No countries are going to block Steam for not preventing alt-right hate-groups from leaving hate comments on store pages. Reddit and TikTok are regularly censoring users criticizing alt-right hate groups and international Satanic pedophiles, and no nation has even considered blocking them AFAIK.

? Guardian advertises itself as not having a paywall

there's no paywall, there's a donation ask, but you can just close it.

Steam provides the forums; not mods. The developers are supposed to moderate their forums.

No, all of Steam's forums default to Valve moderation, unless a dev chooses to bring/do their own moderation. If the dev moderates, they have total control and can do anything they want, regardless of community rules. If Valve moderates, you basically get eventual, low effort checks for flagrant rule violations in reported posts (which many trolls even exploit, knowing Steam mods don't read threads or history or anything).

Fuck shit damn. Cunt piss bitch. America was built on goddamn slave labor. Ooh boy, all that cursing was so, so difficult for my civilized upbringing.

This is what chuds don’t get, since they never read terms of use. Social networks don’t often oppose aimless expletives like “Let’s fucking kick a baby into lava haha!” They oppose pointed, meaningful intention like “I’m going to shoot up my school because it’s been infested with n%%%%s.” Hate is a language used everywhere, separate from curses, and it’s one I don’t mind blocking on every front possible.

I used to get added by randoms everytime and they always had the clown award because that’s the easiest way for people to mark someone as a scammer

Profile clown awards say nothing more than some jerk spend points on being a jerk. Not at all a good reason to think people were flagged scammers, especially since you can just hide any profile awards with a checkbox.

But no, while clown awards are still there, you can't give them anymore. Maybe "funny" will be the new clown, or maybe people will spend fewer points just to be jerks.

It's also easy to think nothing is happening because Valve takes their sweet time getting around to reports, and while they will eventually tell you "something was done" if something was done, they won't give you any way to find out what was done or what report they're even referring to. You just get that generic "something was done" message.

If I'm not mistaken devs have the ability to remove inflammatory comments or mark reviews as being irrelevant to be scrubbed.

Steam forums are about game mechanics, advice and tech support right? Or am I being filtered the on-topic stuff?

It "controversial" because racists and bigots made it that way. There was no controversy about other heist games, there's no "controversy" about games with all-white characters. But put in a diverse group of character, that steal back what was stolen and suddenly that's "controversial".

The forums are just full of bigotted trolls who want to see the game fail.

They do have an "Owners" forum (the default is the Non-Owners for those who don't own the game). I imagine the non-owners forum is there to provide an opportunity for non-owners to ask genuine questions about the game, but that obviously isn't happening. Maybe you're right and they should just make it owners only. I don't know if it would be visible to others though.

There are valid use cases for non owners, but I think they don't outweigh the cost. Sometimes you have to sacrifice something and this is something I could live with.

Well, that's what controversial means. Things like lgbt rights, abortion rights, etc. are also controversial, but objectively fair/correct

If any group complaining about something makes it "controversial", then everything is controversial and the word loses all meaning.

There are entire studies on "at which point does x become a controversy", I'm not gonna go there

I've had a mildly expensive inventory in the past while trading so I've seen a lot of scammers. The clown award was the fastest way to tell if someone was suspicious. Obviously you don't just base it on that, other telltale signs are no mutuals, private inventory, faked hours on cs, turned off commenting on profile, account level, 3p trust sites, etc.

I've yet to see a single profile that was legit that had the clown award. People usually don't give out awards, at least the profile ones. The average person buys profile decor.

This was back in 2024 ish though, I don't trade anymore so I block non mutuals adding me

Honest question, do you think someone replying to a thing in a public forum "cringe thing made by a liar" is actually harassment and should be forcefully removed just because the dev doesn't like it?

The seems too far censorship to me.

The antisemitism yeah get rid of that shit

Yes. Never in a million years I would consider "cringe game, made by a liar" an honest review, and I don't know why anyone would consider it as such. It's clearly part of a harassment campaign.

should be forcefully removed just because the dev doesn’t like it?

It should be removed because it's not a review and has nothing to do with the game at hand, not because the dev doesn't like it.

Not liking something doesn't mean it should be removed.

Any negative review of a game then becomes fair game.

Not liking something doesn't mean it should be removed.

And I never said that.

Any negative review of a game then becomes fair game.

No, it doesn't. If you truly, truly believe that the review is authentic, I have a bridge to sell you.

I'm not even saying it sounds like an authentic review persay but I don't think objectively one can say for sure it's because of a targeted harassment attack, which if we remove any "borderline" reviews, again it opens up removing any legitimate criticism against a game just for saying "oh it's harassment!"

That's such poppycock I don't even know if you're subtly trolling. Anyone could put a clown on a profile for anything, and they come far more from bad actors than anything remotely legitimate. Steam forums are full of bad actors. Actually supporting that kind of petty toxicity by insinuating clowns mean something is gross.

Thankfully, profile awards can be hidden, and I'd expect they often are, so it's hard to really say how many are given out. I certainly hid profile awards when the system was new, because it's weird Steam just helps people deface your profile. Even having awards hidden hasn't stopped the occasional spiteful clown award getting added.

So are you just gonna ignore all the other ways I've listed to tell a scammer?

Never said it was a one and dusted kinda thing if you had a clown award, just that it should immediately raise red flags if you have a relatively worth inventory and actively trading. MY experience is that all the randoms trying to add me that had the clown award displayed were in fact scammers.

This is in the context of trading once again, not steam forums or even general steam. Steam trading is functionally a different experience from general steam. No sane trader uses the forums to trade. Its all 3p sites. People adding you when you actively trade items are either people looking to trade or scammers. If you're not trading in the mid to high tier range, none of what I've said applies to you. The clown award doesn't mean anything then, because you're not going to get 5+ daily friend requests

On a side note you should probably not use the forums, it's been unmoderated for about 15 years.

I hope you're right! I saw something flashing by about the UK suing Steam over price fixing, with the threat of enormous fines or being banned if they don't pay them. Steam has many flaws, but I believe the world is better with them than without them.

because if you don't see it - it disappears! like magic!

the angry chud whos economic stability has been shattered by a neoliberal race to the bottom, the chud who can't afford to live in the same town he grew up in, who has been directed to view every moral or class grievance in purely racial terms by the corporate media. When that same chud dares to express any anger or resentment or hostility, and he expresses that anger to his cultural out group, at least YOU will be there! to wag your finger in his face and moralise to him about how people's feelings are important, even as you ignore his.

censoring someone doesn't change their mind, if anything it hardens their velief and encourages them to spread it elsewhere

NO ONE WANTS YOU NOT TO BE ANGRY!!

LOOK AROUND LEMMY! Every political community! Every discussion! EVERYONE is angry, jaded, fucking upset the system isn’t working! The difference is, SMART angry people get angry at the actual causes of that economic disparity. Not going on wild, racist tangents to blame people even poorer than them that have barely done a thing to even affect that economic situation!

I don’t fucking trust anyone who’s not angry at the world. Those people are blind. But worse are people who are angry at the most victimized part of the world, instead of the ones doing the victimizing; or those who are angry at politicians who did in fact try to give rural America something to do with their hands - read the Inflation Reduction Act - but were spat on because Fox News parroted Shell’s line that renewable energy is a scam.

Don’t you dare say I’m demonizing people or “wagging my finger at them” for being fucking angry. That is a bald-faced lie. I demonize people for taking their anger out on people that should be brothers and sisters in the fight against injustice.

what seems to “smell” funny more and more lately is that I can’t tell what is a full fledged game I want to play and what is AI/Slop created to jump on a bandwagon. Rimworld. Great game. Are the “rims in space” variants real? Just reskins? Why is everything in instant early access these days? And for years sometimes. Look, as a sw eng myself, I get it. But my adhd knows the game too. Something becoming “useable” before its finished means I never finish it. Looking at my own git repos… yep lol.

just a reminder: moderation happens with only the priority valve will give it, determined by a feedback loop involving profit, not content. they are a corp just like the rest of them.

whooosh

This is why I always look at negative reviews. I often come across "downsides" that aren't downsides to me or outright appealing.

mark reviews as being irrelevant to be scrubbed

as the article details, in the case of reviews flagged by devs, Steam gets to decide if they want to remove them or not, and often they don't, even when they contain open bigotry or personal attacks towards the developer

Hey, you might want to contact the Sentinels of the Store group about this - they do reports on Steam's developer and customer issues, and occasionally have direct communication with Valve.

In fact they covered this article in a recent post: SteamWatch - Developers Accuse Steam of Failing to Tackle Bigotry

The US Guardian is strongly pro-trans, while the UK Guardian is more mixed. It had (maybe still has?) some TERFs in prominent positions for a very long time, and they kept churning out their transphobic opinion pieces week after week.

There was even an intra-Guardian clash about this in 2018, when their US reporters called out their UK colleagues: Why we take issue with the Guardian’s stance on trans rights in the UK

Thanks, I really appreciate it, I'm just going to bed now but I'll be sure to check this out ASAP.

Hmm I cannot close it without signing up unfortunately