A new government report says gaming companies are working with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to root out so-called domestic violent extremist content. The report notes established mechanisms for policing extremism with social media companies and recommends that national security agencies establish a new, similar process with the vast gaming industry.
The exact nature of the federal agencies’ collaboration with video game companies has not been previously reported, but is detailed in a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which is based on interviews with five gaming and social media companies, including online gaming platform Roblox, Discord, a social media app commonly used by gamers, Reddit, and a game publisher and social media company that requested anonymity from the GAO.
The Intercept reached out to the companies identified in the GAO report for comment, but none of them had responded publicly by the time of publication.
“The FBI and DHS have mechanisms for sharing and receiving intelligence on social media and domestic violent extremism threats with gaming companies,” the GAO said. The report found that DHS intelligence directorates meet with gaming companies, and that gaming companies can use these meetings “to share intelligence with I&A.” [DHS’s intelligence office] The FBI is investigating “activity promoting domestic violent extremism” online or simply “activity that violates a company’s terms of use.” Through its 56 field offices and hundreds of local offices, the FBI receives information from gaming companies about possible illegal activity or extremist views and investigates further. The FBI also briefs gaming companies about the alleged threats.
The GAO warned that the FBI and DHS lack a comprehensive strategy for aligning their work with gaming companies to their agency-wide missions. “Without a strategy or goals, agencies may not be fully aware of how effective their communications with companies are or how effective their information-sharing mechanisms are in supporting the agency’s overall mission,” the GAO said. The report recommended that both agencies develop such a strategy, and DHS agreed, setting a target completion date of June 28 of this year.
“I can only think of the FBI’s terrible track record when it comes to identifying extremism,” Hasan Pikar, a popular Twitch streamer who often broadcasts while playing video games under the handle “HasanAbi,” said of the scheme. “They’re much better at identifying and exploiting vulnerable young people with mental health issues.”
The GAO study, which covers the period from September 2022 to January 2024, was conducted at the request of the House Committee on Homeland Security, which asked the government auditor general to investigate the use of gaming platforms and social media by domestic violent extremists. Although there is no federal law that criminalizes domestic violent extremism as a category of crime, since 2019, the U.S. government has classified domestic terrorism threats into five categories. These are defined by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as racially/ethnically motivated violent extremism, anti-government/anti-authority violent extremism, animal rights or environmental violent extremism, abortion-related violent extremism, and all other domestic terrorism threats.
The GAO investigation also comes as Congress is pressuring major gaming companies to crack down on extremist content. Last March, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) sent letters to game companies Valve, Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Riot Games, Roblox Corp. and Take-Two Interactive, urging them to take steps to crack down on gamers.
“Unlike traditional social media companies that have in recent years developed public-facing policies to address extremism, created trust and public safety teams, and published transparency reports, online gaming platforms have not generally utilized these tools,” Durbin said in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. In the letter, Durbin asked the Department of Justice to explain what channels “the Department of Justice and the online video gaming industry use to communicate and coordinate” about the threat of “online video games from extremists and other malign actors.”
Since the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the federal government’s attention to combating extremism has increased dramatically. On his first day in office, President Joe Biden directed his national security team to conduct a comprehensive review of the federal government’s efforts to combat domestic terrorism. The White House considers domestic terrorism “the most imminent terrorist threat facing the United States,” posing a greater threat than foreign terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State. Biden’s directive resulted in the first national strategy to combat domestic terrorism, released by the White House in June 2021. The strategy cites “online gaming platforms” as a place where “individuals are recruited and mobilized to commit domestic terrorism.”
According to the national strategy, intelligence agencies have assessed that extremists emboldened by events like January 6 “pose an elevated threat to the homeland,” and that “DVE [domestic violent extremist] Attackers are independently radicalized by consuming violent extremist content online and often act without guidance from violent extremist organizations, making them difficult to detect and disrupt.”
The federal government has said sharing intelligence with gaming and social media companies is another way to identify and counter extremism. The government also recognizes that there are constitutional and legal questions about Americans’ free speech rights. The GAO report suggests that both the FBI and DHS are proceeding cautiously in light of federal litigation on these issues, including cases that are before the Supreme Court.
Following a 2022 lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, a federal judge last year barred the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies from contacting social media companies to combat what they consider to be misinformation.
Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies have long focused on gaming as both a vehicle for radicalization and a backdoor platform for extremists to communicate. A 2019 internal intelligence assessment prepared jointly by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Joint Special Operations Command, and National Counterterrorism Center and obtained by The Intercept warned that “violent extremists may exploit the capabilities of popular online gaming platforms and applications.” The assessment listed six U.S.-owned gaming platforms that are considered popular, including Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net, Fortnite, Playstation Xbox Live, Steam, and Roblox.
“We must end the glorification of violence in our society,” former President Donald Trump said after the 2019 mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. “That includes the cruel video games that have become commonplace.”
The GAO report lists more than a dozen experts who participated in the study, including three from the Anti-Defamation League, the Defense Department-funded RAND Corporation and participants from several academic institutions.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has testified before Congress multiple times about the use of gaming platforms by extremists. In 2019, Sharon Nazarian, then ADL’s senior vice president for global affairs, was asked by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) whether gaming platforms were “monitored” and “if there was a way to use AI to identify such conversations.”
Nazarian responded that gaming platforms “need to be more tightly regulated.”
