This CHUD has spent the whole weekend spamming this in the official Steam Deck group chat. Utter cesspit.
Why would anyone want to use a public steam group anyway. Not defending this turd but if you can’t self-filter unmoderated spaces it’s best to just stay out of them, it’s not sustainable for every last corner of the internet to be actively and aggressively moderated in real time.
I’m not sure what you were expecting either way
This line of reasoning consistently defends the offender by blaming the users for expecting a baseline of civility.
The choice isn’t between a ‘lawless wasteland’ and 'aggressive real-time moderation. It’s about whether an official platform should have basic, automated filters against the most blatant hate speech - the same way most games filter the worst slurs from usernames or in-game chat.
Arguing that it’s ‘unsustainable’ to stop racial slurs from flooding an official group chat is just arguing for the right to be a bigot without consequence. What I was ‘expecting’ is for Valve to implement the bare minimum of community management on their own official platforms. The fact that this is seen as an unreasonable ask is the entire problem.
It’s genuinely disappointing to see how many responses suggest the solution to targeted harassment is for the targets to simply leave or block the user, as if that fixes anything.
To those suggesting we just ‘block’ or ‘ignore’ racial spam: you’re asking us to accept a degraded community as the new normal. The problem isn’t our sensitivity; it’s the refusal to uphold a basic standard of decency. Vindicating the attacker by shifting the burden to everyone else is not a solution.
if everyone blocks them, they’ll just get ostracized. Reaction is what such people want. It’s not a targeted hate, it’s a provocation by inappropriate behaviour.
L on steam moderation side, but you make of it a bigger deal than it actually is imo
You’re confusing a personal tool with a community solution. My ‘block’ button doesn’t stop the public chat from being filled with racial slurs. The ‘bigger deal’ you mention is the hundreds of users who have already left, that’s the measurable consequence of treating this as a ‘provocation’ instead of a violation of basic community standards.
I’ve heard your uninformed opinion and I am choosing to disregard it.
i like how easily you can disregard my “uninformed opinion”, but you can’t disregard a very informed, it would seem, screaming of a random kid.
everybody has the block button, given that everybody presses it, the person spreading “hatespeech” would be simply ignored. Not to mention, that there is a report button on everybody’s steam profile page.
The ‘bigger deal’ you mention is the hundreds of users who have already left…
if they left insteaad of reporting the person in question and blocking all communications with them (another feature of steam btw), i can only pity their inability to use the software at hand properly. Not to mention, that “hundreds of people leaving” sounds like a plain dramatization, if non an entirely made-up fact.
i’m sorry, but of all people, you’re the uninformed one, as, it seems, you have no clue how the words work. Spoiler, it’s not the slurs that make the words hurt.
The longer alarmists like you cry about a kid shouting slurs, the longer a behavior like this will be seen by the kids like this one to be effective at bringing the attention, the more this practice would be widespread.
By the way, the fact that you’re all worked up about something as dumb as a single word means the kid achieved exactly what they wanted.
Your argument has reached its logical conclusion: blaming everyone but the racist spammer and the platform that enables them.
This is no longer a debate about features, it’s a choice of principles. You are advocating for a system where hundreds of users perform the labor of blocking each racist, where targets of harassment are blamed for being targeted, and where the platform bears no responsibility for its own spaces. Brilliant.
I engage on this topic with you in good faith, but your position has made it clear you are not just ignorant on the issue - you are actively defending a racist spammer over the implementation of basic filters against hate speech and racism.
I don’t debate the merits of racism with its apologists. We’re done.
Never defended anyone. I explained why you’re making of this situation a bigger deal than it is, but i do not condone the behaviour of the person from your post. Stop thinking in extremes. As i said previously, there’s still a report button on everybody’s steam profile.
And while you’re claiming that i’m blaming everyone, you’re the one, who blamed
- steam moderation
- steam community (by calling it a cesspit)
- me
i was only blaming you for doing a counterproductive job, as there are wrong ways of doing a seemingly good thing. Instead of reporting the person in question and blocking them, you’re spreading the screenshots there, on lemmy of all places, crying about how bad the steam moderation is. The only thing you might achieve by doing it like this is stroking your ego. You said the person in quesiion spent all weekend spamming? Did you report them in the first place? Or whining on lemmy about how much of a cesspit steam is was your first instinct?
There are no steam representatives here, you haven’t provided any links for people from here to go and report the troll. In other words, your post is of no substance, and you’re either too ignorant to do it the right way, or you’re purposefully posted it to instill tribalistic behaviour.
Not only you think in categories like “us vs them”, but also self-righteously force it upon everyone else. This is a way of spreading even more hate than there already is. You’ll only end up in an isolated echo-chamber full of hate, not much better than the people you hate so much yourself, practically taking their place, instead of being better than them. Good luck in your self-destructive endeavour.
Lol, nice backpedal and reframe. You now claim you “do not condone the behaviour” yet your entire engagement here has been a masterclass in minimizing it and attacking those who object. Let’s review your position:
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You insisted the spam was “not a targeted hate, it’s a provocation by inappropriate behaviour,” deliberately downplaying the use of a racial slur as mere “inappropriate behaviour.”
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You repeatedly framed the solution as a burden on users, stating that “everybody has the block button, given that everybody presses it, the person spreading “hatespeech” would be simply ignored.” You blamed those driven out for their “inability to use the software.”
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You dismissed the damage as a “dramatization,” and labeled concern as “alarmist,” arguing that speaking up only makes the problem worse.
This isn’t a neutral stance. This is a textbook defense of a toxic status quo. You have consistently argued that the community should absorb the harm of racist harassment rather than expect the platform to implement a simple basic filter.
You are correct about one thing: my post was not for Steam representatives. It was to call out a failing of a platform I use and to see if others users here shared this concern. The fact that you have dedicated so much energy to attacking my method rather than the problem itself is, as I said, a clear choice of principles. I stand by mine.
As I’ve previously said: I don’t debate the merits of racism with its apologists. Have exactly the kind of day/life you deserve.
Blocked.
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Even if it wasn’t a slur, that’s spam. Should be easy to recognise and ban on that alone.
can you block users???
Blocking is a personal tool for personal conflicts. This is a public nuisance attack. The solution isn’t for hundreds of users to each individually block a racist spammer; it’s for the platform to have basic moderation to stop the public harassment in the first place.
I run a small social meeting site, and I have included functionality that watches for multiple blocks of the same user in relatively quick succession. This automatically bans the user from the site for a period of time. Maybe they could implement something like this. Of course, I also moderate my site, so there’s that.
The fact that you also moderate is the key difference!
How prevalent is moderation in chat. In mmo’s I have played you would have to block the person. I mean they would get reported and eventually banned. Can you not report people in valve chat?
I have reported them several times, as I’m sure others have. The fact that you can see the spam continuing unabated is the clearest possible evidence of how prevalent Valve’s moderation is in these chats.
The tool exists, but without the will to use it, the result is what we’re seeing now.
So basically this guy started up late sunday and was still not banned by monday morning during a period that also had a massive tech fire across the industry with the cloudflare outage. Generally I found people were banned at most places within 24 hours so by this evening. I mean that is sorta a worse case timing example so im not sure im going to get all upset at lack of moderation quite yet. Honestly im not even sure if folks were banned in chats I have been in before as I only hear it second hand since I block shit I don’t want to see. I usually can tell from other folks reaction to it in the chat.
A ban might eventually happen, but that misses the point. This started on Friday last week, it’s been five days of this. Relying on a slow, reactive ban system after a racist spammer has already poisoned a chat for nearly a week is the failure.
Basic moderation is about maintaining a standard to prevent this. A ban now would just be cleaning up a mess that never should have been allowed to happen in the first place.
The situation is clear, and my position is too. I won’t be debating this further
Sadly, this is a hazard in real life as well
Sounds like someone should move to their own discord server?
Why should hundreds of users have to migrate to a third-party app because the official platform refuses to stop one person from spamming racial slurs? The problem isn’t the community, it’s the lack of moderation.
idk, but apparently hundreds of users also have no problem with the policy of the official platform. So maybe that isn’t the right space for you.
So instead of basic moderation, filters and decency hundreds of users should abandon the official group chats so ignorant racists can have a slur-fest?
That confuses silence for consent. The users still there aren’t necessarily endorsing the policy; many are likely just tolerating it. Meanwhile, the hundreds who have already left are the proof that it’s driving users away.
Arguing that the targets of harassment should be the ones to leave, rather than expecting the platform to curb the harassment, is a profound failure of community principle. I see absolutely no value in continuing this discussion with you.
Not all communities are for all people. Maybe it’s refreshing that there exists a place that doesn’t have the same community principles.
oh yeah give the racists safe spacs.
god you’re fucking nuts, and entitled
Ah, ‘different principles’… Now we get to the heart of it.
Enjoy your principled stand with the racists. Blocked.
Bro what?? Get a grip.
We can just ignore them and not be offended by words, though
It’s not about being ‘offended.’
A healthy online community, like any public space, needs basic rules against harassment and hate speech. This isn’t about policing opinions; it’s about preventing a space from being weaponized to spread bigotry and silence others.
Choosing to ‘not be offended’ is a personal choice, but allowing the space to be overrun by slurs is a collective failure to maintain a minimum standard of decency.
Hmmm you are probably right, it does seem like the person in question is flooding the chat with the word. That is a problem, the word itself should not be (probably except when intentionally used to cause harm, but intention is quite difficult to measure or prove)
The context removes all ambiguity. Spamming a slur in a public forum isn’t a debate about the word; it’s an attack on the community. The proof is in the outcome: hundreds of people have left the chat due to Valve’s non-existent moderation.
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Regardless of whether you think slurs are “made up” or not, free speech absolutism is an open invitation to bigotry. That’s why so many libertarians & right wingers are into the idea.
All words are “made up”, but with respect, that observation misses the key point. The spam is the delivery method, but the slur is what makes this an act of targeted hate and harassment, not just a nuisance.
Dismissing the word’s power ignores the very real historical and social weight it carries; weight the spammer is intentionally leveraging to cause maximum harm. It’s not a coincidence they chose that specific word.
I believe I’ve been clear on why this distinction matters, so I’ll leave it at that.
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You’ve perfectly described the mechanism, but drawn the wrong conclusion. The power isn’t ‘given’ by individuals being sensitive; it’s inherited from the word’s historical use as a tool of oppression and violence. That weight is a social fact, not a personal choice.
To use an analogy: a gun is a real weapon because it causes physical harm. A slur is a social weapon because it invokes that history to cause psychological and social harm. The harm is no less real to its targets.
Your argument ultimately suggests that the targets of historical violence should also bear the burden of dismantling the tools used against them, while the rest of us do nothing. I fundamentally disagree with that premise. We have reached an impasse, and I see no value communicating / explaining this premise to you any further.
Classic crypto fascist comment. Post hog
It’s not in any individual’s power to take that away though. And even if that personal choice were meaningfully possible, you’d put that on thousands of people suffering harassment rather than the few doing it?
That’s just handing public spaces over to oppressors.
You may have heard the line about the nazi bar.
2015 idubbbztv take
Actually we should kill people like this as well as those who defend them in any way.
![The true beauty behind Valve's "hands-off" approach to moderating group chats [CW: Racism]](https://crazypeople.online/pictrs/image/572ed67f-7951-4688-aa83-1e3f9ae46487.png){kind=link}