Bluesky Post (this was also posted on twitter)
I was hoping to find a statement from the aggressor, but it seems to be too early.
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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Oh for the love of fuck. Americans. Your country isn't the centre of the universe. It doesn't matter where a company's headquarters are. If you are doing business in, for example, Germany, you have to abide by German laws. Being American isn't an excuse and it doesn't shield you from consequences for breaking the law.
Also, the big issue is that Valve isn't actually using their right to refuse service. People can spread all sorts of bigotry via Steam's discussions and groups without Valve acting on it. They're providing a platform for hate speech and that is inherently immoral, regardless of what the law says.
I wanted to preface by saying you are the one juxtaposing the American centralization. I clearly specified US in my post to avoid the confusion of different country laws. Obviously each country has its own laws regarding it but, I'm using the US as a default, as it is a US based company. When it gets into other countries it gets sticky, obviously they need to follow other countries laws to operate, but only so much can be done. Thankfully most countries either have an equivalent to section 230, or rely on a takedown style system (including Germany), which absolves responsibility as long as it's taken down when reported.
As for whether or not steam is using the right to refuse service, they do, but they do so when it's reported(they even specify that in their TOS). Their content moderation system is very passive, I don't believe the ADLs report at all because of the faulty data set it uses such as the ideology that since pepe was linked to some hate posts it can be used as a hate post detector, then directly contradicting themselves by saying that they acknowledge that Pepe is not a hate symbol in most uses and that you have to be aware of the situation.
Reading the ADL report, there's a lot of it that I agree steam could do, but there's things that ADL is just falsely seeing as wrong. Such as their claim they have no policy prohibiting hate and extremist groups (incorrect it's in their main TOS) for example.
They state that steam is not doing enough for detecting the stuff, then proceed to give examples of exactly how steam is doing to protect against, such as having a Content report system, having content filters which are very clearly blocking hate and terrorist symbols, then they complained at the fact that steam had the audacity of giving the user the choice to turn off the moderation system, which is a client side setting.
Additionally I noticed they never tried to report anything, A quick Google search of other news companies reporting on the issue explains why I found. Because when it's reported steam actually takes it down. The system works as intended, it's just nobody in those groups want to report the group, and others haven't bothered it seems.
Personally though, I have never not had someone who had clear hate or a terrorist symbols in their name not get banned within a day or two of reporting them. It's only happend a handful of times, and usually it's regarding a clear bullying case, but they almost always at the very least get community banned.