The Washington Post Decries 'Toxicity' in Videogames (siliconvalley.com)

This week the Washington Post shared the story of 20-year-old Sam Haberern, who was playing Call of Duty on his Xbox when the other players "started asking him whether he had ever testified in court or murdered anyone." "They said they were from Maryland and that they were going to come and kill me," he said. By then it was 3 a.m., and Haberern decided to quit. One of the gamers in the party then sent him a message via Xbox Live. It contained his home address. Next his house phone rang, then his mother's cellphone. A message appeared on his TV screen from one of the party members -- it was asking why he didn't answer... Haberern contacted Microsoft, which makes Xbox, via its website and reported what happened. Unsatisfied with that process, he then typed a Reddit post, which would go viral, asking what recourse was available to him. The varied and ultimately unsatisfying answers centered on a common theme: There was no good solution.

Toxic behavior in competitive activities is not a new development, nor is it exclusive to video gaming, as social media users can attest. But its persistence amid a rapidly rising medium -- both in terms of users and revenue -- spotlights the question of why undesirable or, in some cases, criminal interactions have been so difficult for the video-game industry or law enforcement to eliminate. Now, with technological advances in online multiplayer games and video gaming's increased prevalence worldwide, a growing percentage of the population is becoming unwittingly exposed to a slew of abusive acts that are only becoming more visible. While game publishers, console makers, online voice-chat applications and even the FBI are aware of these issues and working to confront them, complications stemming from modern technology and gaming practices, freedom of speech concerns, and a lack of chargeable offenses on the legal side make toxic elements a challenge to extinguish.... Ambiguities within the U.S. legal system have played a role in constraining the efforts of law enforcement during the era of online gaming.
After the death threats, Haberern didn't contact the police, but questioned whether Microsoft was creating a safe environment for kids.

The next day, he was back to playing videogames. "But I definitely don't accept invites from people."

Comments

fucking idiots

[Cederic]

So a guy suffers harassment, doxxing, stalking and death threats but doesn't call the police.

The Washington Post meanwhile disregard entirely the illegality of all of those things, claim the law is lacking in this instance and blames video games?

I'm not sure who the biggest fucking idiots in this situation are. The guy that didn't call the police, the Washington Post or the antisocial people that would be antisocial malicious bullies in any environment.

Re:fucking idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, "someone threatened you in CALL OF DUTY, eh?" - Cop eyes rolling audibly... The bigger question, why is this kid's information so accessible to base-level trolls on Call of fucking Duty? DID he shoot someone?

Call of Duty is an opsec hole big time, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't just offer up your address or phone number. They either targeted this guy (like his frienemy down the street doing it) or he's completely doxxed-naked somewhere.

Hell, teachable moment either way. Let's find this kid and ask him, now that he's double-doxxed himself and gone viral, right?

Re:fucking idiots

[ShanghaiBill]

Would the police be willing to do anything about it?

Most likely the perp is outside their jurisdiction, in another state, or even in another country. Even if they were located, and tracked to an IP, it would be difficult to build a case that it was a particular individual.

Our law enforcement system is not designed to deal with these situations.

Re: fucking idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

White males built civilization and fund the lives of those minorities we don't understand. Yes, I will never understand the experience of not qualifying for college entry but getting in anyway to fill a quota, then getting a full ride through it, a nice job at the end despite my grades to fill another quota, all while whining about my oppression. You are right, such an experience is alien to white males.

Re: fucking idiots

[BitterOak]

WTF? The IP you get from your ISP is dynamic, and there's no way to map it to your address without consulting provider's logs

That's true, as long as you don't have WiFi in your home to which anyone, including you, has ever connected a device such as phone or tablet with GPS. Even if you leave your GPS turned off, if you've ever had a guest in your home to whom you've lent your WiFi password so they can connect to your network with their phone, then if they have GPS activated, your IP address -> physical location mapping is available to any apps running which have location permissions, and thus to the providers of those apps. That certainly includes Google and probably Facebook. Many of these companies sell your data to practically anyone who wants to buy it, and TOS agreements usually include permission for them to do so, but it isn't clear such permission is even needed. Therefore it generally isn't hard for someone who wants to buy it to find your physical location based on your IP address even if your ISP is good about protecting your privacy.

Re:fucking idiots

[Kaenneth]

Might prevent his death to have the police aware of the situation before a swatting.

Re:What a dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, wrong? MANY video games online are full of trollish teenager-tweens who try to out-edgy eachother and think/act like they're all gangsters. To pretend this isn't the case makes you a visible-on-map dumbass, nothing more.

Unsubstantiated supposition

[Solandri]

Toxic behavior in competitive activities is not a new development, nor is it exclusive to video gaming, as social media users can attest. But its persistence amid a rapidly rising medium -- both in terms of users and revenue -- spotlights the question of why undesirable or, in some cases, criminal interactions have been so difficult for the video-game industry or law enforcement to eliminate.

I don't see any numerical data in TFA substantiating this. Is "toxicity" in video games more prevalent than elsewhere in life? It seems a simple enough question, and the fact that TFA doesn't answer it suggests the author simply has an axe to grind against video games, and is using the logical fallacy of a single example to promote his point. Usually people end up making this logical fallacy when they begin from a pre-determined conclusion, and work backwards to find supporting data. Rather than the opposite (look at the data first, then arrive at a conclusion.)

It's unsubstantiated journalism like this which leads to stupid things like parents pulling their kids out of school after a school shooting elsewhere in the country. Statistically, your kids are more likely to be shot outside of school than at school. So you're increasing their odds of being shot by pulling them out of school.

Re:Unsubstantiated supposition

[hairyfeet]

You are forgetting the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory which sadly has been proven time and time again. Its a lot easier to act like a douche when you know the people around you can't just grab your dumb ass and smack some sense into your stupid head so you see more fuckwads per square inch on the net that even the worst city.

bored teenagers

[Dutch Gun]

Bored teenagers (or close approximates) think this shit is hilarious. Yeah, online gaming is a toxic sludgefest. But (shocker), it's not really any part of "gaming". Hint: it's the "bored teenagers" part. Games are just where they hang out. Note this little detail:

“It was great,” said Haberern in an interview with The Washington Post. “I was talking [trash], they were talking [trash],” he said, adding that such antics are typical and understood to be part of the culture.

In other words, they were vigorously insulting each other, and he thought it was hilarious, and hand-waves it away as "part of the culture". Insulting strangers... what fun! Apparently, someone didn't appreciate his view of the "culture", and doxxed the dude (his gamertag was probably displayed on social media), then had some fun of their own. Hey, isn't this "part of the culture too?" "But... but... it happened to meeeeee!"

I'm not excusing any of this, especially when it's completely uncalled for by the victim, but I'm long past being surprised by any of it. And no, even this idiot doesn't deserve death threats. But now that our personal information is there for the entire world to see, anyone can probably get anyone's personal info from something as innocuous as a gametag.

I sure wish I had an answer, short of "changing human nature". Something something AI will surely solve this problem... *handwaves*

The videogame industry helped...

[blahplusplus]

... to create this mess by getting rid of game ownership and stealing control of software out from under gamers since the internet has made fraud and software theft easy as just keeping the software they've produced at their offices.

Dedicated servers and the lack of forced matchmaking would do wonders to de-toxify gaming instead of forcing everyone to play together without any admin tools or ability to run dedicated servers like ye good old days in the 90's.

So I will cry no tears for corporations and their idiot managers for creating this mess.

Another WaPo hoax

[guruevi]

No police report, no proof, flimsy backstory, it's another Smollett story. There is no way to get an IP and fully doxxed in a matter of minutes from playing Xbox. All traffic travels through the server, P2P traffic is minimal if at all existent so most likely you have to hack Microsoft servers; then you have to hack the ISP, cross reference the address with various (hacking into) cell phone providers databases before making an untraceable phone call all in under ~10 minutes for some lulz? And no adult thinks this is illegal and highly concerning.

WaPo is getting played by their own side like a narrative fiddle in a desperate attempt to get a story out.

Re:Another WaPo hoax

[sound vision]

I'd say that there should be no way to get personally-identifying information out of Xbox Live. I can't say that there isn't. MS certainly does have personally-identifiable information tied to each account, so it's within the realm of possibility.

I'm not sure where the association with Smollett comes from, I'm picking up there's some kind of unstated inference, but even what was actually got typed is inaccurate, as there was a police report filed in that situation. Following that police report, and further investigation, the stories in the media were accordingly updated or followed up on. That whole process was complete before I ever heard the name "Smollett", and I read the news daily. To me, that is an example of the system working. If you are expecting 100% perfection from any system, good luck. If mistakes are owned up to and corrected when they occur, that's the best I can ask for -- and more than we get from most institutions.

But yeah, this is definitely part of the liberal media's War Against Gamers, which I guess is like the "War Against Christmas" that Bill O'Reilly used to always yell about, but for Millennials. Played like a fiddle, you say?

Re:Real name / address published? For what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't game. I have a life. An adult wanting childish things is degenerate.

Same way I feel about alcohol, watching sports, playing golf, watching Netflix, and vacations.

If you are so childish and pleasure-driven that you managed to make a life which you need an escape from, you deserve to have no respite from it until you grow up.