How gaming platforms have become hidden incubators for extremism
While policymakers and headlines have traditionally zeroed in on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X, young people are increasingly gathering on gaming platforms — and having conversations that are typically anonymous and largely invisible to the outside world.
Why it matters: Spaces like Discord, Roblox and Steam — built for gamers to connect — have evolved into the social discourse hubs where authentic interactions happen, as mainstream apps chase virality instead.
- Now, these gaming platforms are drawing new scrutiny for harboring hate and exploitation in closed forums that remain hidden until problems spill out, often too late.
Zoom out: Mainstream social media apps focus on elevating content publicly, making them ideal for spreading ideologies, rumors or disinformation. But often of those ideas have their roots in smaller forums on gaming platforms.
- Extremist groups that have been booted from mainstream platforms have found new homes in gaming and gaming-adjacent spaces.
- Unlike public-facing apps like Instagram and TikTok, users of these apps are much more accustomed to using pseudo-identities to connect, making it easier to share radical and taboo ideas anonymously.
Zoom in: The gaming-focused architecture of these platforms is key to the proliferation of dangerous content on them, says Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, a policy advisor on tech and law at NYU Stern.
- “Extremists and predators go to these gaming spaces to find highly-engaged, susceptible young people, many of whom are yearning for connection,” she says.