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

[b0s0z0ku]

Would the police be willing to do anything about it? Most cops aren't the most tech-savvy people -- they'd probably take a report and round-file the thing, not knowing how to proceed. Or "kids will be kids, just ignore it."

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

[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

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

You weren't around for Gamergate were you?

The Media has free licence to demonise video games, video gamers, and game developers. All are a punching bag to be libeled, video-nastied, and lobbied for regulation alongside supporting cast in the political sphere. Whatever your narrative or political orientation, video games can be tarred and feathered to support your cause, with work done with aplomb by writers whose own "professional" articles and tweets would be toxic enough to get them banned from most community forums.

And let's leave aside the commercial reality of consumer eyeballs and ad dollars(via Twitch etc) roving away from traditional media and to the newer digital industries.

We are 40 years out from the first moral panic denunciations of arcade games by the media, and nothing had changed in the tone or the accuracy of the media's reporting on this industry. Only the topics. For Pac-Man and Donkey-Kong, it was about "drugs". For GTA it was about "sex". Today it's about "toxicity", not because there is any serious connection between the game and such topics, but because "toxicity" is the contemporary moral panic the media is selling. And video games are the biggest, easiest, and least politically connected of all industries to tar.

Never mind that this industry has done more to connect the world and advance both technology and entertainment than any other medium over the last 40 years. Never mind that the media itself has become a toxic den of 24 hour propaganda, misinformation, and war-mongering. No, it is the place of the the likes of the Washington Post to decry a whole industry and tens of millions of gamers as "toxic" in the court of public opinion, and journalisms privilege to drown out dissent on all channels to deny all appeal. The industry as always, will just have to ignore them. Plus ca change.

Re:fucking idiots

[Kaenneth]

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

Re:fucking idiots

[hairyfeet]

I can back this up, had a numbnuts that would try to TK me every time I jumped into my fav game for months, got so stupid my own team mates were "Here let me take care of that for you" /kills idiot/, what did I do that caused this braintrust to go mental? He was bragging all over the chat about how badly he was gonna kick our asses...and I punt kicked him like a 30 yard field return, wasn't even close as he was a "spray and pray" type while I actually can hit what I am at. Had the same thing happen several times back in the day when I ran a clan on Mechwarrior, you would get these Shadowcat users that thought they were Billy Badazz and I had my clan adopt the "big blue blanket" strategy of WWII, with the scouts being the picket line, mediums the cruisers, and a couple ultra heavies with long range death dealers as the carriers. We would get death threats and attempted DDoS all the damn time.

So yeah there are some serious whack-a-doodles out there and sadly the whole local/state/fed layout of law enforcement really doesn't work for this kind of thing but considering how power mad the US government has become? I'd be loathe to support anything better as it will quickly be turned into "ZOMFG you didn't use the correct pronoun you nazi!" SJW horseshit, see what is going on in Canada and the UK right now.

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.

Re:What a dumbass

[Darinbob]

So it's like slashdot with graphics?

Real name / address published? For what?

[ffkom]

Is there a single reason why your game console, let alone random people on the Internet, should know your real name and home address?

I would not share such information with a toy. Heck, even the people with whom I play racket sports in real life don't know more than my first name, and there is no reason why they would need to know more.

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.

Gamer Demonization

[Gregg M]

Where is the Reddit post?