these symbols seem to render very differently on different devices. i got a wheel of hatchets, an eight-pointed star, and two futhark runes on desktop.

...which is why it's at the very least irresponsible for them to send something like this. if there is actually intent here that only makes it worse.

You forgot to hide your name.

I don't have the email but I would assume those emojis in this case are Slavic neopaganist symbols, also known as rodnovery.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Rodnover_symbols

Steam once again using the winning strategy of doing nothing while your opponent fucks up

People defending this as “those are lighning bolts, not everyone knows it’s nazi imagery” are american, right?

Nah, they know what they are. They're trying to a) downplay the symbol's significance and normalize displaying it and b) get a "snowflake got triggered by lightning bolts" own out of it.

The strange thing is that they did notice It and elected to not send it in German instead of just not putting the symbols in the subject.

The nazis (in particular their graphic designer Walter Heck) did literally invent the sigrune/doppelrune, it doesn't have roots in history and there is no excuse for them to have sent it given they admit they didn't send it to germany. Like... no, there's no justification for this one.

They ran the ss symbol - except for the campaign in Germany where nazi symbolism is illegal - so they knew what it was and ran it anyway

People responded to this going "hey dude wtf" and the official response has been...not smart

And now it is blowing up

The SS symbol is not a dogwhistle. Dogwhistles are meant to be covert and unassuming to anyone except those within the neofascist subculture, like 1488 and triple parenthesis.

Unlike those dogwhistles, meant only to be understood by an ingroup, the SS lighning bolts are as explicit as a swastika. I would go even as far as to say that they are more egregious than a swastika, as swastikas have cultural signification in some countries that might muddy the waters when interpreting the symbol alone. The SS bolts have no such excuse.

Also it wasn't an automatic filter on german emails, it was a filter on german speakers. German emails configured with english as their language did receive the email, according to comments here.

There is no benefit of the doubt to be allowed here. If they don't have an extremely solid explanation (and LLMs aren't that, they know how to recognize actual dogwhistles, they wouldn't output actual 1940s nazis imagery so famous & standard, unless instructed to), then either someone needs to be fired, or we as the public need to understand that there is complacency for actual nazism within this company.

Again, this isn't some little dogwhistle people might be confused about. This is standard 1940s nazi imagery, on the same level of significance as the swastika. I knew this as a child in the 2000s, as a kid who never paid attention in class and found history to be the most boring topic.

One of the main issues with all that is that there was a review, and they didn't sent it to Germany because of that review. So no, it was known, it is not a niche dog whistle, and I for one am not blaming the intern (if any) who did it, but rather the moderator who allowed the letter to go