I read the whole 45 page report from GAO about "gaming extremists": 🧵
Bear with me, because this thread will be long. I will highlight all the parts I found funny or concerning.
It's important to be aware that the government is full of stupid, intrusive clowns.
So what is GAO?
It is the Government Accountability Office, headed by the Comptroller General who is appointed by the President.
It supposedly helps the government work more efficiently and tracks how taxpayer dollars are spent.
Not doing a very good job of it I'd say, lmao.
To start with, GAO links video games with domestic extremism and claims they influenced domestic terror attacks.
They are claiming that livestreamers are the point of origin of extremism, which then moves through YouTube and Twitter, and finally "infects" a large group of people.
They reference the Anti-Defamation League about white supremacy in games.
You'll find out why towards the end of the thread.
They unironically say that humor, memes, and positive aesthetics are a threat.
They link the Buffalo shooter with FPS video games.
Those gosh darned extremists making friends while playing games online!
Their own experts say that there's no evidence to link violent extremism with video games, but they press on regardless.
Reddit jannies mentioned LMAO
If you're too spicy online, companies may give you a personal janny who monitors your activity on other platforms so they can ban you.
Companies give organizations and other special interest groups a reporting backdoor. This was revealed during the Twitter files, but apparently this is still going on unabated.
They're afraid of statue pfps lmao
The FBI and DHS have direct lines to social media and gaming companies.
The Jan 6ers had code words to bring weapons to the Capitol but mysteriously, they didn't bring any. Weird, that.
The DHS collects text and images from social media. This means the DHS has a meme stash lmfao
I&A is the Office of Intelligence and Analysis within the DHS.
They lament that they're not able to collect spicy memes from online video games.
The reason this report references the ADL so much is that they have THREE "experts" from the ADL.
Other organizations are generally represented by a single person.
FINAL NOTES: The report reveals how intrusive the government is, and how they want to expand their incestuous relationship with social media companies into gaming as well.
They make tenuous links between gaming and extremism, but they only support it with assertions.
The worst is yet to come. The report urges the FBI and DHS to improve on their strategies to secretly collect data from games and work with gaming companies and social media to root out "domestic extremism". The DHS has already agreed to this report and is taking action.
If you've gotten all the way down here, thanks for reading. I spent about 3 hours on this, and I'd appreciate it if you retweeted this so others may see it.
Here's an apustaja for your troubles.
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