The recent arrest of John William Kerby Kelly, a 19-year old Neo-Nazi found to be managing racist and Anti-Semitic groups in Steam, prompts a call to action for Valve's increasing hate speech problem. Last Jan. 10, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested John William Kerby Kelly over multiple cases of doxing and dangerous interstate swatting events.
Kelly was charged with a "conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States, specifically interstate threats to injure." He was found to manage Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels responsible for multi-national doxing and swatting.
Doxing is the act of sharing someone else's private information for unlawful purposes, while swatting is a harassment tactic wherein a person falsely reports an emergency situation to authorities in hopes of deploying an armed emergency response team, usually a SWAT team, to another person's house.
One of his alleged victims is a transgender streamer Andrea "Cyberdemon531" Rovenski, who has been swatted late 2018. In an interview with VICE, Rovenski recalled the horrifying experience. A person called 911 saying she has a hostage in her basement. The authorities "tackled her to the ground" and "manhandled her mother."
Neo-Nazi Activities in Steam
According to the report of the Anti-Defamation League, which worked FBI and the LAPD, the 19-year old Neo-Nazi was part of at least two Steam groups openly propagating racist and Anti-Semitic propaganda.
He manages the gaming board for the groups "Carl's Army of Northern Virginia" and "The Rhodesian Defense Forces", both of which subscribe to the extreme right propaganda.
Carl's Northern Army of Northern Virginia's description reads, "Aryans get 15% tax deduction, no negroes, no industrialism". On the other hand, The Rhodesian Defense Forces is a group that possibly aligns themselves to Dylan Roof's Manifesto -- a belief largely held by the extreme right that Americans are being subjected to oppression by non-Whites in South Africa, leading to American genocide.
His Neo-Nazi activities were not confined in Steam communities, the ADL's Center for Extremism finds. By analyzing thousands of online posts, the ADL found out multiple online profiles linked to Kelly. Similar to Steam, his social media accounts on Github, Instagram, and Twitter were ridden with Anti-Semitic and racist sentiments.
Since 2017, Valve has been under fire for the ubiquitous presence of Ne0-Nazi groups using Steam and the streaming community as platforms for their operations. In an article by VICE, thousands of results pop-up after searching the terms "nazi," "white power," and similar terms in Steam groups.
Steam groups are a great way to connect with the larger gaming community, offering video conferencing, text chatting, and sharing of profiles. The social community feature is largely unregulated, making it the perfect platform for targeted indoctrination, even recruitment for extremist groups.
Call for Regulation
Amidst the criticisms and investigations, Valve is yet to provide a solution to the problem of unregulated communities. They have updated their rules and regulations on discussions, reviews, and user-generated content, but they do not have the manpower to enforce these rules. In fact, as of December 2019, Steam only has 21 volunteer moderators, and 13 staffers tasked in regulating all 7,800 games, and it's communities. As punishment for disobeying the rules stated in Steam's code of conduct, accounts can be suspended, and specific reviews can be banned.
