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Games

65% of Online Gamers Face Threats, Stalking, Other 'Severe Harassment' (cnet.com) 167

Online gaming may be popular and fun, but it's not without pitfalls. More than 70% of online gamers have experienced some form of harassment, according to a survey released Thursday from the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Technology and Society. From a report: And 65% of players said they've experienced "severe harassment," including physical threats, stalking and sustained harassment. "Online hate causes real harm," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a release. "Every time someone in an online multiplayer game physically threatens or harasses another player repeatedly because of who they are or what they believe, that experience doesn't just end for that individual when the game is over."

Among online gamers who experience harassment, 53% reported being targeted based on their race, religion, ability, gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity, according to the ADL. Nearly 30% also report being doxed, which means having their contact or other personal information published online. The ADL also said that some gamers reported being exposed to "extremist ideologies and hateful propaganda."

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65% of Online Gamers Face Threats, Stalking, Other 'Severe Harassment'

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  • Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JDeane ( 1402533 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @06:37PM (#58987712) Journal

    And of that 65% 99.9999999% of the "threats" are from some 12 year old kid who has no means to carry out said threats. The verbal abuse is annoying but anytime you deal with the public it's bound to happen at some point.

    • Re:Statistics (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @06:42PM (#58987740)

      But if a significant portion of those 65% are 12 year old kids themselves, they don't yet have the ability to fully realize that the guy they're talking to can't actually get to them.

      Oh, and if he has no means to carry out his threats, how did 30% of them end up doxed? From there it's really just a phone call away from turning into a SWATting instead.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Why are 12 year olds on the internet playing adult games unsupervised in the first place?

        • by JDeane ( 1402533 )

          I often wonder this myself.

          • by Anonymous Coward

            Because parents don't parent anymore. They are not allowed to. Because if they hurt little Johnny's feewings in anyway, it's a visit from CPS for their 'violation'. Repeated violations gets Johnny taken away, and the parents may even have to go live with Bubba for a while.

            Of course, this kind of behavior isn't new, and even if parents were allowed to parent, little Johnny would go to a friends house or use his phone at school instead. Like we did back in the day when we were not allowed to play Mor

        • Re:Statistics (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @09:24PM (#58988502)
          I play counter-strike sometimes and when I hear an obvious child I frequently make a point to say "I hope your parents are listening right now. Do you know what a bad idea it was to have given your kid a microphone? Now he can talk to perverts like me. Good job."
          • I honestly thought, while reading this, you were going to go with "Do you know what a bad idea it was for your parents to have birthed you?"

            This is why I am a terrible person and part of why I mute my mic when I play - 1) nobody needs to hear my trash talk and 2) nobody needs to hear a grown man cry when he's lost the match.

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        how did 30% of them end up doxed?

        Goes to show what a load of crock that survey is. 30% of 70% have been doxxed, i.e. over 20% of gamers have been doxxed? Yea, right. Just more bullshit from the ADL. They're a political activist group whose business model is to label everything under the sun as hate so they get to play censor.

      • The ADL is full of shit and has been for some time. Trusting their d
        "data" is a mistake.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A couple points

      1)
      Being an online gamer and interacting with this audience I can also say this:
      * People believe they experience harassment. Arguing with that is trying to argue against a tautology. One can't say someone is "wrong" about believing some given context.
      * People are wrong that they are harassed. "Believing" one is harassed and actually being harassed are not the same thing.

      I come from a game where being kicked from a group for a poor performance is considered harassment. Quips are

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      And of that 65% 99.9999999% of the "threats" are from some 12 year old kid who has no means to carry out said threats. The verbal abuse is annoying but anytime you deal with the public it's bound to happen at some point.

      Indeed. Further, it's quite silly to say "everyone faces severe X". If everyone faces it, it's norrmal X.

      The only time verbal abuse really annoys me is when I can tell someone's trying to tell me something that make be useful in playing the game, but is too wrapped up in flaming to explain it.

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The only time verbal abuse, wait what, I always turn off that little feature in online, unless you type it in the chat window, I do not hear it. I much prefer the chat window of microphones, It slows them down enormously you have to stop gaming to type. I am not sure what happens with that microphone stuff, I started turning that feature off years ago, after having to hear someone crap on about which character makes the best guardian in totally annoying detail, disabled voice from others at that time and ha

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Been playing online games for twenty years. Made a few friends who have actually become real-life friends, but never had a bit of trouble from anyone. Maybe I'm not playing the right games, or not playing them with the wrong people.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, 2019 @06:40PM (#58987724)

    "The ADL also said that some gamers reported being exposed to "extremist ideologies and hateful propaganda."

    Oh no people have ideas ON THE INTERNET.
    Don't listen to the ADL.

    • Oh no people have ideas ON THE INTERNET.

      Ideas and ideology are not the same thing.

    • "Extremist ideologies and hateful propaganda" == The average junior high school play yard.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Coming from a liberal background and with ~30 years experience online:
      You will find persecution for your politics, whatever they are, at least once in your life online.
      Your favorite non-political activity will have you persecuted by elitist scum either because of a different view on it, or because of inferred politics based on how they play it (go look at pro-Rebel vs pro-Imperial Star Wars fans from the 90s for an example. The modern Star Wars fans may be too intellectually diluted to sample.)

      My point is:

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Did you not notice that a number of recent terrorists cited YouTube and even games as the places they were radicalized? This is not really news.

      It's not even surprising. Places where young, impressionable people hang out have always been targeted. Used to be youth clubs and around, now it's online. When I was about 15 the Scientologists were doing it around town with surveys and fake "health checks".

      • Yeah, I'm struggling to see the parent's line of reasoning. Why are we saying that extremist propaganda is "just ideas"? We don't have enough skinheads and suicide bombers?
  • " 53% reported being targeted based on their race, religion, ability, gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity" ever known?

    I guess gaming sites should have some way of anonymizing users instead of whatever they're doing now.

    Most games I've seen have a report button, if the companies don't actually investigate/ban/report to the relevant authorities, they're not doing their job.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      They're not being targeted. When some 14 year old who just heard some new swear words and gets killed while spawncamping starts yelling "I'm going to kill all of you nword faggots" that is not hate speech, or threats, or abuse, or harassment.
      It's called shit talk, they have no idea that you're gay, black, jewish, etc. So calm the fuck down Nancy.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      " 53% reported being targeted based on their race, religion, ability, gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity"

      Hmm, I've done online gaming for decades. Never had anyone target me for harassment for my "race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity", probably because I don't tell anyone any of those things.

      Though I have heard rumors that some people had a few rude things to say to me about my ability. But that just made me cackle maniacally when I heard about it....;-p

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I got some racist abuse at school. Back then I hadn't even heard of the internet, but these days it's not uncommon for that abuse to continue after school on social media and in online games.

        Easier to get away with in games too, no chance of a teacher hearing you say it. Unlike text chat the platform has no easy way to detect it over voice.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 )

      If I had to guess, I would say it's because they aren't content to just play video games... they feel the need to announce their race, religion, ability, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity to anyone who will listen.

      And, then they pull a Jussie Smollett.

  • sucks
  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:07PM (#58987876) Journal
    Physical threats count as severe harassment? I'm going to pound all of your faces into the pavement.
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      No. Go read TFA. 30% are being doxed. That's severe harassment.

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        I don't find that estimate credible. Three in ten gamers has their personal offline details shared online?

        I can believe three in ten gamers is stupid enough to link their in-game presence to their instatwitface account and then get surprised when people use non-game channels to interact with them but that's hardly fucking doxxing.

        Shit, I've been gaming online for 28 years now and the only time I've ever seen someone doxxed was when they told everybody in-game that they'd taken an overdose and were spending

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's probably because they often play with people they know offline, e.g. at school, who then reveal details about them to other people.

          It's not really surprising that school bullying continues online. It's a known issue with social media too.

        • I don't find that estimate credible. Three in ten gamers has their personal offline details shared online?

          I can believe three in ten gamers is stupid enough to link their in-game presence to their instatwitface account and then get surprised when people use non-game channels to interact with them but that's hardly fucking doxxing.

          Shit, I've been gaming online for 28 years now and the only time I've ever seen someone doxxed was when they told everybody in-game that they'd taken an overdose and were spending their last minutes with us. Ten minutes later we'd tracked down which room in which building on which campus they were in, had someone onsite heading there and an ambulance on the way.

          Even then we didn't actually know their RL name.

          Are you for real? if so, man that's one hell of a story. Could you care to elaborate? I'd love to hear some more

          • by Cederic ( 9623 )

            Yeah, it's real - but it's also from the 90s, I can't remember much more than I've already written. The person was at Durham University and did survive.

  • The ADL (Score:3, Insightful)

    by beepsky ( 6008348 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:20PM (#58987944)
    Didn't these guys equate posting a cartoon frog to posting a Nazi swastika? They're the definition of fake news
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They didn't, no. They just pointed out that Pepe the Frog is a symbol often used by Nazis.

      Don't give me that "they are't really Nazis, they are just trolling you" bullshit either. We have all seen the photos and videos of guys with massive swastika tattoos mixing in with them. If that's their idea of a joke then fuck those Nazis.

      • So says the person who thinks that when someone is referring [slashdot.org] to "the reactionary propagandistic version of communism", they are referring to actual communism, instead of the actual message of "this is so completely deranged on its very face that it's what the anti-communists used to accuse the communists of doing, though of course it's not what they actually did."

        Nuance simply isn't your strong suit, but you fake it well.

        Yes, there are a LOT of people who think Nazis are funny, including: Sarah Silver
  • Is this like rape? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stoutlimb ( 143245 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @08:39PM (#58988318)

    Is this like the false "rape epidemic" study that counted things like unwanted staring in the same category as violent rape at knife point?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The one you made up? I doubt it.

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Well, you do get surveys that assume any woman having sex while drunk has been raped:
        http://aspiringeconomist.com/i... [aspiringeconomist.com]

        You also get activists conflating sexual harassment and rape, using '1 in 5 women are sexually harassed' as signs of a rape epidemic. Then you read the reports and find that sexual harassment includes things like

        Inappropriate staring or leering that made you feel intimidated

        -- http://swinburne.custhelp.com/... [custhelp.com]

        Still, at least the United Nations are taking a proportionate view:

        Sexual harassment includes many things...
        [..]
        - Unwanted [..] leaning over
        [..]
        - Unwanted sexual looks
        [..]
        - Referring to an adult as a girl
        [..]
        - Personal questions about social [..] life
        [..]
        - Hanging around a person.
        [..]
        - Standing close
        [..]
        - Staring at someone
        [..]
        - Facial expressions

        -- https://www.un.org/womenwatch/... [un.org]

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Your blog post notes that the question asked was if women have ended up having unwanted sex because they were plied with alcohol or drugs. Unwanted sex is, by definition, rape. If it's unwanted, they aren't consenting to it. That doesn't seem difficult to understand.

          It's interesting that you carefully edited the UN's list. For example, some of the lines you censored are actually:

          Personal questions about social or sexual life.
          Standing close or brushing up against a person
          Facial expressions, winking, throwing kisses, or licking lips

          If you read the list it's pretty clear it's pretty clear that they are talking about extreme forms of these behaviours, not merely

          • by Cederic ( 9623 )

            Oh for fucks sake, my editing of the UN document in no way changed the behaviours it states are sexual harassment.

            The 'or' means it considers questions about social life sexual harassment, as well as questions about someone's sex life.

            Similarly the 'or' means that standing close to a person is deemed sexual harassment, and that facial expressions are.

            I did read the list and it's pretty fucking clear that they're completely full of shit and that everybody commits sexual harassment any time they're in public

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Show us a verifiable example of someone being fired or prosecuted for staring at a woman. It's just paranoia.

              False allegations do exist, that's true. Just today a guy got 18 years for false allegations in the UK.

              • by Cederic ( 9623 )

                Show us a verifiable example of someone being fired or prosecuted for staring at a woman. It's just paranoia.

                No. Do your own fucking research for once.

                Also consider that a false accusation of rape or even merely sexual harassment is enough to damage someone's career and home life whether they're fired, prosecuted or not.

                I know someone that had a formal complaint made to HR about them because they.. held a door open for the next person along, who happened to be female. Formal complaints at a company are a serious matter, even when they don't lead to someone being fired.

                But tell me, did you read the victim impact st

                • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  It's impossible to prove a negative. The onus is on your to prove your claim. Anyway, I did google, no examples were found.

                  • by Cederic ( 9623 )

                    I didn't make thst fucking claim. You seem to be struggling with basic reading comprehension today, maybe the heat is getting to you.

                    Stop asking me to provide evidence for claims I haven't made and try actually understanding the points I do make. I'm only trying to help you (and educate anybody misled by you).

                    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                      That's my point. It's paranoid BS that hurts men by making them afraid of socialising and forming relationships.

  • by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @09:00PM (#58988406)

    These numbers show that the people ruining gaming for everyone are actually a small minority: more to the point, not a population big enough that any company truly "needs" them to survive anymore. Time to bring on the long-overdue crackdown.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Just like there are rules & laws against bad behavior in the physical world, there must be rules in virtual world!!!

    Internet (WWW) was created for advancement of humanity & NOT for providing safe haven for bullying/abuse/exploitation/manipulation!!!

  • by clawsoon ( 748629 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @09:44PM (#58988590)
    Part of being socialized as a guy in modern society is learning how to not react to disgusting, offensive, and hurtful things. For a lot of us, the only way we can figure out how to do that (especially when we're young) is to shut down our emotions or mask them with sarcasm. This leaves a lot of us emotionally stunted. It works out okay for a while, but then we get older and start wondering why our relationships fall apart, or why work that was once interesting is now boring and pointless, or why we don't seem to have any close friends. Then we have to start growing up again at the point where we left off - at the point where we started shutting down our emotions in order to survive.
  • What I find amazing is that Society as a whole is by now firmly in a space that used to be soley occupied by experts and nerds. Listening to some right-wing USian trump voter ramble on about conspiracy theories for 30+ minutes is fascinating in a bizar sort of way. The 'problem' - if you want to call it that - being that 25 years ago when we started being online he probably wouldn't have had the means or the interest in doing this. These days anybody, no matter the Level of cognitive ability - can grab a su

  • Reminds me of those people with the [MAGA] clan tag in cod.
  • "53% reported being targeted based on their race, religion, ability, gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity"

    how the hell are you to know any of these things of people you meet online in a game?
    are they using silly names like balba_the_black_muslim_trans_amputee_96?

  • Seriously? Who has gamed on the internet and not been subject to prepubescent or incel grief? What are they doing that I'm not?

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