Thread by @reveal

1/ This week’s Hate Report: We dig into the video gaming platform Steam and find it’s a haven for groups celebrating school shooters and neo-Nazis.

revealnews.org/blog/hate-repo…

2/ We discovered at least 173 user-created groups dedicated to glorifying school shooters and a whole bunch more promoting neo-Nazi or white supremacist ideology.

(See the link above for the screenshots. Warning: They contain offensive language.)

3/ @steam_games won’t respond to our interview request. We wish they would.

4/ The app also hosts neo-Nazi groups. That included a group claiming affiliation with AtomWaffen Division, a white supremacist group whose members have been connected to five recent killings. The page was taken down earlier this week, but we archived it.

5/ A @dailybeast report found that William Edward Atchison, who killed two people in a New Mexico school shooting last year, had posted racist and violent content to Steam for years before carrying out his massacre

thedailybeast.com/new-mexico-sch…

(The @dailybeast has been owning the “worst corners of the internet” beat lately, btw.)

6/ As the @nytimes reports, experts contest a direct link between playing violent video games and engaging in IRL violence. What’s happening on Steam seems to be users taking advantage of a lightly moderated forum to post extreme content

nytimes.com/2018/02/23/us/…

7/ Bigger picture: In the wake of the Parkland shooting that killed 17 people last month, the FBI has come under scrutiny for failing to act on ominous online posts from the accused shooter.

nytimes.com/2018/02/23/us/…

8/ Steam pages show how widespread the admiration and conversation about school shooting is online, and how little some platforms have done to stop it.

9/ What’s behind school shooter fandom? A recent Finnish study interviewed participants in school shooter fandom groups and discovered many people in this community found school shooters personally relatable

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

10/ Here’s what some respondents in that study told researchers:

11/ Communities like these are drenched in performative irony. The goal is often to get a visceral reaction from other users. However, as one Finnish study participant said, it’s inevitable that someone reading it would carry out a copycat murder:

12/ Have you experienced violent, racist hate in the video game world? If so, tell us about it here revealnews.org/blog/help-us-d…

13/ To get the Hate Report in your inbox every Friday morning, click here to sign up revealnews.org/hate/