Behind the colorful pixels of the video game Fortnite There is a secondary platform where white supremacy reigns. A nouveau rapport du Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), consulted Exclusively by Wiredreports dozens of racist, anti-Semitic, or politically violent mini-games published by players using the creative mode of Fortnite. The moderation of Epic Games, the publisher of the famous «battle royale»has difficulty cleaning.
One recreates Jasenovac, a Croatian concentration camp from World War II, and proposes to exterminate Jews, Gypsies and Serbs. The other promotes the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and refers to the racist theory of the “great replacement”. And it took only a few hours after the attack for a mini-game to assassinate Donald Trump. Although they sometimes only stay online for a few hours, the damage is done.
On Fortnitethe creative “islands” mode, released in 2019, is a prime target. Extremists gravitate toward video games that let you build your own levels, according to Garrison Wells, an expert on the subject at the University of California, Irvine. Forums where these levels are shared then become hostile to the players targeted by the hate speech, who tend to abandon the platform.
Supremacist movements therefore marginalize minorities online as they would dream of doing in the public space. “Which creates a vicious circledit Garrison Wellsbecause many games rely on player reports to moderate their platform.” But the people most likely to report the horrors have left.
2⃣ “Jasenovac Education Map” shockingly tags itself as “educational” and “role-playing,” allowing players to either role-play as Ustaša, tasked to “eliminate SRBs,” or as Serbs, the victims. This is a gross oversight by Fortnite’s content moderation. pic.twitter.com/hf5t1P6mZA
— Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (@globalextremism) July 18, 2024
Grey areas and naivety in moderation
It is not new that so-called “sandbox” video games, which provide an editor for players to create their own levels, are being hijacked to create inappropriate content. In 2022, US Senator Urges Steamthe leading PC sales platform, to take action against the rise of neo-Nazi “mods.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) estimated in 2021 that 2.3 million teenagers had already been exposed to hate speech or white supremacist speech through video games, in the United States alone.
For Wendy Via, president of GPAHE, Epic Games is not doing enough. She denounces a rather vague regulation to allow problematic “islands” to remain online. And adds that the regulation on political speech is very broad.
The rules of the creative mode of Fortnite However, they do prohibit them “content containing hateful representations or symbols, or which glorifies or incites violence”and those who might “demean, dehumanize, marginalize, perpetuate negative stereotypes, denigrate other users or groups of users, (or) use hate speech”.
Racist activists nevertheless find a way around it. Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, a law advisor at New York University and co-author of a report on extremism and gaming, explains that the first phase of moderation, automated, is easy to fool by using alternative symbols or not putting a cover image. They then know, when faced with human moderation, to plead parody or historical reconstruction in good faith.
4⃣Fortnite has also hosted politically violent content, including maps based on the recent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. GPAHE had to report one of these maps in order for it to be de-platformed. pic.twitter.com/SoTxdBNtpJ
— Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (@globalextremism) July 18, 2024
“We try to apply the rules and not make arbitrary decisions”responds Alan Cooper, a spokesman for Epic. But while some mini-games fall into a gray area, others clearly violate Epic’s policies. Fortnite. GPAHE thus identifies one that makes players biblical Egyptians who have to kill Jews in a fictional battle. It is still online. The same user had already developed a game simulating the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“No matter how much money these mini-games make, (Epic) doesn’t need it‚ s’impatiente Wendy Via. What’s the point of keeping them on the platform for so long, other than to avoid getting politically involved? (…) As soon as (the game about the attempted assassination of Trump) came out, they took it down. So why not take the others down?
Source: www.slate.fr
