Twitch Takes Action After #TwitchBlackout
On Wednesday, June 24, 2020, many Twitch streamers participated in a blackout of Twitch. Either they didn’t stream on the platform or they streamed under the hashtag TwitchBlackout in protest the rampant sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations toward top Twitch streamers and Twitch’s lax response to those allegations and how they handle sexual harassment and assault reports in general.
Other streamers and Twitch viewers claimed that the Twitch Blackout would not work and is a pointless waste of time. Twitch, however, proved otherwise when they began permanently banning Twitch streamers after investigating allegations of sexual harassment and assault reports. In that time Twitch has permanently banned iAmSp00n, BlessRNG, WarwitchTV, DreadedCone, and Wolv21.
As Twitch continues their investigations into sexual harassment and assault allegations, more Twitch streamers will feel the ban hammer.
Kotaku reported that Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm has been permanently banned. When asked why Dr Disrespect was banned, Twitch said,
As is our process, we take appropriate action when we have evidence that a streamer has acted in violation of our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. These apply to all streamers regardless of status or prominence in the community.
While Twitch is trying to take out the garbage and clean up its platform, we hope that cleanup includes tackling racists botting and raiding Black and PoC streamers, using racist usernames, hurling racist, pro-white supremacist and neo-nazi language.
Twitch has of work to do and we hope the streaming platform taking action goes beyond reactionary methods, but includes preventative measures to hold users of their platform accountable and reducing and hopefully stopping racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia on their platform.
