US Senator's Letter To Steam Says It Could Be The Subject Of "More Intense Scrutiny" Regarding Moderation Of "Hate Content"

Just a few days ago, the Anti-Defamation League published a report summarizing their Center on Extremism's (COE) findings regarding the proliferation of hateful content on Steam as they analyzed "458+ million profiles, 152+ million profile and group avatar images and 610+ million comments on user profiles and groups."

Their reported findings registered millions of images or references to things like Nazi swastikas, racist copypastas, or support of foreign terrorist groups like ISIS.

On the heels of that report, US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has penned a letter to CEO Gabe Newell at Valve saying that Steam (and Valve) could come under "more intense scrutiny from the federal government" if the company fails to take more sweeping action against the conduct that the letter says violates Steam's own Content Moderation policies.

The letter, the third such request for information from Valve within the last three years according to The Verge, asks Valve to reply to a number of questions by December 13th. Among the questions asked, Warner asks for a breakdown of current practices used to enforce current terms of service and how Valve defines terms like "encouraging real-world violence" and "violate others' personal rights. The letter is also curious about Valve's intended transparency on enforcement and how many human moderators are involved in current moderation practices, among other inquires.

Warner alleges, "As Black Friday and the holiday buying season approaches, the American public should know that not only is Steam an unsafe for teens and young adults to purchase and play online games, but also that, absent a change in Valve's approach to user moderation and the type of behavior that it welcomes on its platform, Steam is playing a clear role in allowing harmful ideologies to spread and take root among the next generation."

While "more intense scrutiny" isn't actually defined, nor are any potential "punishments" if Valve chose to ignore the request, Warner's letter clearly places a lot of blame for the content at Valve's feet and expects change to be instituted. The US Government can't technically punish legal speech thanks to the First Amendment, but that doesn't mean they can't try to lean on Valve to moderate its content to a greater degree since businesses and their platforms get to make the rules of engagement on their own platforms.

Will Valve reply? What would you do if you were Valve's lawyers?