Steam Censorship is a bad idea?

[KingDingo3]

After all the situation with Censorship being added onto Steam, i can understand "why" they would do it, but "how" it is done is not good whatsoever. I recently uploaded a random picture from the internet, no gore/sexual content/violence, all that nonsence, and within half a hour it has been censored. It has gotten me so annoyed how their system is just blurring any picture they want left right and center.
I recently reported how my pictures were blurred and wanted it changed by sending a ticket, that was 4 days ago, it says it was recieved but i've heard nothing since.

Given if any of the Valve team reads this; Either add a checkbox so we can select what pictures we want to censor, same way as theres a checkbox for spoilers. Or just remove the censor system and find another alternative >_<

p.s sorry for my rant

[Malamasala]

A program will never be good at that anyway. After all, child-unfriendly would be all titles from horror games to violent games to seductive games. That blur-filter needs to be auto-applied to every screenshot not from a child-friendly game. Else it is just double standards where you say "Let's show this 4 year old a man eating human arms". That is totally what you want to show kids, right?

At the end of the day filters suck. They don't help, they just give the illusion that parents can skip responsibility and Steam will automatically make sure all 4-year olds using Steam will never be shown a game rated 10+.

A better idea is to censor everything, in child mode Steam, and then parents have to unlock things to show kids. That puts 100% responsibility on parents to first verify the content. Solves everything, and doesn't involve wasting years developing an AI that is just going to be wrong anyway because some guy decided that mutilation images is child friendly.

[Shadow of the SPQR]

Automated anything I consider to be a path in the wrong direction at this point; especially if the automation is, as this thread makes pretty clear, trigger happy. The trouble at this point in time is that you will hit multiple walls no matter what you do. Remove the system and you're left with the problem. Tweak the algorithm and you'll bounce between too much and too little, at a time when the technology is primitive. Call for more human faces in the process - which I think would be the most effective solution - and you quickly hit hiring costs, human judgement problems when you inevitably hire a block of people big enough to maintain at steam's scale, etc.

Given a few years and dedicated research, and it would probably be more viable. Unfortunately, I don't have much faith in Valve properly executing that without a ton of rough edges along the way.

[Rascal]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από KingDingo3:

Finnaly got messaged by Steam staff, they could only remove for the time being one picture from being blurred, it still winds me up however, because where you may finnaly get one picture unblurred, whos to say any others you upload will not, its censorship at its worst.
A good example would be drinking apple juice, they will freak out and say thats beer and either blur it or make it water. *sorry angry rant*

"Censorship at it's worst" ....😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂..... Ahhh cheers for the giggle.

[KingDingo3]

@Stucky
If its given you a smile, then thats one person happy.
So, anyone else been affected by the random censoring?

[Joe Cool]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Tito Shivan:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Joe Cool:

All things considered it's ridiculousness in the extreme for Steam to worry about censorship, mostly because of the simple fact that it's the parent's job!!

It doesn't mean it has to be easily avaiable either. There's a reason why Video stores didn't sell adult movies next to the cartoons. Or why kiosks don't sell adult magazines next to kid ones. Or why TV channels have 'protected timeframes' where certain programs/content won't be aired.

There's such a thing as facilitating certain content to minors that can get you in pretty hot legal waters. And you won't bail out of it saying 'It was the parents job'...

I'm not saying it has to be easily accessible... but there's such thing as going to extremes.

Automatically censoring perfectly innocent pictures in the friends only section on the off chance that they might contain something "bad for young eyes"... is an extreme.


And to be fair, the "friends only" section in question here would be like the back room in the video store. It's up to the parents to make sure their child doesn't hang out with friends old enough to get videos from that back room, it's the same in how they need to be responsible for knowing who their child is befriending online.


Because we have a real epidemic these days of bad parents who love to place the blame everywhere except where it belongs.. their own bad parenting.

[Cheezus Crisp]

Funny enough the side of my profile artwork for a background got censored despite the fact that it has no relations at all whatsoever to anything that's inappropriate. I'm probably showing an extreme example but it just goes to show how unreliable the censoring system is. I've had many friends that uploaded very basic artwork that has nothing to do with inappropriate content and it becomes immediately censored. Whatever Valve is using to detect inappropriate content is far too unreliable and easily triggered by the smallest of things. They should consider finding alternate means to detect and censor what should be censored and what shouldn't or completely scrap the idea. It's a rare case that I've actually found people upload real inappropriate artwork as people would eventually report the image and have staff take it down. From what I know, correct me if I'm wrong, Steam wasn't intended to be for people under 13 in the first place. Meaning that there should be the allowance of pictures within the PG 13 range. Anyways I'm just one of those people who are ranting about this issue too. It's probably driven me insane to see almost every artwork become censored on Steam. I don't think saying that technology is primitive is appropriate for the censoring algorithm. I've seen many instances such as Discord which has a very reliable censoring system for inappropriate content. I'd rather have the algorithm be less sensitive than over sensitive.

[ezwip]

I'd like to opt out of it and the censorship. I tried to talk my wife into getting me a nanny and she said no but when I come on Steam I have one, what gives?

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

My guess is that whatever's tripping over this is misinterpreting the images for having lots of skin-tone colors.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

As for spoilers, do they still have that thing where they expire in 4 months?

Because that is stupid.

[Black Blade]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από ezwip:

I'd like to opt out of it and the censorship. I tried to talk my wife into getting me a nanny and she said no but when I come on Steam I have one, what gives?

Enjoy?
https://store.steampowered.com/account/preferences/
Scroll to COMMUNITY CONTENT PREFERENCES

[KingDingo3]

As Black Blade states, if you go to preferences, you can click the tick boxes to unblur select pictures that would deem risky to show to public eyes, however when some people rely on their artwork and screenshots to stand out and welcome new friends, thats when Steam censorship can be a real problem, its kinda a tricky situation to be in tbh.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Cloak:

Steam is harrasing me and targeting my post for calling them out. I am suprised this thread hasnt been deleted yet. Since it contains the word cesorship, they don't like that word.

Then you're deluding yourself.

This thread is reasonably meaningful and civil. That's why it hasn't been deleted.

There have been many threads, about the hearts censor for swearwords in forums, about link removal in the forums and in chat, about Steam's recent comments regarding visual novels and other games with anime art, and much, much more. A lot of them stay up just fine.

[Malamasala]

Last I heard about those anime games they were refusing to accept games until they had their magic "allow anime games" feature added. Still can't imagine what kind of anime game feature they need on Steam when they add anime games like normal anyway.

Most likely the system won't even be useful, and they delayed publishers for no reason at all.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Malamasala:

Last I heard about those anime games they were refusing to accept games until they had their magic "allow anime games" feature added. Still can't imagine what kind of anime game feature they need on Steam when they add anime games like normal anyway.

Most likely the system won't even be useful, and they delayed publishers for no reason at all.

Well, conveniently, stuff like Shining Song Starnova is launching on GOG (and Denpasoft and MangaGamer) first.

Pretty sure this is the first time a VN will get on GOG before Steam. This is new.