Exposure to white supremacist ideologies in online gaming doubled in 2022, a new Anti-Defamation League (ADL) study finds, and three-quarters of all adult gamers experienced severe in-game harassment. (Severe in-game harassment refers to prolonged harassment, doxing, physical threats, and sexual harassment, the ADL notes.)
The study, based on a survey of 2,134 people who play online multiplayer games, found that 20% of adults reported exposure to white-supremacist ideologies in 2022, a significant increase from the 8% who reported seeing such content in 2021. The ADL says that 15% of kids ages 10 to 17 reported hearing discussions of white supremacy in online games.
White supremacist language was most often found in Call of Duty, Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Valorant, and World of Warcraft, the ADL finds.
“White supremacists and extremists are pushing their ideas into the mainstream across society, including online games,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in a statement. “We know that what starts online doesn’t always end online—it can have deadly consequences in our communities.”
Prior research suggests that online gaming communities unleash both positive and negative behaviors in people. Gamers of all ages look to online communities to find a feeling of belonging within a group. But, as Rachel Kowert, who studies extremism in gaming at the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, wrote in a recent research report, when gamers “fuse” their real-life and in-game identities, they can exhibit a “willingness to fight/die (for other gamers), recent aggressive behaviors, Machiavellianism (a personality trait characterized by interpersonal manipulation, being deceitful, cynical, and lacking morality), narcissism, psychopathy (lack of empathy), sexism, racism, and the endorsement of beliefs and policies centered on ideas of white nationalism.”
The ADL says gaming companies simply aren’t doing enough to control harassment and extremism.
“I think there is only one game company that has a policy on extremism, and that’s Roblox,” says Daniel Kelley, who directed the study for the ADL. “This is the fourth year we’ve been doing this [study], and we’re not seeing the kind of action we need from the gaming industry on extremism.”
Kelley says social media companies remain far from perfect at controlling hateful and extremist speech, but they’ve made serious investments in resources—both human and AI—needed to combat the problem.
“When social media companies started becoming more responsible and transparent about this they began releasing transparency reports that included more detailed descriptions of extremist speech and what it looks like,” he says.
Gaming companies have not been held to the same standard, Kelley says. “There have been hearings in Congress about extremist speech on social networks, but the gaming industry hasn’t received the same amount of attention from the government,” he says. (The industry trade group Entertainment Software Association didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Large gaming platforms have content moderation groups, and they’re often staffed by talented and well-intentioned people. But, as has been made clear in a very public way at Twitter, those groups are often not given the resources and political power within the organization to better moderate harmful content.
“There needs to be increased investment by the gaming companies in this work,” Kelley says. “There needs to be a real shift in priorities.”
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