There are rules that people must agree to before joining Unloved, a private discussion group on Discord, the messaging service popular with gamers. A rule: “Don’t respect women.”
Unloved serves as a forum where some 150 people embrace a misogynistic subculture, calling themselves “incels” or involuntary celibates. They share memes, but they also joke about school shootings and discuss the attractiveness of women of different races.
A report, released last month by New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, underscored how deeply entrenched misogyny, racism and other extreme ideologies have become in some video game chat rooms.
People who spread hate speech have a far-reaching effect, the study found, even if they are far from the majority of users. They have built virtual communities to spread harmful views and recruit pliable youth — with little of the pressure faced by social media giants like Facebook and Twitter.
Researchers conducted a survey in five major video game markets — the United States, Britain, South Korea, France and Germany — and found that 51 percent of those who played online reported encountering extremism in the past year.
“It may be a small number of players, but they are very influential and can have a big impact on gamer culture,” said Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, author of the report.
Among those surveyed in the report, between 15 and 20 percent of those under the age of 18 said they had seen statements that supported the idea that “the white race is superior to other races,” that “a particular race or ethnicity should be expelled or eliminated”, or that “women are inferior”.
In Roblox, a game that allows players to create virtual worlds, players have recreated Nazi concentration camps.
“Some of the tools that are used to connect and foster community, foster creativity, and encourage interaction can also be used to radicalize, manipulate, and deliver the same kinds of outrageous theories, tactics, and language to other people,” said Jeff Haynes, a gaming expert.
The companies say they have cracked down. Some, like Roblox and Activision Blizzard, the creator of Call of Duty, have implemented automatic detection systems to remove prohibited content before it can be published. But experts say the fast-paced nature of the games creates surveillance challenges. And with 3 billion people playing the game in the world, monitoring what’s going on at any given time is next to impossible.
“In the next few years, there will be more people playing than there are people available to moderate game sessions,” Haynes said.
By: Steven Lee Myers and Kellen Browning
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6740827, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-06-01 14:10:08
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