{"id":29341,"date":"2018-06-29T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T20:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/321098"},"modified":"2018-06-29T20:32:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T20:32:00","slug":"ex-hatemonger-confirms-white-supremacists-recruit-in-minecraft-fortnite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/06\/29\/ex-hatemonger-confirms-white-supremacists-recruit-in-minecraft-fortnite\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-hatemonger confirms white supremacists recruit in Minecraft, Fortnite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Self-described former extremist turned peace advocate Christian Picciolini\u00a0took part in an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/IAmA\/comments\/8umemf\/i_am_christian_picciolini_a_former_white\/\">&#8220;Ask Me Anything&#8221; session<\/a> on Reddit\u00a0yesterday in which he confirmed that white supremacists regularly recruit new members in online games like\u00a0<em>Minecraft, Call of Duty,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>Fortnite<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>This claim (highlighted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.resetera.com\/threads\/former-white-supremacist-leader-confirms-groups-using-multiplayer-gaming-to-recruit-young-people.52239\/\">on\u00a0Resetera<\/a>) probably isn&#8217;t surprising to anyone who&#8217;s been involved in a toxic multiplayer experience, but it&#8217;s\u00a0worth calling out\u00a0as a reminder to devs that your online game can easily become (if it isn&#8217;t already) a recruiting zone for people looking to prey on what Picciolini calls &#8220;marginalized youth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Absolutely! We sought marginalized youth and promised them &#8216;Paradise&#8217;,&#8221; he wrote yesterday in response to a question about whether white supremacists and other hate groups target young people. &#8220;Today they are using nefarious tactics like going to depression and mental health forums and in multiplayer gaming to recruit those same people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He went on to call out the afore-mentioned games specifically, noting that &#8220;mostly foreign recruiters from Russia and Eastern Europe and Poland&#8221; hang around in games like\u00a0<em>Fortnite\u00a0<\/em>and &#8220;drop benign hints&#8230;then ramp up when hooked.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Devs curious to learn more about Picciolini&#8217;s perspective and background as an avowed former extremist should check out the rest of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/IAmA\/comments\/8umemf\/i_am_christian_picciolini_a_former_white\/\">AMA thread<\/a>, in which he talks in some detail about how he would know this and why he thinks more people should pay attention to the way extremist groups recruit and spread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-described former extremist turned peace advocate Christian Picciolini\u00a0took part in an\u00a0&#8220;Ask Me Anything&#8221; session on Reddit\u00a0yesterday in which he confirmed that white supremacists regularly recruit new members in online games like\u00a0Minecraft, Call of Duty,\u00a0and\u00a0Fortnite. This claim (highlighted on\u00a0Resetera) probably isn&#8217;t surprising to anyone who&#8217;s been involved in a toxic multiplayer experience, but it&#8217;s\u00a0worth calling out\u00a0as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}