ADL found a lot of hate toward religious and ethnic identities in hardcore online games.
ADL found a lot of hate toward religious and ethnic identities in hardcore online games.
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Hate and harassment targeted at players with religious, ethnic and national game identities | ADL

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

Hate and harassment was recorded in almost half of online multiplayer game sessions tested with a range of religious, ethnic and national identity-based usernames, according to the Anti-Defamation League‘s latest research.

One-third of gaming sessions that expressed pride in ethnic, religious or national identity resulted in abuse; and 38% of gaming sessions included harassment toward Jewish people.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.