Europol and EU Nations Remove Thousands of Extremist and Violent Links Shared on Gaming Sites
On 13 November, Europol supported several nations in identifying and removing racist and xenophobic propaganda that was being shared on gaming and gaming-related platforms.
The joint operation—called Referral Action Day—involved the European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU), Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Previous Referral Action Day initiatives have focused on social media platforms and the Internet at-large.
Authorities flagged approximately 5,408 links to jihadist content, 1,070 links to violent right-wing extremist and terrorist content, and 105 links to racist and xenophobic content, according to a press release issued by Europol.
Weeks before the action day, participating experts looked through platforms, searching for instances where the gameplay is used to reenact executions, school shootings, or terrorist attacks. Those reenactments are often shared on other social media platforms to reach a wider audience.
“Other gaming-related platforms intended for streaming gameplay are misused to recruit minors into various violent extremist and terrorist groups or to livestream real attacks and even suicides,” Europol said. “…Many accounts on these platforms may not immediately be recognizable as being linked to problematic content, while some even feature usernames and profile pictures with references to infamous terrorists.”
Video games and their related platforms have been targeted in propaganda efforts for decades; however, the livestreamed terrorist mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, resulted in increased attention to extremism in games, according to a United Nations report, Examining the Intersection Between Gaming and Violent Extremism.
The report noted that extremists use at least six methods to exploit video games and spread their propaganda or recruit users, including creating bespoke games; modifying existing ones; using in-game chat functions; communicating on gaming or gaming-related platforms like Discord, Reddit, Stream, Twitch, or chan boards; using gaming references in their messages or imagery; and the gamification of real-world involvement or support of radical ideologies, such as leaderboards or badges that award points for attacks with fatalities.
Read more on this topic in these Security Management articles:
- Gore, Propaganda, and Radicalization Overlap in Extremely Accessible Sites, Researchers Find
- Tackling Online Radicalization and Extremism with Modern Threat Assessment Strategies
- The Web of Influence: How Online Culture is Reshaping How Security Practitioners Conduct Assessments
- Violence-as-a-Service Providers Increasingly Recruit Minors to Carry Out Harmful Acts
