Daniel Kelley
Fighting Antisemitism, Hate and Harassment in Online Multiplayer Games
Daniel Kelley - Fighting Antisemitism, Hate and Harassment in Online Multiplayer Games
- Tonight, we have the great pleasure of having Daniel Kelley with us, who will be discussing fighting antisemitism, hate and harassment in online multiplayer games. Daniel is the director of strategy and operations of the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL, the Centre for Technology and Society. CTS works through research and advocacy to fight for justice and fair treatment for all in digital social spaces, from social media to online games and beyond. Daniel leads the centres worked to fight hate and harassment in the games. For the past three years, Daniel was the lead author of the First Nation Representative survey of hate, harassment, and positive social experiences in online games, which will be repeated again this year. He also manages the center’s game research and conducts advocacy for the game industry, civil society, government, and the broader public to push for all of society’s response to ensure that online games become respectful and inclusive spaces for all people. He is the member of an advisory board of Raising Good Gamers and an advisor to the Fair Play Alliance. Find him on Twitter @DanielJKelley. So Daniel, million thanks for being with us this evening, and we look forward to hearing your presentation. Thank you, Carly, to the two of you. Thank you. And thank you, Lauren, as always.
Thanks, Wendy. Daniel, thank you for joining us, and thank you for helping me learn over the last few months about the gaming sector as you’ve been a great teacher. So, for our audience to start with, I think we should break this down a little bit. The headlines that people may have heard, and from this year’s ADL report is that nearly one in 10 gamers between age 13 and 17 have been exposed to white supremacist ideology and themes in online market player games. That’s an estimated 2.3 million teens were being exposed to white supremacist ideology. Now, let’s explain a little bit about what that means. I’m not sure how many on the platform with us tonight are gamers, but first of all, let’s tell everybody a little bit about the gaming sector, how many people in America play it, and why this is important.
Sure. So, thank you. Thanks for having me and appreciate the opportunity to chat with folks here. In terms of gaming, I think what we’re really talking about here are online multiplayer games. So I think when you think about fighting hate, or when you think about people who are trying to do justice work in games, you might imagine that you’re talking about games as a form of media in the same way you talk about film or television. Talking about how are people being portrayed, what are the stories being told? But what we’re really talking about here are online multiplayer game spaces that are very much akin to social media. There are over a hundred million adults in the United States that play specifically online multiplayer games, though there are over 200 million who play video games of any kind whatsoever. And so when we’re talking about this, we’re talking about the ways in which, we’re talking about games like Fortnite, like League of Legends, even football games like Madden and NFL has an online component. We’re talking about these kind of games where people are playing matches with one another and communicating either through text or voice. And then we’re also talking about how these kinds of spaces have become vehicles for social engagement beyond just the game themselves. So, for example, Ariana Grande played a concert for over a hundred million people inside of Fortnite. It’s a live concert. She’s performing inside the game and people are interacting socially as they would at a concert. There’ve been people who’ve used online game platforms as vehicles for political protests as well. People organising protests of various real world events in these online game spaces. So in addition to being places where people are playing together and interacting, making friends or learning about themselves, these are also becoming increasingly important social spaces in and of themselves online.
And when we say people are using them as social platforms, do you mean they’re using a chat feature? I’m afraid I didn’t necessarily understand that often they’re wearing headphones and communicating that way. So maybe just explain a little bit what you mean by communicating.
Sure, so I think there are three fundamental ways that people communicate in online multiplayer games. So one is like this. I’m wearing a headset. You may be wearing a headset at home as well. But when you’re actually playing the game, people have these headsets on and it allows them to transmit their voice into that gaming space. That’s one of the ways in which people are communicating. Oftentimes there’s also a little box in the corner or somewhere on the screen where people can chat and type in text messages. And then the third area of communication in these spaces is more creative around the, and it depends on how the game itself is structured. So some of these games have the ability to create different kinds of structures inside of the game. In Fortnite, for example, you can build a structure where you can hide from your enemies or whatever, like a little fortress. But the same sort of tools that allow you to build your little fortress to hide from the enemy also can allow you to build structures like, for instance, we’ve seen a giant swastika being made using these kinds of tools in Fortnite. So in addition to text and voice, you also have this creative user-generated content tools that are available in some games.
And the antisemitic or the extremist content appears across all three places in that communication. The chat, through the audio content, and then as you said, actually building it out in the games itself.
Yes, that’s true.
And is there other forms of harassment present on games, or is this particularly racist discrimination that’s the focus?
Sure, so our survey looks across all sort of vulnerable and marginalised communities in terms of the harassment folks are facing. The trends that we found were women were and have been the most targeted group in online multiplayer games over the last four years. They continue to be, followed by anti-Black racism in online multiplayer games. This year, we did see a specific spike in the experiences folks have of antisemitism in online multiplayer games. It went from 22% of Jewish adult gamers in 2021 to 34% of adult Jewish gamers being targeted because of their identity in online multiplayer games. So we’re looking across the whole spectrum, but anyone who belongs to, folks who belong to LGBTQ community, Muslim people, Latino people, a whole range of different identities are targeted by hate in these kinds of communities. And happy to talk a little bit about, happy being a relative term, but glad to share information about why these kinds of things happen as well.
And when people play games, are you able to be anonymous on gaming platforms and is that the first challenge as you think about how you navigate this extremism space?
Sure. So I think anonymity is an interesting point. There are certain games, certainly you can be a username. That’s whatever. You could be your name, you could be someone else’s name. I do think, we do a separate survey of social media platforms. And I think one of the interesting things about that survey is it finds that the place where people on social media are harassed the most is Facebook. And Facebook actually has a real names policy. Ostensibly on Facebook, you have to be yourself. You have to be your real name. And so I think that reveals the idea that if only we did away with anonymity, that would somehow make harassment online go away. And I think that’s not necessarily true. I think one of the things we hear about in gaming spaces and in other spaces is that people who perhaps feel unsafe in their offline environment expressing certain aspects of their identity, find communities online where they’re able to be anonymous, or not be who they are offline and express different aspects of their identity. So I think it’s a complicated question when you’re talking about anonymity and the ways in which it interacts with harassment online.
And I think one of the things that is important and may not be widely understood is who are the main players of these games or the main age group that could be being exposed. So just walk us through some of the statistics on age of gamers and how many hours a day or a week they might be spending on the gaming platforms.
Sure, so in terms of the ages, so the Entertainment Software Association finds that 65% of American adults over the age of 18 are playing games. And 71% of kids who are under the age of 18 are playing games. 62% of women and girls are playing video games. 70% of men and boys play video games. So I think there’s maybe a perception that games is historically have been younger and very male. I think there’s growing areas of research that show that it actually is all different ages and that there are a significant percentage of female gamers as well as gamers of a variety of different identities as well.
I think one of the things that surprised me was the huge number of 13 to 17-year-olds who are gamers for considerable hours at a time at a point in your life when your opinions about the world are being shaped and how much information you can be exposed to whilst playing those games. And it’s something that obviously people talk a lot about social media and about the challenges around bullying and harassment of young adults on social media platforms. Are you seeing some of the same concerning trends in terms of bullying on gaming platforms that have been noted on social media platforms?
Sure, yeah. So I think we did ask about the experiences that young people have on these platforms, on online gaming platforms. We asked the experience of 13 to 17-year-olds. And we’d asked that question last year, and we asked that again this year. So last year, 60% of 13 to 17-year-olds experienced harassment. This year, that increased to 66%. This is the first year we actually did ask about preteens, so this would be 10 to 12-year-olds, and 70% of 10 to 12-year-olds reported experiencing harassment. So these are, I think we ask about the last six months. So these are the kinds of experiences that these young people are having in these spaces in the last six months and this is unacceptable. We know that games are important spaces for young people to explore their identity, to make friends, to understand themselves and other people. And they’re being subject to these kinds of horrible behaviours to just existing in these spaces.
And is it a kind of equal opportunity discrimination? The report touches on white supremacy, but are extremist groups of all types using gaming both as a radicalization and a recruitment tool? Or is white supremacy the leading type of hate?
Sure, so we ask particularly about white supremacy because it’s an area where it’s the deadliest form of extremism. And so that’s really where our focus is. But there are other conspiracy theories and other kinds of questions that we are asking about in the survey. Specifically, we ask every year about, for example, Holocaust denial. And so we’ve seen over the four years we’ve done the survey that it’s hovered around one in 10 people being exposed to Holocaust denial specifically in online multiplayer games. We also asked about, so one of the things we talked about this year was every year the game industry does something where they make a statement about a particular political issue. This year, they spoke out a lot about the Dobbs verdict in the Supreme Court, which gutted Roe v. Wade. And so what we asked about, as a result of that, we asked about some questions about anti-abortion extremism, which some of my colleagues work on. So these are things like saying fem whites must pay, which comes from the manosphere, which is a super misogynistic part of the internet. Also saying things like abortions for Black women will help the white birth rate, which is a kind of crossover of white supremacy and anti-abortion extremism. And we found that 7%, nearly one in 10 of adults were exposed to these kinds of conversations in online games, which goes to show that even as the industry is trying to make statements in support of reproductive rights, in support of women’s rights, they are facilitating these spaces where misogyny is rampant and where these specific kinds of misogynistic extremism are taking hold as well.
So one of the challenges when we talk about online platform social media is where does this cross from an online platform into what you might call the real world. Now, there’s been some headline moments. I want to talk first about some of the celebrities who have been called out for, let’s take antisemitism whilst playing the game. Meyers Leonard is obviously an example. And tell me how, give us an example of the kind of Meyers Leonard case study and how common that kind of problem is.
Sure. Well, I think when we’re talking about Meyers Leonard, and we’re talking about antisemitism, specifically in that universe, what we’re talking about is streamers. We’re talking about people who are on platforms like Twitch. YouTube also allows for streamers who are basically playing a game and doing a performance for their audience of them playing the game and how they’re playing the game and these kinds of things, talking as they’re playing. And I think what we see is, I think Meyers Leonard’s is a particularly interesting case because in general what you see with streamers is you see people who are inundated in gaming culture, who are suddenly, often very suddenly find themselves in front of thousands, maybe millions of viewers, and are acting the same way they would act if they were playing with their friends. In the kind of culture that the lack of moderation and the lack of community norms in these spaces encourage these kinds of horrible, heinous behaviours. And all of a sudden, they have this influence over this audience and are saying these kinds of things. I think Meyers Leonard is particularly interesting because he ostensibly should have known better. He wasn’t necessarily coming purely from the gaming space. He was coming from the traditional sports world where I think there’s a little more awareness of how you are in public than there is in the streaming space. So I think this particularly interesting case, but since his incident where he said that particularly antisemitic slur, I know he’s made a bunch of different, done a bunch of different work in the community and has been trying to rectify his action because words have impact and when you say those kinds of things to an audience of impressionable folks who are watching you stream, it has an impact. It sets norms and it’s not acceptable.
For our international audience, Meyers Leonard is a basketball player, and yes, I think what you said is important. I know that he’s signed up to be a part of Shine A Light this year and is actively going to be involved in the streaming that has been going on this week as part of Shine A Light and will be joining us for the last session. And he’s certainly an example of someone who has engaged with the criticism he received and looked to respond. Now, that’s one example of a real world iteration. A much more concerning example is where actions in the gaming space can lead to real world violence. The example from the Christchurch shooter attack in New Zealand comes to mind. That’s someone where the police have said that he was radicalised on the gaming platforms. is that a common iteration that you’re starting to see?
So I think it’s hard to tell. I think we don’t have a lot of visibility into a lot of gaming spaces to understand that. But I think the Christchurch shooter is an important one because it wasn’t as much, it’s formal radicalization where he was started, became inundated with right wing extremist dogma, was actually on the more traditional social media platforms. But the online gaming space, according to the New Zealand report, showed that he used gaming as a kind of proving ground to say, let me flirt with some of these ideas in these spaces. Let me see if I get any pushback from the community or from the platform. And he didn’t see that. And so as a result of that, he can continue down his path towards radicalization. So I think I don’t know how many people are continuing on the path towards radicalization, but I think what our survey results do speak to is the amount of folks that are seeing people doing that same, “Hey, can I try this bad idea here or this what I think of as an edgy idea here? Will I get pushback? Do I believe this?” And because the lack of moderation in gaming spaces, because of the cultural norms that don’t encourage pushing back on these kinds of things, we are seeing more people flirting with these ideas in these spaces, which is dangerous.
So you just touched on the lack of moderation, which I now want to talk about. Obviously over the last, I would say five years, ADL and other organisations have been making a big push on the policy side of social media organisations. And up until now, gaming companies and platforms haven’t traditionally fallen into the kind of social media engagement and policy piece. Where do gaming platforms line up alongside social media? Obviously we know that Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, have very large moderation teams. We won’t touch on Twitter’s moderation teams for the time being, but they did used to have a very large one. What are gaming platforms doing in comparison to more traditional social media platforms?
Sure. So I’d say in general, gaming companies are about 10 years behind social media in terms of their sophistication with dealing with these kinds of issues. And so you see, and for example, the policies of gaming platforms, you see policies that are more akin to the early days of Facebook and Twitter. For example, where you had every kind of bad behaviour in one policy. We don’t stand for harassment, hate speech, threats, violence, all these kinds of things were all part and parcel of one policy. Whereas what you see today is because of all of the different cases where the social media companies had to grapple with what their policies actually mean and their impact on the world. You see much more streamlined and specific policies around these different kinds of behaviours. You don’t see that in online games. You don’t have the same kind of robust data sharing that you have from social media in online games. And you don’t have the same, even trust and safety, as a function is a career right now in social media. People have whole careers going from trust and safety teams between different social media companies. That same pillar doesn’t, excuse me, that same pillar doesn’t exist in the same way in the game industry. And so I think that also shows the level of maturity that the industry has with professionalising these kinds of efforts.
And in terms of the actual games themselves, the way they are designed, how much control could companies have? Are there moderation tools? Are there in-house reporting systems? Are they able to use the same AI technology that social media platforms use? What resources do they have?
Sure, so anything that a social media company can do, a game company can do, and there are better actors in this space. Roblox is a company that is a platform for seven to 13-year-olds. And because of some actions, investigations, pressure from the public as well as private engagement, they have moved towards being a better actor in the last year or so. And that means that they have robust policies. That means that we know that they have expanded their moderation teams. We know that they have consulted with experts on topics like extremism. These are the kinds of signs that you want to see that the company is really engaging in these kinds of things. You also see Microsoft acquired the AI content moderation company, Two Hat, to expand Xboxes, Microsoft owns Xbox, expand Xbox’s content moderation efforts. And so when you see these kinds of things, when you see significant investments by companies, when you see significant changes in policy, when you hear about teams being expanded, these are the kinds of signs you want to see for companies, really investing in addressing the problem.
And you’ve just touched on the fact that Microsoft is involved here. Who else, who’s the owners of these gaming companies? Presumably they actually, if you go up the tree, they are all owned by very large conglomerates, all of whom in some capacity or another are probably used to navigating some of these spaces on other platforms.
Yeah, I think not all gaming companies. Some major gaming companies live on their own. Activision Blizzard is a large company that is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft actually. But until recently was on its own. Electronic Arts lives on its own. And so I think there are a variety of different, Riot Games is owned by Tencent, who is a Chinese company that has its own, that does its own games as well. So these are all major corporations that are public that should respond to these kinds of these considerations. They also all belong to the Entertainment Software Association, which is a lobbying firm in DC that has been spending a lot of time pushing back on different narratives. They’re all savvy political players, people who should be aware of the power of public pressure to make their games look bad and that the impact that will have on consumers. And so for that reason alone, they should be doing more. We found year over year in our survey that more and more gamers are quitting games because of harassment. And so that should be a really important factor for the industry because the gamers are, as opposed to social media where the consumers might be advertisers, for games, the consumers are the gamers. They’re the people who are buying the games, they’re the people who buying the in-game purchases that drive the whole revenue of the industry. And so the fact that over 30% of gamers are quitting games because of harassment, I think it should be an alarm bell for the industry broadly.
So one of the interesting challenges for the gaming sector is obviously how young the audience is. So discrimination and racism is part of this, but presumably as is grooming, catfishing, and other ways of engaging with young audiences that can ultimately lead to a very concerning outcome. How is law enforcement engaging in this space in terms of seeing what’s going on on gaming platforms, being able to follow up and how secure are these gaming platforms in terms of engaging with the FBI and others when they may need information?
Sure, so I think there are different… So I’d say a couple things here. One would be that gaming environments are less, investigators are less able to look into gaming environments than they are into social media kinds of environments. You can type in some letters and search in Twitter or search on Facebook for activities. That kind of searchability doesn’t exist in games like Call of Duty or Fortnite or League of Legends. You can’t do that kind of searching. So if you are a law enforcement person and are trying to do some sort of investigation on a game platform, it will be more difficult for you. I think both on the law enforcement side and on the game industry side, there’s less sophistication than there needs to be about understanding the seriousness of the ways in which experiences manifest on game platforms. And of the impetus that, and of the importance of being able to communicate the seriousness of the experiences, having the gamers from the industry back to law enforcement. So I think there’s definitely a lot of education that needs to happen on both sides as to how to work together. And yeah.
And in terms of how gaming companies respond when something does happen, is this considered in the same way that you may need a court order and there’s privacy concerns and that kind of thing and how has the legal industry engaged between the two?
That’s not really an area that we focus on that much. I have heard that there are some game companies that, as a result of, excuse me, as a result of a lack of sophistication on their part, are looking for police requests in order to actually look at any of the reports that come in. Because they want to have some higher authority coming to them. But we haven’t really done a lot of work thinking about that particular question.
And then in terms of the actual reporting, let’s try and help people visualise this. When you are on a game itself and you see a swastika being built in the side of a fort or something is written in the chat, what happens next?
Sure, so, I think depending on the platform. I think in general, whether it’s a creative sort of user-generated content like that, whether it’s voice chat, whether it’s text chat, there’s generally some interface that allows you to report to the platform, that allows you to flag it and should give you a variety of different ways in which you can flag the content. You categorise it, you can report it to the platform. My experience is that often that’s where it ends unfortunately. And so I think it’s a real problem because I think, not in this year’s survey, but in previous year’s surveys, we’ve asked about the ways in which, are people reporting and why aren’t they, if they don’t. So 60% of folks in a previous year survey were saying, “Oh no, I don’t report.” And part of the reason why they didn’t report, it really went into two different categories. One was saying, “It’s too hard to report. The actual process is really hard and I don’t want to do it.” Two is in that same vein, “I don’t think it’s going to do anything. I don’t want to waste my time because if I report, I’m not going to get any kind of response.” On the other side of things, which is maybe even more concerning, is this idea that, “Oh, I didn’t think that was worth reporting.” That the norms are such that the level that something needs to reach in order for somebody to feel like they have to report it is so high because harassment and hate is so common in these spaces that they just didn’t think that that was something they should report. Another area is also that harassment is just part of the experience. “That’s just part of being in a game space, and so why would I report?” These are the kinds of things either mechanically, talking about not having trust in the system or just the norms of the space being such that reporting doesn’t occur to people because this is just what happens in these spaces.
And we’re talking about gaming in very broad brush strokes. Are there any games that are better or worse? Any companies that are better or worse, any sectors? People have told me they imagine I would be a Call of Duty player. I don’t if I should be taking that as a compliment or insult, but…
Yeah, no comment on that one, but in terms of whether there are games that are better or worse, again, I think because of the lack of transparency, it’s really hard to tell who’s doing better or worse. I will say that our survey finds that harassment occurs. I think you might imagine that it would be a shooter game like Call of Duty where all of this is happening. But regardless of the genre of game, it happens in shooter games, happens in strategy games, happens in sports games and card games. No matter what the genre of the game is, these kinds of experiences happen in any kind of game where people are connecting. I think the other piece of it is there are Roblox, as I mentioned, actually has an extremism policy. Actually says, “Hey, don’t glorify or celebrate extremist groups or ideologies in our games.” And they’re the only major game company that actually has a policy that explicitly says that. So that’s the kind of thing that we’re looking for. We’re looking for meeting minimum expectations. And for games like Call of Duty, for games like Fortnite, League of Legends, those kinds of things don’t exist.
And are there any online support communities for this kind of thing? And what are they advocating? I know there’s an organisation called Lost Tribe, which is particularly engaged around online Jewish gamers and giving them community. Are there places for people to go for support?
Sure. So one of the services that I think does really good work here is the online games and harassment hotline, which is actually a hotline that provides emotional support for people who are having these experiences. I think it’s an interesting model because it is meant to be almost therapeutic in the sense that people who are having these experiences. It may not rise to the level of something where you want to go to law enforcement. But it’s still horrible to be and it has an impact on people when they experience antisemitism, when they experience racism or misogyny. And you want to have a place to go to. So I really think that that’s a really great resource. In terms of what we’re able to do, we do have a reported incident form on our website, and we are able to take incidents that come in from various game platforms and able to escalate them to a variety of different partners that we work with. I think we see less reports on game platforms for some of the reasons that I’ve said, which is I think there’s a sense that, they won’t listen to reports in their game, they won’t listen to reports from us. It’s not worth my time to fill out a report because we can’t, the platform won’t engage. So I think it’s a challenging space. And I guess the other thing in terms of support communities, in the same way there are some streamers on Twitch and other places that maybe are emblematic of the harsher elements of these communities. I do think that there are examples of streamers on Twitch and other places who are embodying more inclusive communities. And I think there’s another place where people could find support for, is fighting these pro-social streaming communities.
I will say as part of the Shine A Light campaign, we’ve had five streamers engage with us who would not normally be a part of this kind of initiative, but using their platforms to educate and raise awareness as to how you respond to antisemitism and using their communities to raise those voices up. And for kids who are on these platforms, how well equipped do you think parents, teachers, the support network for kids are to really understand the types of challenges they may be facing? And are there some good tools or resources you would recommend?
Sure. So we asked about this in our survey last year. We asked about the degree to which parents were aware of, for example, different safety features that are currently available on many of these games. I think we found less than half of parents and caregivers were aware of any of them or used any of them in setting up games for young people in their lives. I think that’s on parents to educate themselves and that’s also on the game companies to make these kinds of resources and tools more available and more accessible to people when they’re first setting up the young person in their lives, on their game platform. One of the things I think we recommend more than anything, more than safety tools or anything is really starting a dialogue with the young person in your life about the spaces they’re in. Take online gaming spaces seriously. In the same way you wouldn’t ignore your kid going to a playground or a play date or a school and you wouldn’t just be like, “Oh, I don’t care what happens in that space. That’s not a real space.” You should think about online games in the same way you think about these spaces. We have a table talk that allows you to give us some questions and other things that you can ask the young people in your lives related to some of the data from our survey. And that’s a resource that’s available for folks to start that conversation as well.
And obviously we know that governments around the world are starting to look at how they legislate and engage with social media platforms and different countries tackle this differently. The UK for example has very different policies around internet security and safety than the US. What are the various government options or tools, and what ones are you advocating for?
Sure. So I think, actually just this past Friday, a coalition of lawmakers in DC, as a result of or based on reading and understanding a little bit about our report, sent a series of letters to CEOs of major game companies. And I think doing the first step that legislators should really do, which is asking questions. How are you doing content moderation? How are you thinking about extremism? How are you engaging with people who represent different marginalised and targeted communities? These are the first steps that legislators can take in trying to shine a light, if you will, on the problem. And really use their bully pulpit to draw attention to these problems and show the industry that they’re paying attention. I think another way is in which we’re thinking about legislative action is we supported a bill called AB 587 in California, which would mandate social media companies do certain forms of transparency around their content moderation practises. I think we’re exploring ways in which we can do similar work in gaming and whether that particular law actually does already applies to gaming spaces. So I think definitely looking at ways in which legislators can probe the industry to better understand what they’re doing, and then the ways in which we can explore legislative solutions around transparency.
And how much of a challenge here, if I may, is the age of legislators and their experience with gaming? We’ve all seen some of the questioning of CEOs of social media companies where it’s very obvious from the questions that the lawmakers, to be honest, probably have never stepped foot in a social media platform. In the little learnings I have done in the last few months, thanks to you and your colleagues, I just now understand I’ve scratched the surface and by how much I don’t know. So for law enforcement and for legislators, how do they tackle that huge knowledge gap?
Sure. I think we are seeing, I’ve been working in this space for a few years now, and I think we are seeing legislators doing the work of educating themselves and bringing on staff that have deeper knowledge in these areas. I think if you look at the kinds of social media hearings we had a few years ago versus what we’re seeing today, I think the level of sophistication of questions has grown. And I think the fact that we’re seeing legislators starting to reach out to companies, to educate themselves, to engage with the research that we and others are doing, I think that shows that there’s a desire among certain legislators to educate themselves and to learn more about this space. Because I think they see that it’s important. They also see that they don’t understand what it is. And I don’t think they want to see the same repeat of social media where exactly what you said happened. They got up in front of the whole country and essentially showed how little they knew about these kinds of spaces. And I think there’s a lot of, I think a lot of work is happening to try and ensure that that doesn’t happen in the same way when we’re talking about these kinds of spaces.
Are there any countries that are more advanced than the US in thinking about this?
Sure. So the Australia actually has an eSafety Commissioner. That is a high level person who actually I know engages with a bunch of different game companies and does a bunch of work in that space. So that’s one I would point to. But I think primarily we’re focused on the US and so I think our work here is really on trying to make sure that people in various positions of power have the information they need to make these kinds of important decisions about how to legislate or where to look for more information on this.
And if somebody listening has a gamer in their lives, what would you advocate that they recommend gamers do if they do experience harassment online or if they want to be a good ally?
Sure. So I think there’s two things. One of which is, like you said, there’s allyship in the moment in the space. If you feel safe yourself to be able to push back, To say, “Hey, wait a minute.” Ask a question about what somebody says. So the ways in which someone is talking to another person. I think that’s a way in which you can show allyship, especially if you feel safe yourself. I think also using any of the reporting mechanisms that I’ve mentioned. We have a cyber safety action guide, which does show the different mechanisms that allow for reporting in the variety of different games as well as social media platforms. So you can use that resource to report hate when you see it on these platforms. And you can also use the same communication features in these games to push back in terms of the community norms. To say that these kinds of behaviours are not appropriate in these spaces.
And there’s obviously the crossover between the gaming world and the real world through e-gamers and sports teams. One of the things that I’ve been surprised to learn about is that big crossover and how many sports teams may now have either gaming platforms themselves or their own online piece. The sports leagues across America have been a huge part of Shine A Light and really engaged meaningfully in raising awareness. Obviously also, sports celebrities have huge platforms and big followings. How are our sports teams navigating this space? And do you see that sector as challenging as some of the other games?
Yeah, I’m less involved. ADL does a bunch of work in sports and in traditional sports, and I’m less involved there than in the gaming spaces. I do see that there is more, traditional sports is more thoughtful, I think, about how their players appear in public. And the ways in which their players can be ambassadors for the kinds of values we want to see as a society. I think with esports, they’re catching up to that, but I do think that there is still, esports emerges from gaming culture, and so you still have the same kind of phenomena that you see in streaming that you see in esports a bit where you have people who are emerging from gaming culture and are suddenly thrust in front of people and are behaving the same way they would in a normal gaming space. I think you’re seeing that less among professional athletes who are also engaging in esports because of the education piece that goes into being a professional athlete in a traditional league. But I think in the pure esport space, I think you do still see a bit of that, the sort of bleed over from gaming culture into the professional area.
So as you look ahead to next year, what are the actions or the policies that ADL are going to be advocating for in terms of the gaming space? Wat do you think are the big priorities for this sector?
Sure, so I think one of the things we really want to be looking at is, the main way that games are rated right now is through the ESRB ratings, which is a series. If you’ve seen a game, it has M for mature or T for teen, and they’re generally rated based on the kinds of content in the game or does it have blood or swearing or all these kinds of things. But it only says on the thing like, users interact. It doesn’t say anything about any of the steps that any of the games are taking to make their online space safe and inclusive. So I think one of the things we really want to do is try to, and the things we’re going to be pushing on is how do we create a framework for actually rating games that it actually does take into account the different efforts that companies are making to address these things. There are some companies who are going to be better than others, but right now, there’s no information for parents, for gamers of all ages about, is this game safe? Media pieces aside, is this game taking safety seriously? So I think that’s a big piece. And then the second piece is really around making sure that the most basic thing in an online space, which is an extremism policy. Making sure that that game companies have in place something on their code of conduct or in the terms of service or anywhere else that says extremism is not welcome here. And then of course there needs to be the downstream work of, okay, now that you’ve said that, what does that mean and how is it implemented? And how do we find it and who do we work with? But at the very basic level, saying, we won’t promote extremist, white supremacist ideologies in our online space. That should be an easy bar for the game industry to rise to. But so far really only Roblox has actually taken and gone there, unfortunately.
What are some of the reasons that they’re giving you for not doing it?
Well, I think there’s just a lack of understanding. One is, it’s not happening here. I think that’s one of the reasons why this year we included in our survey a list of games. We asked people, “Okay, in the past we’ve asked, okay, you’ve had experience of white supremacy, but where did you have it?” And unsurprisingly, it was across all the games. It was in sports games and in shooter games and all these kinds of games. So those are the excuses that we get. We hear, “Oh, it’s not happening here.” And we hear, “Oh, well that’s included in our, we say we don’t approve of hate.” But there’s a difference between a casual, casual, between a hateful phrase or a slur and the kind of hateful white supremacist ideologies that have led to violent acts in United States and elsewhere. There’s just a different level of harm there. And I think that that’s something important to call out. And I think it’s something that every social media company has recognised. Every social media company has a hate policy and an extremism policy. And I don’t think the game industry is quite aware of the nature of the threat at this point.
And how much do you think average society is aware of the threat in terms of understanding? If you’ve got kids at home and they’re sitting in their room for hours on a time, you’ve touched on the fact that there’s not necessarily the same understanding that you know where your teenager is till four o'clock in the morning, that actually online spaces can have similar challenges. What do you think is important for society to understand about gaming platforms?
Yeah, I think it’s important for society to understand that these are social spaces. This is where conversations are happening. These are where people are connecting and hanging out with their friends. And whether that’s adults, whether that’s teens, whether that’s pre-teens, these are the spaces where people are. And I think the sooner we get away from, I think the minimising of these spaces in terms of their import, and I think in general, yeah, there’s a sense that these gaming spaces aren’t as serious, that they aren’t consequential spaces, that people are just playing, but these are important social spaces. And so if we can put these platforms in the same category as social media in terms of how we’re thinking about it, I think that’ll go a long way in terms of pushing how people are thinking about these spaces and taking them seriously.
And one of the levers that people have used, let’s say on Twitter in the last few months, is advertisers. Where are you spending your money and how do your consumers feel about it and who are you associating with. Are there advertisers in the gaming space? Does it work similarly in terms of advertising dollars being spent and is that another way to be pressurising gaming companies?
I think certainly looking, many of these are public companies. And so there is certainly a business element to this, but games are structured differently than social media companies. I think the sort of business model of many gaming companies is not the same kind of user-targeted data advertising that you’ve seen in social media. As I said earlier in this conversation, in social media, the advertisers are the customers, but in gaming, really the gamers are the customers. They’re the ones who buy the game, they’re the ones who, for games that are free to play, you have the ability to buy custom stuff inside of the game to have a cool little gun or a costume or whatever. These are the kinds of assets that gamers are purchasing. And so I think to find a way to reach gamers themselves, and to really for gamers to… That’s why as part of the launch of the survey, we put out an opportunity for folks to send a letter to gaming CEOs. You can send a letter to these games and you’ll say, “This is important.” I think in addition to reporting, in addition to calling out these things when they happen in these spaces, you can make your voice heard and write and speak on how important this is to you and how this impacts your purchasing as a consumer.
Thank you. So I know that that’s a lot to cover and that I hope did a decent job of running through it all without scaring people too much as to what their 14-year-old may be up to at 4:00 AM in the morning in their room. Daniel, I know that you, on behalf of the Jewish community, have really been a huge advocate in trying to get people to pay more attention and to take this seriously. Your colleagues at ADL did tell me that I think you spent a good three years before they agreed to focus on this, repeatedly bringing it up in meetings. Sounds similar way to I am about Jewish security in New York. So I can appreciate when you feel like you’re talking to yourself, but I think the last three years of the survey really shows the concerns around this issue and how important it is that, as you say, people move away from trivialising the gaming industry into understanding that this is a huge part of where the real world spends their time. And also that there is stuff that can be done. You’ve just given a big list of things and there’s more resources on the ADL website. As part of Shine A Light this year, we’ve piloted engaging in the gaming platforms and it’s been an eye-opening experience for me. But also, as you say, there are allies out there, there are those out there who actually will stand up in the same way that you find in the real world. And also examples of people like Meyers Leonard, who then when you engage and work with them and they understand their reach and their platform, can be brought around. As we wrap up, is there any other resources or places you want to send people to who might be looking to learn more?
Sure. I think the only thing we didn’t talk about is that none of these, in the same way we say no social media companies are monolithic, no game companies are monolithic either. We do work with, for example, the Fair Play Alliance, which is a coalition of different game companies that are trying to work on this. There are people in the industry who are trying to make this better. I think there’s still a lot more for the C-level to really invest in as well as government, as well as the civil society. But I think for folks to check out the work that the Fair Play Alliance is doing, which I think is some of the most cutting edge stuff in the industry in terms of actually trying to tackle this stuff head on. And we’re proud to partner with them.
Fantastic. Well thank you very much Daniel and thank you for joining us as the third part of the Shine A Light series with Lockdown University. And for those of you who would like to learn more about Shine A Light, you can visit the website on shinealighton. And happy Hanukkah, Daniel, and thank you for being a great Shine A Light partner. And I wish everybody a good afternoon and good evening wherever you are.
Thanks so much for having me, take care.
[Carol] Bye.