Speaker 1: From Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio. It's the Big Take.
Speaker 1: I'm West Cassova today. Confronting the rise of extremism in
Speaker 1: the world of online video games, one study finding around
Speaker 1: four in ten Americans personally experience some sort of harassment online,
Speaker 1: particularly those bad for gamers of color. They say this
Speaker 1: is typical of what happens on the online gaming community.
Speaker 1: They call it a racist, toxic environment, and they're doing
Speaker 1: it all well, They're just trying to do the simplest
Speaker 1: of things, have a good time and play a video game.
Speaker 1: I listened in on a gaming session and the black
Speaker 1: gamer was told by someone he was playing with online,
Speaker 1: you need handcuffs and a knee on your neck. In December,
Speaker 1: the Anti Defamation Lead released a study that found white
Speaker 1: supremacist ideas have gained significant exposure in the past year
Speaker 1: through online video games. One in five adult game players
Speaker 1: in the A d L survey reported encountering other players
Speaker 1: who promoted the superiority of white people over people of
Speaker 1: other races, and the report also found fifteen per cent
Speaker 1: of teen and pre teen gamers said they interacted with
Speaker 1: white supremacists. The A d L study and other recent
Speaker 1: research about extremists using video games to spread their ideology
Speaker 1: has led to calls for video gamemakers to do more
Speaker 1: to stop hate on their platforms, and it sparked concerns
Speaker 1: that arise in hateful ideology online will lead to greater
Speaker 1: acceptance of racism and extremism in the real world. These
Speaker 1: questions have even caught the attention of the U. S. Government.
Speaker 1: Cecilia donnas Ascio covers the video game industry for Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: and she joins me now from New York to explain. Cecilia,
Speaker 1: over the years, we've seen video games blamed for any
Speaker 1: number of social ills. Politicians have said violence and video
Speaker 1: games leads to school shootings and other violent crimes, even
Speaker 1: though there's not a lot of evidence that it's true.
Speaker 1: So now we're seeing the sharp increase in people saying
Speaker 1: gamers are spreading white supremacist ideology. Do we know if
Speaker 1: hate groups that spread their views in gaming communities are
Speaker 1: having success in actually turning other players into white supremacists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been such a long history of this
Speaker 1: with video games. There's the Satanic panic, even with Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons, which is a pen and paper game in
Speaker 1: the seventies. There's this idea that video games um inspire
Speaker 1: people to commit violent acts in real life, which has
Speaker 1: been disproven over and over and over again in decades
Speaker 1: of studies, including amazing longitudinal studies by amazing researchers. And
Speaker 1: now there's this idea that there are people who are
Speaker 1: getting radicalized through video games. And that's I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anyone out there who study this who would say
Speaker 1: that's not happening at all. The question is what is
Speaker 1: the scale And the reason why it's so hard to
Speaker 1: measure is because video game companies really don't share their
Speaker 1: data with a lot of people on this topic. There's
Speaker 1: only one video game, Roadblocks, that has a really specific
Speaker 1: anti white supremacist, anti neo Nazi policy on its platform.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say gaming companies don't take this seriously.
Speaker 1: They do. Activision, Blizzard, Riot Games, all of these top
Speaker 1: gaming companies have issued statements to Bloomberg saying that this
Speaker 1: is something that they are paying attention to. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to handing that data off to outside researchers
Speaker 1: who really do have expertise in this topic, it's just
Speaker 1: it's a black box. So let's say they were to
Speaker 1: hand over this data. What is it I'm playing a
Speaker 1: game and what happens to me in the scenario where
Speaker 1: someone who is trying to fill my mind with these ideas?
Speaker 1: What does that look like? First, I want to tell
Speaker 1: you what it probably doesn't look like, and then I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what it does look like. So say I'm
Speaker 1: playing Fortnite and I am in a game with a
Speaker 1: random person. We both drop down onto the map, we
Speaker 1: get our guns, and we go out and we try
Speaker 1: and find people to shoot. Maybe we're on voice chat,
Speaker 1: and if I'm good at that game, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be playing it for maybe like ten minutes before I'm
Speaker 1: in a new game. But if I'm the average person,
Speaker 1: this stranger that I meet in the video game has
Speaker 1: like three to five minutes to pitch me on their
Speaker 1: views before you know, we are just kind of gone
Speaker 1: forever into the abyss and we never encounter each other.
Speaker 1: So it's as you're playing the game, you're carrying on
Speaker 1: a conversation. So it's like that's part of the appeal,
Speaker 1: is that you're actually reaching out to real people as
Speaker 1: you're playing this game. Video games are communication channels, that's correct,
Speaker 1: and it's a great way to meet people online, but
Speaker 1: at the same time, it's unlikely that you are going
Speaker 1: to in the span of three to five minutes, be
Speaker 1: converted to have these really heinous and dangerous beliefs. What's
Speaker 1: more likely is where you do meet people through a
Speaker 1: video game who also have these beliefs, and over time,
Speaker 1: being exposed to them, they become normalized for you. And
Speaker 1: depending on your background, depending on your beliefs, your family situation,
Speaker 1: these beliefs might appeal to you and you might adopt
Speaker 1: them yourself. And that's something that can happen through playing
Speaker 1: a video game with someone, through talking to them on discord,
Speaker 1: through communicating with them over Reddit or Facebook or Instagram
Speaker 1: or anything. The question that researchers are trying to grapple
Speaker 1: with right now is to what extent is this a
Speaker 1: video game specific issue versus a social media issue that's
Speaker 1: more generalized. Have you found in your reporting that the
Speaker 1: kind of approaches that you describe can draw people in Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I published a feature with Wired magazine in two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty one about an individual who goes by Ferguson and
Speaker 1: he was playing Roadblocks, which is one of the most
Speaker 1: popular games around right now. Million people play roadblocks every day,
Speaker 1: and when he was eleven he's now in his twenties,
Speaker 1: he encountered somebody on roadblocks who was running these military
Speaker 1: drills that he would just sort of run around in
Speaker 1: circles for hours and hours and hours and he could
Speaker 1: only say yes no, sir. And he became connected to
Speaker 1: this individual who in the story called Malcolm, and over
Speaker 1: time they begin to kind of engage in these role
Speaker 1: playing scenarios through avatars in these video games, and they
Speaker 1: really liked playing the bad guys. This individual, Malcolm, who
Speaker 1: Ferguson was introduced to, was also someone who was very
Speaker 1: much an Internet edge, somebody who generally is very much
Speaker 1: online who kind of trades in inappropriate memes and has
Speaker 1: a really edgy sense of humor and is very intentionally irreverent,
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time on four Chance, spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time trading in very inappropriate and offensive memes
Speaker 1: like four Channa courses, this online uh Chad group which
Speaker 1: is sort of overrun with some pretty nasty stuff, extremely
Speaker 1: nasty stuff, really really heinous stuff. In some instances, Ferguson, Malcolm,
Speaker 1: and several other people ended up being a part of
Speaker 1: this group that included at some point twenty thousand people
Speaker 1: role playing ancient Rome, and they had all of these
Speaker 1: laws that kind of in the end amounted to fascism.
Speaker 1: They had degenerously laws that outlawed homosexual relationships. They were
Speaker 1: anti Semitic in a lot of ways as well. And
Speaker 1: I interviewed a lot of people who were involved in
Speaker 1: this group about the impact that participating in it had
Speaker 1: on them, and you know, some of them look back
Speaker 1: on it and say, wow, that was quite literally us
Speaker 1: role playing fascism as children. And other people look back
Speaker 1: on that group and are actually in law enforcement now
Speaker 1: and are in the t s A. And some people
Speaker 1: also took something different from that and did become acclimated
Speaker 1: to those beliefs later on. So see one of the
Speaker 1: problems here, and you're grappling with it here in and
Speaker 1: you're reporting is how concerned we should be about this.
Speaker 1: Years ago, there was the gamer Gate revelations where women gamers,
Speaker 1: women game developers were under just absolutely vicious attack from
Speaker 1: certain male gamers who didn't want them in their world.
Speaker 1: That had real world consequences, and there was a backlash
Speaker 1: from it. But as you also say, sometimes it's overblown
Speaker 1: the amount to which what happens in the gaming world
Speaker 1: then comes into real life. So when you look at
Speaker 1: this as you do all the time, how do you
Speaker 1: weigh and measure how concerned people should be about white
Speaker 1: supremacy in the online gaming world. I think it's husually
Speaker 1: alarming that teen and preteen gamers have been exposed to
Speaker 1: white supremacist views of a video games. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it's one in five adults um and that was double
Speaker 1: the rate in two thousand one. So this is clearly
Speaker 1: an issue, and it's something that a lot of researchers
Speaker 1: are begging gaming companies to take more seriously. I think
Speaker 1: that parents should be extremely concerned about the people who
Speaker 1: their kids are associating with over the internet in online games,
Speaker 1: because online games are communication channels, and you're not just
Speaker 1: playing an online game with someone when you really click
Speaker 1: with them, you're also friending them on Instagram, communicating with
Speaker 1: them over the gaming chat app discord, maybe you're following
Speaker 1: them on Twitter. You know, it's not limited to the
Speaker 1: video game. So I think we should take it seriously.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I think it's really important to
Speaker 1: understand exactly what we're talking about, which is not an
Speaker 1: issue that's localized to video games, but an issue that
Speaker 1: is integral to the nature of social media. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of companies out there that have huge populations
Speaker 1: of users and don't think about moderation upfront, don't think
Speaker 1: about how to cultivate communities that are inclusive and not harmful.
Speaker 1: And that's a major design problem and a major philosophy
Speaker 1: problem that we've seen on Twitter, on Facebook, everywhere on
Speaker 1: the internet, and gaming companies are not at all excluded
Speaker 1: from that. Cecily, you don't just cover to the gaming industry.
Speaker 1: You play games a lot yourself. Have you encountered this
Speaker 1: sort of thing just in you're playing of these games? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can tell that I have like a
Speaker 1: feminine voice, and so when I play video games over
Speaker 1: voice chat, and I really like playing competitive games in particular,
Speaker 1: I have received a lot of comments that I would
Speaker 1: describe as heinous and unwelcome when I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: sort of hang out after work. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people experience that based on the way that there voice
Speaker 1: sounds or details that they share over video games. And
Speaker 1: it's on gaming companies to create more inclusive environments where
Speaker 1: people can feel safer just enjoying their hobby after work.
Speaker 1: It's something that's pushed a lot of women and minorities
Speaker 1: of gaming culture, and that's not fair because half of
Speaker 1: gamers are women, and a lot of us will just
Speaker 1: sort of do it in private and playing a single
Speaker 1: player games. Um have talked to a lot of women
Speaker 1: who don't play multiplayer games, even though they enjoy them,
Speaker 1: because in order to be good at the game, a
Speaker 1: lot of the time you do have to be communicating
Speaker 1: with your voice, and they just don't want to deal
Speaker 1: with it. And so how do you design a game
Speaker 1: to do that? Is it that it shuts you down
Speaker 1: if you use a certain language or behavior. It's kind
Speaker 1: of the million dollar question. It's probably a multimillion dollar
Speaker 1: question at this point. But what scientists say who study
Speaker 1: this is that if you make it really easy to
Speaker 1: report people in video games and make the report forms
Speaker 1: extremely easy to decipher, both for the person who is
Speaker 1: reporting and the person who takes the report, more people
Speaker 1: will actually participate in that system. Plus, if you give
Speaker 1: people positive reinforcement for doing a report, So for example,
Speaker 1: if you tell them like, hey, that person you reported
Speaker 1: was actually banned later, they're going to feel like the
Speaker 1: loop was closed and they were reward for doing a
Speaker 1: good thing. Where do you see this heading. Do you
Speaker 1: think that gaming becomes a kinder, gentler place in the
Speaker 1: next three years, five years, or do you think that
Speaker 1: things become more abrasive. I think it's going to go
Speaker 1: in both directions, because, as we saw with this Anti
Speaker 1: Defamation League survey, exposure to white supremacists beliefs inside of
Speaker 1: online games doubled between two thousand twenty one and two
Speaker 1: thousand twenty two. That is a huge issue, in alarming
Speaker 1: and definitely points to the need for gaming companies and
Speaker 1: potentially even politicians to address this at the same time.
Speaker 1: Never before in history have gaming companies taken as seriously
Speaker 1: the need to moderate their platforms on the level that
Speaker 1: social media companies moderate their platforms. Gaming companies have hired
Speaker 1: cognitive scientists, sociologists, experts, and extremism to keep their platforms inclusive,
Speaker 1: um so everybody can enjoy their games and everyone can
Speaker 1: also buy their games. It doesn't seem, though, into this
Speaker 1: Anti Defamation League survey, that gaming companies are doing anywhere
Speaker 1: near enough to mitigate the exposure of white supremacist beliefs
Speaker 1: to gamers and young teens. Cecilia Denastasio, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for talking with me today. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: When we come back showing game makers how to stamp
Speaker 1: out extremism. Let's continue this conversation with someone who studies
Speaker 1: online extremism for a living. Alex new House is deputy
Speaker 1: director of the Middlebury Institute Center on Terrorism, Extremism and
Speaker 1: counter Terrorism, and he joins me, now, can you tell
Speaker 1: me first, what's is the Center on Terrorism, Extremism and
Speaker 1: counter Terrorism? Do so are sort of like top level
Speaker 1: elevator pitch is that we're a mixed methods research center
Speaker 1: that's operating out sort of the emerging tech, emerging trends
Speaker 1: space in especially right wing extremism, but also extremism broadly.
Speaker 1: And what that means is that we specialize in primarily
Speaker 1: the study of online extremism on things like social media platforms,
Speaker 1: alternative tech platforms, and also video games. So today we're
Speaker 1: of course talking about extremism um on online gaming. And
Speaker 1: last September you got a grant from the Department of
Speaker 1: Homeland Security to actually study this. What is that money
Speaker 1: being used for? Yeah, we got awarded almost seven thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to run a project that is actually going to
Speaker 1: developers game developers across the country and also in Canada
Speaker 1: to talk with them about their processes and knowledge and
Speaker 1: awareness of the issues of extremist exploitation and games. So broadly,
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do is create basically a baseline
Speaker 1: for understanding one, how prevalent is extremism in games, because
Speaker 1: that's still a pretty open question, and too, how prevalent
Speaker 1: is knowledge of these things at the game developer levels,
Speaker 1: How do they think about the issue of extremism and games,
Speaker 1: And is there's some way that we can actually help
Speaker 1: them get better and build capacity and understanding how to
Speaker 1: resist that. So let's take those two things a part,
Speaker 1: because they kind of have the big the twin problems.
Speaker 1: In your research, how prevalent do you find this online extremism,
Speaker 1: these ideologies are in gaming. So one thing we absolutely
Speaker 1: know for sure is that white supremacists and far red
Speaker 1: extremists in general, especially the very very extreme ones we're
Speaker 1: talking like accelerationist actors, the ones who literally believe in
Speaker 1: bringing about the apocalypse, are actively using all sorts of
Speaker 1: different games for the purposes of identity creation, communication, organization, recruitment.
Speaker 1: Those kinds of things. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: we're trying to do in this project is just figure out,
Speaker 1: like what is the extent of that, because right now
Speaker 1: we know that they exist, we do not know the
Speaker 1: actual sort of extent of it, the volume of it,
Speaker 1: and the prevalence of it in these games. So when
Speaker 1: you say they are participating in these games, using these games,
Speaker 1: what exactly are they doing when they're on the gaming platforms.
Speaker 1: It really depends on the type of games. So a
Speaker 1: lot of games, especially the creation ones, will have some
Speaker 1: types of social networking features in them. For instance, the
Speaker 1: use of groups which are like clans or you know,
Speaker 1: like small, small, you know, sets of individuals. The names
Speaker 1: of those groups are references to white supremacist terrorist organizations,
Speaker 1: and these are the show of characters that you're role
Speaker 1: playing in the game, right in the types of like
Speaker 1: organizations that the players are creating and coming together to form.
Speaker 1: So we've seen everything from like an individual users user
Speaker 1: name that references the christ Church, New Zealand mat shooter
Speaker 1: all the way up to like entire groups of hundreds
Speaker 1: of individuals that are references to like nineteen seventies white
Speaker 1: supremacist terrorist organizations or designated far right terrorist organizations throughout
Speaker 1: the world. So that's obviously like the big one, like
Speaker 1: this sort of use of all of the different features
Speaker 1: of a game for the purpose of promoting and organizing
Speaker 1: their activities, but we also see some like more minor
Speaker 1: indicating years. For instance, I've found references on like the
Speaker 1: Call of Duty leaderboard justin user names on the leaderboard
Speaker 1: to like Heinrich Himler, Adolf Hitler, Nazi regime. So it
Speaker 1: really runs the gamut. One of the big challenges for
Speaker 1: me and tracking this is like there are so many
Speaker 1: different vectors of attack, of vectors of misuse on these
Speaker 1: games that it's actually hard to kind of get a
Speaker 1: handle on. So that's what they're doing online and how
Speaker 1: they're using these games. And the second part you mentioned
Speaker 1: was how aware the gaming platforms themselves are of it
Speaker 1: and what they're doing to counteract it. Absolutely, and this
Speaker 1: also is a huge spectrum. There are many different types
Speaker 1: of game developers that range in size from a single
Speaker 1: person all the way up to the big ones that
Speaker 1: have tens of thousands of employees across the world, and
Speaker 1: so sort of correspondingly, there's going to be a huge
Speaker 1: range and awareness of these issues, But overall, what we
Speaker 1: find is that video game developers as a whole aren't
Speaker 1: thinking about these issues in the same way that like
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google and Microsoft are in general. And that's
Speaker 1: because the social networking aspects of games, the vectors that
Speaker 1: they exploit in games, are sort of secondary to the
Speaker 1: central aspect of games, which is actually like the playing
Speaker 1: of it and the mechanics of the game that you're
Speaker 1: interacting with. And so as a result, the moderation of
Speaker 1: those social network features, the awareness, and the policies that
Speaker 1: are in place to mitigate exploitation of them has been
Speaker 1: sort of secondary compared to the big social media companies.
Speaker 1: A lot of this project is filling in those gaps,
Speaker 1: is trying to connect different companies together and then also
Speaker 1: show them that like, hey, this is a huge problem.
Speaker 1: It's probably increasing in prevalence, and this isn't going to
Speaker 1: go away on its own. And what's the response from
Speaker 1: the gaming industry when you go to them and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're doing this project, We're gonna try and come up
Speaker 1: with best practices to get rid of this, help you out.
Speaker 1: Are they very eager to work with you? It is? Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a mixed bag. We have found um some developers
Speaker 1: are very very eager to work with us. Others sometimes
Speaker 1: have to be a little bit scared into it, and
Speaker 1: this is something that my research center works in the
Speaker 1: tech sector as well. As you know. There are some
Speaker 1: companies that are fully aware of the problem and actually
Speaker 1: actively come to us and ask us for help and
Speaker 1: getting a handle on it. And there are others that
Speaker 1: we have to put together a suite of examples that say, hey,
Speaker 1: do you know that there's a designated terrorist organization operating
Speaker 1: on your platform currently? And they say no, and then
Speaker 1: we're like, hey, we can help you deal with that.
Speaker 1: If we don't have that sort of the aspect of
Speaker 1: giving them examples and and telling them we're here to
Speaker 1: help you, We're not here to tear you down, a
Speaker 1: lot of times we will get a bit of a
Speaker 1: cold shoulder. As awareness of these issues increase, in coverage
Speaker 1: of them, in public, pressure on these companies increases. Over time,
Speaker 1: that has been changing and we have seen a lot
Speaker 1: more cooperation over the past even six months relative to
Speaker 1: the last year, but we do still find that there
Speaker 1: is a reticence on the part of some people in
Speaker 1: the games industry to address these issues. It's easier in
Speaker 1: some cases to ignore it and hope that it doesn't
Speaker 1: exist than it is to take it on and ignore
Speaker 1: ug that you have a bunch of potential terrorists using
Speaker 1: your platform. You would think that a gaming platform would
Speaker 1: really want to stamp this out rather than allow it's
Speaker 1: a game to become a place where toxic culture spreads,
Speaker 1: which can't really be very good for business, right And
Speaker 1: that's one of our big arguments is that this is
Speaker 1: absolutely a huge negative aspect and it has a massive,
Speaker 1: massively negative impact on the health of the community that
Speaker 1: they're trying to build. The problem is that, you know,
Speaker 1: putting together a trust and safety team from scratch is
Speaker 1: very expensive, and building content policies to try to address
Speaker 1: these kinds of things in a more nuanced way can
Speaker 1: be very expensive. One of the things that we've noticed
Speaker 1: is that with this Homeland Security grant, with the backing
Speaker 1: of the US government, and with the space to actually
Speaker 1: go to companies and say, hey, we want to help you.
Speaker 1: You don't have to give us money, we want to
Speaker 1: help you build these best practices, there's more appetite for it.
Speaker 1: Turns out people like to get some help if, especially
Speaker 1: if they don't have to do it alone, and they
Speaker 1: don't have to spend a ton of money on it.
Speaker 1: The reaction has been pretty positive. We found a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the games industry to be willing to
Speaker 1: confront that kind of process. We'll be right back. Why
Speaker 1: do you think extremism is so common on games? There's
Speaker 1: so many different kinds of games, and yet it seems
Speaker 1: to be very widespread across genres. What it is it
Speaker 1: about online gaming that makes it such an attractive place
Speaker 1: for extremism. There's two elements to this. So the first
Speaker 1: one is the more straightforward one, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: generally most of the individuals who are participating in them
Speaker 1: are young. They're under thirty in the vast majority of cases.
Speaker 1: A lot of the accelerationist groups that we study were
Speaker 1: founded by teenagers and recruit teenagers right out of high school.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, teenagers are spending a lot of their time
Speaker 1: on all sorts of different games, and it's just a
Speaker 1: nature of where the mainstream youth culture goes so to
Speaker 1: do extremists. This idea that games provide some sort of
Speaker 1: unique social bonding opportunities is a very powerful one and
Speaker 1: it has been used and studied for years on the
Speaker 1: positive sense of like friendships are made in games more
Speaker 1: easily than they are in other types of social media
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. But we've just recently started
Speaker 1: untangling the negative aspects of that, the potential for those
Speaker 1: really strong social bonds to actually have that sort of
Speaker 1: darker element to it. Extremists don't have, you know, all
Speaker 1: of this social science data to back them up, but
Speaker 1: there is this sort of sense among them, and I've
Speaker 1: seen this in chat rooms that games provide this sort
Speaker 1: of particularly amenable area for recruitment, for mobilization, for radicalization,
Speaker 1: for getting people into that frame of mind to be
Speaker 1: more amenable to carrying out violent action or to be
Speaker 1: more dedicated to the cause of the extremist organization. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the arguments that people in the gaming community
Speaker 1: made for years, and I think it's backed up by research,
Speaker 1: is that playing video games doesn't necessar ssarily caused violent
Speaker 1: behavior in real life. Is the idea of recruiting people
Speaker 1: into extremist groups to bring them into extremist ideology is
Speaker 1: different from that. The studies have backed up this idea
Speaker 1: that like playing violent video games, the consumption of violent
Speaker 1: content does not have a direct link to violence in
Speaker 1: the real world. What we are currently working on right
Speaker 1: now is a more indirect, more sort of amorphous relationship.
Speaker 1: We're not focusing on content necessarily really at all. Um
Speaker 1: we may in the future start looking at content a
Speaker 1: little more seriously. We think that there may be some actual,
Speaker 1: some like nuanced indirect relationships with the actual content. But
Speaker 1: for the moment, what we're looking at is actually the
Speaker 1: relationships that are built in game, and that is very
Speaker 1: different than what the type of game actually is. And
Speaker 1: it's what we find is that, like it's really sort
Speaker 1: of the nature of games broadly, the way that that
Speaker 1: social interactions within games happen that is driving this possibility
Speaker 1: of like an increasable ability to extremism and radicalization. That
Speaker 1: is very very different than the old school theory of
Speaker 1: like you play Call of Duty, you become a mass shooter. Really,
Speaker 1: what it's talking about is like you are more likely
Speaker 1: to find the type of community and to be primed
Speaker 1: mentally to be integrated into those types of communities that
Speaker 1: have a pension for promotion of white supremacy or inciting
Speaker 1: real world violence, then you would if you weren't playing
Speaker 1: games to that level. We're still in the very nascent
Speaker 1: stages of untangling these types of correlations, and they're probably
Speaker 1: going to end up being very complex, but we're starting
Speaker 1: to get a sense of like, there is definitely something
Speaker 1: going on in the video games space that is unsavory
Speaker 1: and that is not something that we want to promote.
Speaker 1: There's this whole setup, there's this whole mental state that
Speaker 1: you enter, There's this whole set of social interactions that
Speaker 1: you encounter in games that may predispose you to being
Speaker 1: more likely to be radicalized. It is estimated that women
Speaker 1: now make up about half of all gamers, and yet
Speaker 1: women and girls say they're still treated like a minority
Speaker 1: and often face harassment in addition to extremism. For many years,
Speaker 1: there's been a problem of hostile and environment to women,
Speaker 1: to l g B t Q game players. Is that
Speaker 1: something that you're also studying. Is a part of this
Speaker 1: look at the culture of games? Yeah. Absolutely. What's really
Speaker 1: fascinating is that we've known for decades that game culture
Speaker 1: has an unfortunate close proximity to toxicity and especially sexism, misogyny,
Speaker 1: anti l g B t Q action, those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: The study of extremism and games is relatively new. The
Speaker 1: study of toxicity and games has substantial history, so we
Speaker 1: can kind of use the study of that of toxicity
Speaker 1: as a proxy for fighting indicators of extremist activity twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, thirty years ago, even though people weren't thinking
Speaker 1: about it in the same way then, um. And the
Speaker 1: reason for that is because toxicity is, in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases a tactic used by extremists for a whole
Speaker 1: host of things, for encouraging participants to be more primed
Speaker 1: to getting radicalized, for undertaking their own ideological goals. Harassment
Speaker 1: and hate are tools used by white supremacists for the
Speaker 1: purposes of intimidating their enemies and encouraging their sort of
Speaker 1: in group to be more collaborative with each other and
Speaker 1: more loyal to the end group rather than the out group.
Speaker 1: That isn't to say that all toxic players are extremists. Rather,
Speaker 1: toxicity is just one set of tools that are used
Speaker 1: by extremists pretty frequently and often very frequently in games
Speaker 1: and the two thousands, when coordinated harassment campaigns were first
Speaker 1: getting innovated, a lot of times they were getting innovated
Speaker 1: in games spaces like early virtual world SIMS, early social
Speaker 1: networking games like Second Life and other types of games
Speaker 1: like that, that was where these like decentralized networks of
Speaker 1: of toxic actors would be coordinating and carrying out their
Speaker 1: campaigns of harassment. And so a lot of what we
Speaker 1: see in toxicity broadly across the Internet was really innovated
Speaker 1: in video games. So there's a really fascinating relationship there,
Speaker 1: and a lot of those people early on who innovated
Speaker 1: that the toxic actions ended up becoming rightly and stream
Speaker 1: most later on. I suppose if you're a person, especially
Speaker 1: a young person, who does not feel very powerful in
Speaker 1: your regular life, coming into an online world where you
Speaker 1: can essentially be a bully of others can make you
Speaker 1: feel powerful. Yeah, and you have all these networks both
Speaker 1: in game and in the game ad Jason spaces that
Speaker 1: are telling you that what you're doing is right and
Speaker 1: celebrating you and giving you friendships and giving you that
Speaker 1: sort of like those dopamine hits of positive social interactions.
Speaker 1: One of the things I always remind games industry people
Speaker 1: is that this focus on toxic content is great and
Speaker 1: we need to crack down on it. But the problem
Speaker 1: is toxicity is a negative relationship like the person carrying
Speaker 1: it out is trying to make the target feel intimidated,
Speaker 1: is make them feel bad, and so self reports are
Speaker 1: easier to generate and take action against radicalization. So the
Speaker 1: person who carries out the harassment then gets radicalized by
Speaker 1: a community who's celebrating them. All of those radicalization interactions
Speaker 1: are very positive. The target of the radicalization is supposed
Speaker 1: to feel welcomed, they're supposed to feel connected, they're supposed
Speaker 1: to feel rewarded, and that is really really hard to
Speaker 1: detect solely from like self reports or from a reactive sense,
Speaker 1: because if you feel good, you're not going to report
Speaker 1: radicalization attempts to the game developers. So absolutely, there's this
Speaker 1: huge interplay there between toxicity on the one hand, and
Speaker 1: then the networks of people who are trying to recruit
Speaker 1: the toxic actors into their networks. You spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time looking at the darkest side of online gaming.
Speaker 1: Is there any reason for optimism? Is there anything that
Speaker 1: makes you actually feel hopeful about what can be done.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge gamer, Like I've been a gamer in
Speaker 1: my whole life, and one of the things we've seen
Speaker 1: borne out by the research is that games are incredibly positive.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the interactions, a lot of the
Speaker 1: unique characteristics that I was just describing are more generally
Speaker 1: and more often very very positive. Extremism is a fringe thing.
Speaker 1: It is a minority of individuals who end up in extremism.
Speaker 1: So one of the optimistic sides here is that for
Speaker 1: most people, the interactions in a game are positive. Like you,
Speaker 1: you end up in good pro social relationships and connections.
Speaker 1: And for people who might be you know, lonely or
Speaker 1: introverted or having trouble making friends in the real world,
Speaker 1: games can be a really really powerful tool for you know,
Speaker 1: surmounting some of those obstacles, and they have been for
Speaker 1: for you know, tens of millions of people throughout the world.
Speaker 1: And so the big challenge then is how do we
Speaker 1: make sure that we're maximizing that that positive impact, maximizing
Speaker 1: the conversion of people into pro social actors, and minimizing
Speaker 1: those types of people who might be more vulnerable to
Speaker 1: the darker sides of it. And I think that question
Speaker 1: is solvable. Like I think we are seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of companies do a lot of investment in in sinimizing
Speaker 1: pro social behavior, uh and and having some of the
Speaker 1: more like more types of condom moneration that are signed
Speaker 1: to encourage and reward good behavior rather than just crackdown
Speaker 1: on bad behavior. And I think there's some really encouraging
Speaker 1: signs from the industry that they're moving in the right
Speaker 1: direction there, and my hope is that with this project
Speaker 1: we can help galvanize that a little bit more. Alex Newhouse,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. You can read more of
Speaker 1: Cecilia Dona SCIO's reporting at Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a
Speaker 1: daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. From more
Speaker 1: shows from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big
Speaker 1: Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The
Speaker 1: Big Take is Dicky Burgolina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Mobarrow and Michael Fallero. Raphael M. Seeley
Speaker 1: is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin.
Speaker 1: I'm Westcasova. We'll be back tomorrow with another big take,