Hate and harassment targeting players with religious, ethnic, and national game identities | Add

Hate and harassment were recorded in nearly half of the online multiplayer gaming sessions tested using a combination of usernames based on religious, ethnic, and national identity, according to Anti-Defamation LeagueLatest research.

One-third of gaming sessions that expressed pride in ethnic, religious, or national identity resulted in abuse; 38% of gaming sessions involved harassment toward Jews.

Instead of conducting an annual gaming survey, the ADL Center for Technology and Society took a different approach to research this year, asking 15 gamers to play hours of games with usernames that indicate national, religious and ethnic identities. They got a lot of hate.

Examples of hate and harassment include racial slurs, trash talk, or disruptive play. Identity-based harassment was present in a third of the play sessions in the four games (Valorant, Counterstrike 2, Overwatch 2, and Fortnite) that participants (student researchers) played using the usernames “Proud2bJewish,” “Proud2bMuslim,” “Proud2bChinese,” and “Proud2bChinese.” Proud2bIsraeli”, and “Proud2bMexican”.

In some sessions, people were not only harassed based on their specific username, but also experienced instances of general identity-based harassment or harassment toward multiple other identities.

“The unacceptable normalization of harassment in online gaming is alarming not only because of its prevalence and because so many teens and young adults experience hate in these spaces, but also because of the severity of the verbal abuse we recorded,” Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, said in a statement. “Hearing phrases like ‘gassing the Jews’, calling people the ‘N-word’ or seeing a gamer called Hitler is not unimportant; it is pure, unabashed hatred, and gaming companies need to step up and stop it.”

Of the four games tested, Valorant and Counterstrike 2 stood out for causing some form of harassment in about two-thirds of game sessions; Half of them were harassed on the basis of identity. In contrast, Overwatch 2 and Fortnite showed the least amount of identity-based harassment (8% in Overwatch 2 and 20% in Fortnite).

In Valorant and Counterstrike 2, more than half (57%) of play sessions using the username “Proud2bJewish” included some level of harassment based on Jewish identity.

The ADL has been investigating hate and harassment — as well as prosocial behavior — in online multiplayer games since 2019. Six in ten people (ages 5 to 90) in the United States play video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association, and there are more than 3 billion players around the world. In 2023, the ADL found that 76 percent of adult participants (ages 18-45) and 75 percent of teens (ages 10-17) in online multiplayer gaming reported experiencing any harassment in online gaming.

“As more and more people participate in online gaming spaces, we need to find ways to reduce disruptive behavior, hate, and harassment,” said Daniel Kelly, interim president and director of strategy and operations at the ADL Center for Technology and Society. statement. “The gaming industry and government have a responsibility to ensure that people feel safe while participating in competitive online gaming. As shown in our research, these spaces can lead to positive social behaviour, which should not be overshadowed by the rampant abuse we record. At the same time, Alarmingly, one of the main responses of all study participants was that they expected there to be more hatred than there actually was.

I interviewed Kelly and we talked about the nuances of research. The report also included detailed recommendations for the gaming industry, government, researchers and caregivers. The full list is available at the end of the report.

“These are fleeting spaces,” Kelly said. “When you talk about a match-based game, like Counter-Strike or Fortnite, those spaces are there for a few minutes and then they’re gone. So researchers’ ability to understand those spaces is really limited. And so what we did here was have a group of participants play a set of games Major online multiplayer teams use a variety of usernames that express pride in a particular identity and record those sessions.

The result was not a nationally representative sample as needed to conduct the survey. But the sessions produced qualitative data about how you bring your identity into an online game and how people in that community respond to it.

“About half of the participants experience some form of hate,” Kelly said. “What was interesting was that participants who were students or recent graduates said they thought there would be more backlash towards them. The reputation of online games as social spaces is such that they imagined it would be an expectation that there would be hate.”

Kelly said that since the start of the Gaza war on October 7, 2023, hatred against Israel or Jews has increased. But this study did not focus on that specifically.

“What we’re seeing here is a continuing trend and a continuing manifestation of the rise in anti-Semitism that we’ve seen around the world. Certainly since the events of 7-10-2023. But I think you’re seeing a kind of naked expression of it in these places,” Kelly said. They contact someone who says the username is Proud2bJewish or Proud2bIsraeli, and people sometimes react to that by “stepping into the ovens.”

The Anti-Defamation League did not look at anti-Palestinian behavior in this particular study. Kelly said there will be more work on future surveys.

Recommendations for industry

• Implement industry-wide policies and design practices to better address how hate targets specific identities.
• Motivating and promoting prosocial behavior through design.
• Instead of reducing the number of trust and safety employees, as many companies did in 2023 and 2024, companies should expand resources in this important area.
• Improve reporting systems and support harassment targets.
• Enhanced content moderation tools for in-game voice chat.
• Issue regular and consistent transparency reports on hate and harassment.

Recommendations to the government:

In February 2024, the ADL released its annual report, Hate Is Not a Game: Hate and Harassment in…
Online games 2023 in which governments need to take a more active role in the fight
Hate and harassment in gaming have been highlighted.

In particular, Kelly said the ADL supported laws against SWAT attacks, where people call police SWAT teams into players’ homes, or doxing, where players post personal information to other players.

ADL Recommended:

• Prioritize transparency legislation in digital spaces and include online multiplayer gaming.
• Promoting access to justice for victims of online abuse.
• Establish a national toy safety task force.
• Resource search efforts.

methodology

In late 2023 through summer 2024, a diverse group of students, recent graduates, and young adults participated as players in four competitive online first-person shooter games (Valorant, Counterstrike 2, Fortnite, and Overwatch 2) with the usernames Proud2BJewish, Proud2Bmuslim, Proud2B, Israeli, Proud2B , Mexican, Proud2B, Chinese.

Students recorded approximately 250 hours of play and cumulative experiences after each hour of play.

ADL is the world’s leading anti-hate organization. Founded in 1913, its eternal mission is “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to ensure justice and fair treatment for all.” Today, ADL continues to fight all forms of anti-Semitism and bias, using innovation and partnerships to make an impact.

The group has been conducting surveys about hate and harassment in online gaming since 2019. One of the difficult things about conducting surveys is that the industry itself doesn’t share the data, Kelly said. The ADL has pushed gaming companies like Activision to include anti-extremism policies in their codes of conduct.

Kelly said the Valorant and Counter-Strike 2 experience is very different from Overwatch 2 and Fortnite.

“I think Overwatch 2 and Fortnite have done more in terms of policy and design to prevent hate and harassment in those spaces. Whereas you see that less in Counter-Strike. I think Valve is way behind the gaming industry broadly.”

There are some gaming companies like Activision and Roblox that are using AI to eliminate toxic behavior in games. Activision uses artificial intelligence to screen for spoken violations of its standards while Roblox can send warnings to people who use foul language. These companies were aggressive. Activision also had to crack down on cheaters.

By contrast, Elon Musk (formerly of Twitter) has ditched fact-checking in favor of community feedback, and Facebook’s Meta has dropped fact-checking in favor of something similar. This occurs in part because of a change in ownership or a change in political leadership in the White House and Congress.