If someone had written this in a novel, you would have dismissed it as being heavy-handed and too over-the-top to be even remotely credible. EA is now using genuine Stasi agents to police gamers:
Electronic Arts’ Berlin office just entered into a troubling partnership, one that has German gamers reeling. The EA office in Berlin recently announced it was partnering with the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and its program “Keine Pixel für Faschisten” [No Pixels for Fascists]. The Orwellian program seeks to monitor political beliefs in the video game industry and among players for “racism, sexism, and anti-semitism.”
The Foundation is headed by Anette Kahane, a former agent of the East German Ministry of Security, also known as the Stasi — the repressive secret police that monitored and brutally suppressed dissent in East Germany after the Second World War. At its height, the Stasi had over 102,000 officers and nearly a quarter of a million of its own citizens spying on family members, neighbours and colleagues for wrongthink.
In a German news profile from 2019, Kahane’s activity in the Stasi was revealed through leaked documents. She was considered an excellent asset, enthusiastic in the performance of her work, and submitted intimate information to the Government on the lives of her friends, family, journalists, and even Chilean immigrants fleeing the fascist Pinochet regime. She also wrote extensive reports detailing people’s private lives, from weddings to teenager’s birthday parties.
In fairness, I suppose it can be hard to come by the necessary five-years experience thought policing required for the average Trust & Safety Council job these days.
It’s astonishing how many people across the political spectrum genuinely prefer secret police and thought crime to the possibility that someone, somewhere, might call them racist or anti-semitic.