A squad of police officers from Denmark have been assigned the task of playing video games online. The reason is that they must look for signs of abuse, bullying and hate speech under the name of Police Online Patrol.
This special unit has a presence on Steam, Discord, and even streams on Twitch. Due to the nature of their roles, they are also active in popular multiplayer games like Fortnite, Minecraft, and Call of Duty: Warzone. In Minecraft they have even been customized to look like a Danish police uniform. They regularly share clips of what’s going on behind the scenes and some of their gaming wins on video streaming services like TikTok.
The Police Online Patrol began its operations in April 2022 with the aim of “policing social networks” and “engaging in dialogue with children and young people in particular, preventing inappropriate behavior and crimes and intervening if crimes are committed”.
Online gaming is one avenue used by extremist groups for recruitment, and the recent case of teenagers playing ISIS on Roblox shows us the kind of strange and disturbing things that go on hidden on the internet. Having responsible adults available for kids to turn to when they’re uncomfortable playing online games is a good idea, but you probably need more than a few people to make an impact.
Gaming toxicity has been studied and reported many times, with players in some titles experiencing hate speech and harassment on a regular basis. This has also extended to swatting at times, which has had lethal results in some cases. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a single solution to all of these problems.
