Oh for the love of fuck. Americans. Your country isn’t the centre of the universe. It doesn’t matter where a company’s headquarters are. If you are doing business in, for example, Germany, you have to abide by German laws. Being American isn’t an excuse and it doesn’t shield you from consequences for breaking the law.

Also, the big issue is that Valve isn’t actually using their right to refuse service. People can spread all sorts of bigotry via Steam’s discussions and groups without Valve acting on it. They’re providing a platform for hate speech and that is inherently immoral, regardless of what the law says.

Valve also does business outside the US. American law doesn’t clear them of their legal obligations in other countries. And besides, legality and morality are not always the same. Providing a platform for hate speech is supporting hate speech, and as far as I’m concerned that’s unethical regardless of whether or not it’s legal.

And ultimately they’re still Valve’s responsibility. If you provide a platform, you’re responsible for what people do on it.

Really? Because in my experience you have to wade through racist, homo- and transphobic, and misogynistic shit the second you foolishly open the discussions page on any game that features black or brown, LGBTQIA, and/or female characters.

Looking at it from the outside it doesn’t look like a failure at all, it provides the prison industrial complex with an endless stream of slaves cheap prison labour. If we assume that that’s the actual goal, it’s a resounding success.

And most kids already do. People have been complaining about “kids today” for literally thousands of years. Probably longer, we just don’t have records of it. There have always been troublemakers, and there always will be. People have been blaming everything from literature to TV to music to video games to, nowadays, phones. This, too, will blow over, and it’ll be fine.

And the kids that are this brazenly disrespectful and disruptive would be disrespectful and disruptive without phones too. Most kids aren’t though, no matter how much alarmist media wants them to be. It’s a good old fashioned moral panic. Punish the actual wrongdoers, leave the test of the kids alone.

As long as the phone isn’t used in class I fail to the the issue. There’s no need to ban phone use in general while on school premises.