Bosses of Steam, Discord, Twitch and Reddit have to explain themselves for radicalizing users

The murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last week has caused a real political tsunami in the United States.

The latest example was the invitation by the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform for the heads of various online services and platforms to a hearing on the radicalization of Internet users.

1. The CEOs of Steam, Discord, Twitch, and Reddit, namely Gabe Newell, Humam Sakhnini, Dan Clancy, and Steve Huffman, are to appear at the hearing.
2. The commission expects the CEOs to explain what steps they will take to curb the radicalization of their users and ensure that these platforms are not used for "nefarious purposes" in the future.
3. The hearing will take place on October 8th of this year.

Message from the American Congress.

Discord and Reddit comment

Some of these services have already commented on this matter.

• A Discord representative stated that the company cooperates with authorities on such matters and is willing to appear before the committee to discuss its actions.
• Meanwhile, a Reddit representative announced that the service has strong moderation rules for content promoting hate and violence, and that its investigators have so far found no evidence that Charlie Kirk's killer was active on Reddit.

The gamers' reactions to this announcement are mostly negative. On Reddit, they express opinions, among other things, that the current US authorities are using the excuse of fighting radicalization to try to limit freedom of speech. Some people are concerned that misinformation and hate are being spread on social media, both by "trolls" (often paid by various groups) or bots.

However, as other users rightly point out, such platforms have the data and tools to severely limit this, but they simply don't do it because it wouldn't be beneficial from a financial point of view. Reddit is often presented as an example of such deliberate powerlessness. The platform allows accounts to hide the history of their previous posts. In practice, this is something that is mainly beneficial for trolls and bots, as it makes it harder for regular users to detect them.

It is also worth noting that the heads of Facebook and X services, on which radical and hate-inciting content regularly appears, were not summoned before the commission. So it's hard not to wonder if the fact that their owners are friendly towards the Republican party didn't decide this.

• Steam
• USA
• Reddit
• Twitch
• Discord