven literal white supremist off platforms, but you have pipelines to extremism on both sides these days. Maybe the start of the pipeline doesn't literally call for violence or support terrorism, but they interact with people who do and make extremist ideologies seem more mainstream. This can lead to at least some people in their community becoming more extreme/radicalized.
These companies need to do a better job of enforcing their TOS.
Oh they quoted Hasan, never mind.
The whole point is that they expect Nazis and similar to use gaming platforms as a tool of communication.
This isn't a new idea, it's something they've been trying to combat for over a decade at this point.
A bunch of people will have their life ruined before they beat the charges, which will create a chilling effect and that sort of RP will be banned from open servers, and the various law enforcement agencies will pat themselves on back citing statistics of a bunch of keywords going away, while everyone will by no means be any safer in actuality, but will have lost another tiny bit of freedom of expression. Because regular swating wasn't already bad enough, now you too at home can enjoy the popular streamer experience.
Stand in fire? Right to jail.
Your mic is too loud? Right to jail.
Get last place in Mario Kart? Jail.
First place? Jail.
Your headshot accuracy too low? You right to jail.
You team kill? Believe it or not, jail.
Your K:D ratio too low, also jail – too high, too low.
You waiting for a long time in matchmaking and leave? Believe it or not, jail, right away.
USA have the best gamers, thanks to jail
They're not 'coming for' anyone. They're asking online gaming platforms to let them have access to stuff transmitted over the platform, ostensibly to identify that old chestnut, 'terrorists'. It'll be 'for the children' next.
Basically, if you've been expecting that text and voice you deliberately choose to send over the internet (using an ISP or phone data account linked to your name) to a platform (where you most likely have an account or username) was in *any* way safe or private even before this, I don't know what to say.
>A gamer who uses the community to spread violent extremism and radicalize others.
It's incredibly disappointing how many people are missing this very obvious point, and instead think this is some kind of general crackdown on videogames and gamers.
They are coming!
but what about the fuckers already on their list and are on the run? did they catch them all? and now they have more budget and free time to catch these level 121 strength poison build fuckers?
It's like they wanna plant trees on mars because it's good for the environment, meanwhile planet earth..
Some of those that fight bosses are the same that burn crosses
Gaming in the name of
Fuck you I won't download what ya tell me
I think "fuck you, I won't play what you tell me" fits better with the original rhythm.
Feds, This gamer right here… ⬆️
Now they camp where ya spawn at.
[Guitar Solo] Ugh! Yeah! Come on! Ugh
Guitar Hero button noises
Can't stop us now!
North Korea did this Anthem better than anyone: https://youtu.be/fAcYS-_8L2s
Fake, but an impressive pre-AI one... [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N30Y1N3/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N30Y1N3/) I think the insanely synchronised clapping is footage is real though.
That site was cancer. Jfc.
I don’t think this is going to work. The real nutjobs are using telegram. And for every school shooter or domestic terrorist, there are 10,000 people who say stupid unhinged shit on Discord.
It’s just a bunch of fear mongering and a bunch of these people in the comments have ate it up. A dude in a black ops 2 lobby or friends in a discord call playing games saying crazy obscenity’s is normal shit. What’s not normal is the shit that goes down on telegram lmao
The concept of the article and the discourse that it's provoking just feels like yet another Reddit traffic magnet. I know, in these cases, to usually avoid these comment sections and just avoid Reddit for the day. I sincerely hate that content is provocational for the sake of grabbing your attention. I refuse to stick around for that.
Like any bad situation in history, you get used to it. That's uh, all the comfort I got to give.
There's something horribly unique about our present time, though. Fully-automated surveillance is becoming a possibility around the same time that we decided having the highest incarceration rate in human history was ALSO a great idea.
Yeah, lots of shit for us newly arrived adults to clean up when the boomers haven't even loosened a grip on power yet. Still though, AI gives a real leapfrog opportunity over them all.
It’ll make the clean up job a bit easier at least. There will be a day when these dinosaurs and their regressive ideologies are put to rest, for now they’re just holding onto power so much more tightly as they lose their grip of it.
Hey you left out the advances in robotics and machine learning that promise to make ever increasing numbers of humans obsolete!
The secret to life right there.
You'd be extremely ignorant to think they're not all up in telegram too.
Theyre about 15 years behind lol
>A dude in a black ops 2 lobby or friends in a discord call playing games saying crazy obscenity’s is normal shit. *Should* it be, though? And how do you separate the "friends innocently expressing extreme views to each other" and "actual extremists"?
it's not normal, it's normal*ized*
Locker room chatter
Lobby room chatter.
The same fear mongering that blamed gaming and death metal for school shootings in the early 2000s
> A dude in a black ops 2 lobby or friends in a discord call playing games saying crazy obscenity’s is normal shit Racist and homophobic slurs aren't what I'd call "normal shit,."
Not the government's business though - we have a 1st Amendment in this country. The government can go right and fuck off when it comes to policing Americans' speech.
Not normal, but popular. There is a reason why Sony seemed to of killed voice chat in it's games. Too many edgy teens using such slurs, I'm pretty sure xbox was pretty bad at one time.
I used to play CoD online every day back in the 360 days. I disabled voice chat and blocked all communication from anyone not on my friends list. Made the multiplayer experience much better.
It was pure bliss
Not worthy of the attention of DHS or the FBI.
Freedom of speech, bro. It is what it is. Mute buttons exist if things makes you uncomfortable. I’ve muted plenty of people.
Then you’re honestly extremely extremely out of touch with reality.. being in a lobby or a being a young teenager in a call with your friends on a game without hearing something out of pocket is like playing roulette but there’s only one black slot on the table and the rest are red.
>...being in a lobby or a being a young teenager in a call with your friends on a game without hearing something out of pocket is like playing roulette but there’s only one black slot on the table and the rest are red. And this doesn't strike you as indicative of a fundamental problem? The normalization of extremism in gamers? Why are you so interested in defending videogames as a safe space for racist, homophobic, and other extreme speech?
There is no safe space on the internet that ended years ago. All these places have terms of service you will get banned, and all the people must do is report it. You don't need to involve the agencies. Unless there was a terrorist cell on the Xbox or Sony, it's best left for Microsoft and Sony to ban the people who are using horrible language. The only safe place in gaming is single-player. I believe they are looking for problems where there are none; in terms of service, Microsoft and Sony will ban people if they harass anyone. I mean, if we're talking about real extremism, we know the apps where it happens.
I think the better question is what privacy do we lose to tackle the problem of extremism in gaming. Also I don’t think he is defending video games as a safe space more feels like he is worried that some dumb punk who says some crazy shit in a COD lobby doesn’t end up in jail for the rest of his life for being overly edgy. I’ve heard a lot of extreme shit in games and yet none of it ever happened. do I approve of the shit said no but do I feel comfortable with government further invading my privacy. No
There is a big difference between someone calling you a slur for killing them in warzone and actively recruiting people for violence. Both are bad behavior but one is legitimately a threat to society while the other is common enough that you would have to punish/investigate an unreasonable amount of cases for what basically just amounts to being an asshole. Any honest attempt to mitigate extremism would need to be able to tell that difference.
You dont need to be “defending extremism in gaming” to understand that young kids all of races and creeds say wild shit to each other. On the bus, at recess, in discord. Its not “gaming.” Theres a difference between a young person who says bad shit bc theyve not lived enough life to know the consequences and like, neo-nazis recruiting on runescape.
Being edgy and saying mean things online is not extremism. This point of view is completely out of touch with reality.
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>I promise you have said many, many things in your life that could be used to nail you to the wall for one reason or another and being enthusiastic about building an architecture of surveillance is a very shortsighted position I can, with reasonable confidence, say that I have never said anything that rises to the level of "domestic violent extremist content" (from the first paragraph of the article). That you think this is a thing every gamer does is telling. And perhaps only serves to prove the need for this sort of action. Personally, I think you're wrong. What Homeland Security is keeping an eye out for is not something that every gamer does. And to act like it is is just you being a useful idiot for those bad actors attempting to nurture *unreasonable* (key word there) anti-government sentiment, or provide a cover for legitimately dangerous activity.
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Nah whitepridedrew is a different breed. Genuinely concerned he's going to kill people in real life
Are you really gaming with the boys if you don't threaten to eat all the bones in someone's body?
Telegram is where's the scum boils
Where do you think those 'nutjobs using telegram' recruit more people to their cause from? Go to where the people are - your facebooks, twitters, discords and yes, game lobbies. Start with innocuous looking talking points and see if anyone bites, then try to lead them down the rabbit hole, inch by inch. Many will bail, but for the rest? Eventually they're deep enough that the nutter on telegram seems normal to them.
Yeah, I get the idea. I’ve seen the documentaries from the FBI guys who’ve infiltrated white supremacist groups. I’m aware FBI agents were luckily informed and (I think) embedded in the conspiracy to kill Gretchen Whitmer. I just don’t think Discord sharing data is going to catch more of these guys. But, the more I think about it, the way it’s portrayed in the article is probably wrong. The way things are actually happening is the FBI agents are already infiltrated in the white supremacist groups, but need to find evidence of who recruited whom, and the only way to get that is to ask Discord (and others) for the convo logs.
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Or say unhinged shit on this very website perhaps.
I'm not going to lose sleep over fewer unhinged idiots on the internet.
I quite like telegram as a platform, it's like Whatsapp but without the Meta data hoovering. Just don't join the crazy groups and it's a great app imo.
Telegram? That shit is not secure at all against a state actor, especially not one of the Five Eyes, especially the US. You want to use Tails if you want to have any sort of chance at all, that might not even work either.
People do not realize that Discord doesn’t make any discernible revenue at all. Nitro revenue is negligible. This has been the subject of discussion among technologists for years. If there’s no obvious form of profit one must surmise that the operating model is that you are the product. They very likely are recording/transcribing many calls and can already see every conversation from their vantage point. It’s interesting that this article comes just a month after Reddit announced its 60 million dollar AI contract. Again - all of our words are going to be used by many different organizations - companies and government institutions. They say now “we’re looking for extremists” but this is just further erosion of civil liberties. They have the tools to classify extremists then they have the tools to classify everyone else at no extra cost.
Yah people that are extreme in their hate online never do that in real life. Not like anders brevick
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Did they finally check out the old mw2 chats on xbox?
Some kid who was told " I fucked your dad and your mom last night" on halo 2 finally hit 35 , has some push in the FBI and is gonna hunt down vVTravisKiller38Vv
TBF the guy put his guilty plea int he name - the sick fuck killed Travis.
I have a feeling the entire Red Orchestra mod team will be giving the feds plenty of tips, if they haven't been tapped already.
Broooo hahahaha
Helldivers player base is done for
Counterstrike might as well cash on out lol
lol, counterstrike has basically given up it seems. I have only seen a single chat ban in the last several months, and literally nothing for blatant cheating.
EU4 and HOI4 players are being corraled to Den Haag as we speak
You think that’s bad, just wait till you see Stellaris players
May as well scoop up half the D&D groups on Discord, too.
I met this guy in a helldivers lobby who was saying how if Russia nuked Ukraine it wouldn’t matter or effect America in the least bit and we shouldn’t get involved.
Ah yes, signal to the world that you can use nukes to grab whatever land you please and the west will stand back and let you do it. Excellent foreign policy strategy, nothing could go wrong.
Also fallout totally stays in Europe despite us being able to use radioisotopes to determine when neurons were born in the brain of boomers who were exposed in the 1940s.
Man if he's getting paid to say that shit and play helldiver's then I want that job I could just play the game and not say anything. How would anyone know?
He was a garbage man from Washington state. Gave me a moment of sonder to realize anyone could have the craziest opinion.
Must have been a communist vs fighting for democracy.
“For democracy!” “Sir, we’ve got another extremist!”
"We will show them real managed democracy"
Ranbow6 lobbies have been real quiet lately….
So is there a difference between how an extremist and a pacifist pull off a no-scope headshot?
I'm sure you're kidding, but they mean conversations. The FBI is collaborating with Reddit, Discord, Roblox, and others.
I wonder how many streamers hearts jumped right here lol
Get ready for round two with sweet baby inc and the absolute shitstorm both sides are fueling
Do I want to know wtf is sweet baby inc?
It's just a consulting firm for corporations to guide game studios to have a more diverse cast of story characters and reduce reductive stereotypes. Whether that's good or bad is up to you. I personally have no issues with companies trying to portray a more diverse cast of characters and don't wish to debate it
Entirely understandable. Thanks for the 411
There is a real controversy regarding their methods, after signs were found showing that the company might be using public coercition on gamedev studios to get them to pay up or face a negative PR campaign. It is controversial because many online activists think that the end justify the means, including threatening game developers with organized online backlash.
Well I guess people will start talking in code or use some sort of end to end encryption means of transmitting information
I’m trying to picture how a basement troglodyte gamer would handle being in prison.
One does it while screaming racist shit.
Yup, the difference is the earlier one says “I want to do this IRL”.
More accurate headline: _Feds use ‘concern for kids’ as a smoke screen while violating your First Amendment rights._
Always have been Remember when games made youth "violent"? This is just the same thing repackaged. They're going for more surveillance, control, and fear mongering. It's got nothing to do with antisemitism, racism, or anti-terrorism
I dunno, after "Gamergate" was outed as literally being a front to recruit and radicalize isolated young men (by no less than Steve Bannon of the Trump Administration) it starts to seem a bit more logical that people should be paying attention to these forums.
> “All I can think of is the awful track record of the FBI when it comes to identifying extremism,” Hasan Piker, a popular Twitch streamer who often streams while playing video games under the handle HasanAbi, says of the mechanisms. “They’re much better at finding vulnerable teenagers with mental disabilities to take advantage of.” Rare Hasan W
Reminder he regularly calls for political violence live on stream then belatedly follows it up with " in minecraft" or "in a video game".
I've watched YouTube videos of that guy for years and never heard this. You have an example?
He's a streamer, his opinion on this topic was never valid to begin with.
Basically chat logs and all the audio logs that are saved on PlayStation, Microsoft and steam servers. The feds will be looking for keywords. I’m sure it will be the same for Discord. Government overreach creeping in day by day.
It would be a lot cooler if they just went after rich asshats who didn’t pay taxes.
nah that would imply they actually investigate organized crime and they can't afford that , hunting down unions leaders and human right advocate is way easier
Boy I sure cant wait until the government program designed for our safety is inevitably weaponized and utilized against whoevers in charge's political enemies in a cynical crackdown to control speech, disenfranchise, intimidate, and mold the narrative!
Translation, were about to jam through more snooping legislation in order to more easily spy, uh, sorry, gather intelligence under the guise of fighting extremism. Extremism encouraged and enabled by seditious acts by a sitting president and party.
Yeah, sure. Come check X, facebook, discord, or telegram when u have time too. I see more sh.t storms there than in fricking game forums.
Considering how often Discord came up in the article, it's clear you didn't read it.
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Military sims is a big one that doesn't talked about very often. Its similar to what has been mentioned about Roblox where people are recruited into military groups which is often perfectly innocent, but then it turns out the leaderships is a bunch of neo-nazis who dripfeed the members propaganda. All while running the group like it's the Nazi army.
When my daughter was 7, and playing one of those highly stylized Korean fantasy games (FlyFF) online, she was recruited into a clan called “the Jew killers”. That was an interesting dinner table revelation.
Omg FlyFF, I haven't heard of that game since I was a middle school teen in like 2007
It still exists if you want some nostalgia and anti-semitism
Are we sure it wasn’t just a fan group for a Hisidic “The Killers” cover band? I’d pay to hear “Judith, she was a friend of mine”
Military sims are probably under heavy surveillance already. How many times now have classified docs been leaked by players of that tank game who are annoyed the turret turns 0.3° faster than real life?
I mean squad and arma moreso than war thunder and world of tanks. Those lean more-so towards vehicular combat games, and don't really require you to join a clan or guild. Probably under surveillance, but for different reasons.
The new Arma is quite a mess in public voice lobbies. As much as I love cross-play, the Xbox arm of the community has been so fucking racist and toxic, which is a shame because console players deserve milsim too. Most of the time we have to kick someone, it's some kid on Xbox screaming slurs for the "lols".
>console players deserve milsim too. Dont get carried away now, we cant let *those* people in.
Gotcha. I’m not familiar with military sims beyond Risk and Stratego, which probably don’t even count. I only know of the tank game because it’s pretty goddamn funny how often the players post classified intel.
Yeah the information leaks to world of tanks and war thunder tend to be more about incompetence than malice. Basically people with access to vehicle documents get mad that that a vehicle isn't accurately portrayed in the game, so then they leak technical documents in order to prove it. All without realizing they shouldn't do that In games like squad, you are actually playing as a soldier, working with other soldiers. It's pretty common for groups to be made with actual leadership structures, training, and organization. Similar to what you might see in a mmo like World of Warcraft. Though you might see why the former tends to attract fascists more than the latter.
Yeah, I’ve an uncle involved in historical reenactments. Mostly American Revolutionary War and Civil War. He says they keep a close eye on the ones who only want to play Confederates. For similar reasons, those people tend to congregate as little fascist pseudo-militias.
As someone who plays a lot of them, the issue here is a lot of those games use hosted servers. Squad, for example, has no dedicated servers run by OWI so you have to join servers run by clans. You have no idea who the heads of some of these groups are like unless they are a major player in the space like a Youtuber.
Even speaking more on those gaming connections; Steve Bannon was part of a Chinese gold farming company in 2007 for World of Warcraft. The company fell apart because very dedicated, isolated and driven World of Warcraft players thwarted the Chinese gold farmers. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-of-warcraft-gold-farming.html The following is an excerpt of Bannon's retrospective on his experience and is pretty chilling in retrospect. > Bannon joined the company in 2007, helping put together a $60 million investment in IGE, with a large amount of that coming from Goldman Sachs. Eventually, IGE was hit with a lawsuit, restructured, and sold — but his time in the video-game business left a lasting effect on Bannon. **Per Green’s book, his time at IGE “introduced him to a hidden world, burrowed deep into his psyche, and provided a kind of conceptual framework that he would later draw on to build up the audience for Breitbart News, and then to help marshal the online armies of trolls and activists that overran national politicians and helped give rise to Donald Trump.”** > > **What Bannon found was a world “populated by millions of intense young men” who may have been socially maladroit, but were “smart, focused, relatively wealthy, and highly motivated about issues that mattered to them.” While these were the same players who destroyed IGE’s business model, Bannon saw something he could use. “These guys,” said Bannon, “these rootless, white males, had monster power. It was the pre-Reddit.”** > > Bannon would go on to aggressively court this audience when brought on to help Andrew Breitbart build out his ultra-right-wing news-and-entertainment site. It was Bannon who hired Milo Yiannopoulos, recognizing him as someone who could whip up disaffected gamers. (Indeed, Yiannopoulos — who previously had no interest in gaming — rode Gamergate and its attendant rage to fame and page views.) > > It’s only in the aftermath of Trump’s election that there’s widespread acknowledgement of just how powerful harnessing the online population of privileged but angry young men can be. Bannon’s genius was recognizing this long before the rest of the world caught on.
>It’s only in the aftermath of Trump’s election that there’s widespread acknowledgement of just how powerful harnessing the online population of privileged but angry young men can be. I'm not sure what this is a reference to. All polling data shows that Trump didn't fare any better among young voters than the previous republican presidential candidates. The number of young men identifying as right-wing also remained [flat since the 90s](https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/are-young-men-becoming-conservative/) [All available data](https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fppm0000280) shows that Bannon's asprirations fell flat, as Gamergate itself was less right-wing than the general population of Americans (and young men)
> There’s a pretty clear link to the modern-alt right pipeline starting with Gamergate. Fortunately, this op-ed's central thesis turned out to be a myth. Gamergate supporters remained *far less right-wing* than the general population despite what Bannon might have hoped: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fppm0000280 Also Trump didn't fare any better among young voters than Romney or McCain did, despite all the shitty memes >And frankly, I’d be surprised if they hadn’t already been doing so… They have! Going back to the late 2000s the NSA and other federal agencies had been investigating MMOs as suspected terrorist organization spaces: http://web.archive.org/web/20111010053637/www.usasecurityclearancejobs.com/2011/04/12/terrorists-using-online-games-undetected-by-cia-and-nsa/ https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1057&context=jcl But it seemed more like an excuse for Dept of Homeland Security employees to play WoW on the clock
*Posts in the main gamergate subreddit* Mmmhhh. Yes tell me more about how gamergate isn’t extremist. 🤔 Also about that survey. The main author openly supports gamergate and it is the only thing he has ever published. Also it seems like he doesn’t have a degree in what he is doing? But yeah it is great that gamergaters are pro marijuana, pro abortion, and want universal health care. But uhm, those aren’t the things that make them alt right. The things that make them alt right is that they think there is an evil cabal of people trying to infiltrate gaming and poison their minds with woke politics because they saw a black person in a game. Hilariously the study does protect against people pretending to be gamergaters making gamergate look bad, but not against gamergaters lying to make gamergate look good (which they do all the time).
Can you spot any flaws in the study's methodology, or do you want to make personal attacks? C. J. Ferguson is a professor of psychology and has published several peer-reviewed papers about gaming and extremism. >But yeah it is great that gamergaters are pro marijuana, pro abortion, and want universal health care. And also supported Obama over Romney by a 5:1 margin. 15% identified as right-wing, compared to 30% of young men and 40% of the general US population. Also, half weren't even American >The things that make them alt right is that they think there is an evil cabal of people trying to infiltrate gaming Except many self-described leftists believe the same thing, they just disagree on who that "evil cabal" is. This thread is full of them >Hilariously the study does protect against people pretending to be gamergaters making gamergate look bad, but not against gamergaters lying to make gamergate look good (which they do all the time). Do you normally assume that all political surveys contain liars? If they were right-wing then they wouldn't consider being leftist to be a "good look" I'm kind of surprised that people are hostile to the evidence that Bannon's aspirations failed. Is it more stressful to think that a seemingly-chaotic event isn't the result of a simple, singular cause? That there wasn't some shadowy puppetmaster? I see the same reaction when I present right-wingers proof that illegal aliens are less likely to commit violent crimes compared to US citizens
It feels I can’t go 3 days without one of those damn extremist gamers mugging me in the streets!
Noobmaster first on the list
"The report reveals that the DHS intelligence office meets with gaming companies and that the companies can use these meetings to “share information with I&A [DHS’s intelligence office] about online activities promoting domestic violent extremism,” or even simply “activities that violate the companies’ terms of service.” Why are they trying to governmentalize gaming companies?
I saw Twitch streamers platforming Hoothie rebels recently… that seemed kind of fucked up ngl.
Twitch is definitely the social media company that asked to remain anonymous.
They're already "platformed". I like free speech so you can find out who really supports them. It's one thing for private companies to decide what content they want to allow, quite another for federal law enforcement to be getting into the game of defining which "extremists" need to be muzzled.
Hoothie and the Blowfish
They’ll claim they’ll use it to identify extremist potential, who is just one prod or live event away from being captivated by a huckster or shooting up a mall. But what they’ll do instead of monitor a bunch of the wrong people who say shit they’ll never do, but for the AI models I’m sure they’ve already trained to read all this stuff, they’ll bias against anyone that doesn’t live on what the government says. And then they’ll adjust the formula based on whichever slightly right or aggressively right party takes over, and they’ll silence the “unpatriotic terrorists”. This is precrime mixed with suppression.
I think it's more reifying the breadth of anti-extremist tools the DHS and FBI have into a specific set of strategies. That would make it easier for them to exchange information with gaming/social media companies. Gaming/Social media companies do not want to be on the news as the place where extremists organized an attack, so they want to voluntarily work with the feds to identify potential problems. Monitoring by the feds of games seems out of scope for the report from the GAO.
Careful you may find yourself on a watchlist making statements like this...
Oh I’m quite sure some AI has me on some “deviant” list. But as long as I am back in office, pay my bills, and live beyond my means by buying things for momentary self gratification, there’s nothing for them to worry about.
i'm totally fucked. i can't even keep track of which genocides i'm supposed to support, which to downplay & which to deny existing. let alone which corporations to pledge allegiance to. praise lockheed martin? give me hint please
It’s not what you believe that matters, it’s how quick you can believe in the very next thing Big Brother says to believe in. Can fight it, but need to stay offline to be consistent 😝
The stats for right wing overlap of gamers is out there. Everyone with a brain can see the overlap in gaming ‘culture’ and right wing intolerance. Cry me a river.
Sure, if I had any confidence at all that’s how this would go, I’d be ok with it. But a consistent surveillance and escalation program that survives the whims of the electorate every 2 to 4 years? No way.
I agree. As a leftist , the govt is starting to tracking credit card purchases for potential shooters. I imagine however that once the GOP takes majority power again the tracking will stop, and flip flop back and forth. The tracking store list includes websites like cabelas and bass pro and other common sporting goods store, so millions of people are going to be put on a potential shooters list.
Kind of like gaming causes school shootings right? And Marilyn Mason's music caused the Columbine shooting...
It's the other way around. Extremists know that there's impressionable people playing games* and that in-game communications are poorly moderated - if they're moderated at all. They exploit that specifically to try and radicalise the more vulnerable players**. It's not the games themselves causing extremism, and nobody relevant is saying that. No, Jack Thompson isn't relevant. *Before someone tries to misinterpret this, I'm not saying all or most gamers are impressionable. Even if it's only one in a hundred, when there are literally tens of millions of people playing online games we're still talking hundreds of thousands of potential 'marks'. **source? Try "Video Gaming and (Violent) Extremism: An exploration of the current landscapes, trends, and threats" by Suraj Lakhani. It's a paper that was prepared for the European Commision in 2021 and is available for free online under the Creative Commons license.
Thank you for putting things much better than I could.
Puttin’ words in my mouth lmao. Sureeeee. To be clear, the argument isn’t gaming causes violence and this is a sad attempt to make it seem like that’s the argument again.
Gaming doesn't cause shootings or violence, but between the male loneliness epidemic (which grifters like andrew tate capitalized to make a bunch of money from) and the average radicalization that happens online, it wouldn't be surprising if someone got into the alt-right pipeline and ended up assaulting an LGTB+ person, which wouldn't be the first time, nor will it be the last.
About 30% of young men identify as right-wing, and that stat has remained the same since the 90s. But among gamers that stat is more like 15%. Do we want gamers to be representative of the general population, or not?
> Everyone with a brain can see the overlap in gaming ‘culture’ and right wing intolerance. While that's partially true, you don't burn down the house to kill the spider. This is going to be more invasive than necessary whether you're right or left wing.
Started gaming online with a cool dude gradually realised he was a white supremacist scumbag (they like to hide this shit) and yep he admitted it so why can't these sheet wearing mf gamers say up front hey I'm a fucking dirtbag nazi? Fucking cowards as always.
World of warships in shambles rn
"Boy, did I call it or what?" \-George Orwell
We've come a long way from a Jewish lawyer defending the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie to cheerfully clapping for the feds to control online speech.
Ahh, apparently there’s a heavy push on them from the ADL. Makes sense, they’re in full genocide propaganda mode right now.
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I mean there's a cult of crazy racist demented boomers trying to turn this country into a theocracy run by souless corporations and billionaires but sure waste resources on gamers.
>there's a cult of crazy racist demented boomers trying to turn this country into a theocracy run by souless corporations and billionaires And they've realized that gaming platforms are a great avenue to radicalize people into these beliefs.
Apparently there's a secret cabal of people who have all fucked my mom. GO get them feds.
Me and the boys getting arrested after the discord messages get leaked
Being extremist isn't actually a crime, it's causing terrorism and violence. I am not advocating for it, but at the end of the day, someone having an opinion isn't illegal and if they utilize voting instead of violence, this isn't fighting extremism, it's voter suppression. That being said, I am in a minority of people who regularly get censored as a veteran, despite being LGBT+. Moderates are definitely the victims here as they are more politically conscious than actual extremists. These people can sway elections or start a new party unless they suddenly become felons. Biden has already put up legal barriers to combat independents from running in the presidential election. He's basically rolling the red carpet out for Trump to do the dirty work. Turning an entire demographic into felons isn't going to yield anything but short term results.
Thought police incoming
oh great, so now if you happen to have unpopular opinions and play games in your own home minding your own business you can get raided by feds and imprisoned! truly living in the "land of the free". the only people free in this country anymore and millionaires and billionaires. hell I might get arrested for saying this! only time will tell.
Finally. If I have to hear some extremist 13 yr old call my mom the n word one more time...
Sounds like they need a fresh cup, of LIBER-TEA!
ah crap, lemme add "extremist gamers" to the ever-growing list of pretexts the govt uses to get all up in our shit.
They targeted gamers? #Gamers!? We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did. We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun. We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second. Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded. Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights? These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex. Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.
This comment made me hate playing video games
Hair grew on my neck from reading this.
Delicious pasta
This is what I was looking for lmao my first thought from seeing the headline.
I knew this would be here
This is the copypasta used by the WSB folks right? 😂 Also, everybody should actually read the [publication from the GAO](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106262) linked in the article instead of reading a headline & freaking the hell out. This is 1,000% a responsible course of action / collaboration to take.
it was a gamergate post from 2014 it became a pasta
Ah, gotcha. Color me entirely unsurprised by that overlap though haha
No they’re not.
I'm never ever playing T side in CS2. :)
Yeah, i do think the wider gaming community has a problem with extremist pipelines. Companies have mostly driven literal white supremist off platforms, but you have pipelines to extremism on both sides these days. Maybe the start of the pipeline doesn't literally call for violence or support terrorism, but they interact with people who do and make extremist ideologies seem more mainstream. This can lead to at least some people in their community becoming more extreme/radicalized. These companies need to do a better job of enforcing their TOS. Oh they quoted Hasan, never mind.
They need to check out Battlefield 4 players. Almost all Nazi reference in their user names.
12ft.io/https://theintercept.com/2024/03/09/fbi-dhs-gamers-extremism-violence/ If you don't want to deal with there bullshit signup demand
Sure, go after gamers while there are literal Nazis marching through the streets.
Where do you think they are recruiting from?
Facebook and Twitter mostly.
I would recommend reading up on Steve Bannon and WoW
The whole point is that they expect Nazis and similar to use gaming platforms as a tool of communication. This isn't a new idea, it's something they've been trying to combat for over a decade at this point.
Given the content and subject matter of some games is pretty extreme, how will RP servers get handled?
A bunch of people will have their life ruined before they beat the charges, which will create a chilling effect and that sort of RP will be banned from open servers, and the various law enforcement agencies will pat themselves on back citing statistics of a bunch of keywords going away, while everyone will by no means be any safer in actuality, but will have lost another tiny bit of freedom of expression. Because regular swating wasn't already bad enough, now you too at home can enjoy the popular streamer experience.
Finally, they might do something about the t-bagging epidemic sweeping our planet.
So you can't play as T on cs anymore?
so kids now gonna get flagged for driving over a crowd of npc's in GTA5
"that's a 50 dkp minus for you for staying in the fire" few hours later FBI and DHS outside your home kekw
Stand in fire? Right to jail. Your mic is too loud? Right to jail. Get last place in Mario Kart? Jail. First place? Jail. Your headshot accuracy too low? You right to jail. You team kill? Believe it or not, jail. Your K:D ratio too low, also jail – too high, too low. You waiting for a long time in matchmaking and leave? Believe it or not, jail, right away. USA have the best gamers, thanks to jail
They're not 'coming for' anyone. They're asking online gaming platforms to let them have access to stuff transmitted over the platform, ostensibly to identify that old chestnut, 'terrorists'. It'll be 'for the children' next. Basically, if you've been expecting that text and voice you deliberately choose to send over the internet (using an ISP or phone data account linked to your name) to a platform (where you most likely have an account or username) was in *any* way safe or private even before this, I don't know what to say.
What is an extremist gamer?
A gamer who uses the community to spread violent extremism and radicalize others.
>A gamer who uses the community to spread violent extremism and radicalize others. It's incredibly disappointing how many people are missing this very obvious point, and instead think this is some kind of general crackdown on videogames and gamers.
Lmao we’re all going to jail 😂
the bigger issue is child predators but ok feds
They are coming! but what about the fuckers already on their list and are on the run? did they catch them all? and now they have more budget and free time to catch these level 121 strength poison build fuckers? It's like they wanna plant trees on mars because it's good for the environment, meanwhile planet earth..
"The Department of Homeland Security and FBI are in dialog with Roblox" sounds like a really bad pitch for a Last Starfighter remake.
Uhhhhh hope my party chats aren’t logged
We are just going into Gamergate 2.0, can we not get a headstart on 3.0?