Twitch suspends Donald Trump's channel
"We believe this is a necessary step to protect our community and prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence"
Donald Trump's Twitch account has been suspended, following the violent pro-Trump riots that took place at the US Capitol on Wednesday night. He isn't fully banned, mind you - Twitch says they've only disabled his channel for now, and will "reassess" the account after his presidency ends. I do hope that assessment ends in Twitch deplatforming a man who incited a coup mere weeks before the end of his presidency, but we've been let down before.
"In light of [the] shocking attack on the Capitol, we have disabled President Trump's Twitch channel," said a Twitch spokesperson (thanks, Kotaku). "Given the current extraordinary circumstances and the President's incendiary rhetoric, we believe this is a necessary step to protect our community and prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence."
How brave of Twitch to take this stance a whole 12 days before his presidency comes to an end. They add that they'll "reassess his account after he leaves office." Perhaps they're hoping he'll take up streaming as a new career. He'll probably have a lot of time on his hands when he's not encouraging riots.
I was about to write "it'll be interesting to see if he does get the account back blah blah blah", but it won't be interesting. It will be entirely unsurprising and disappointing if Twitch gives back a platform to a man that has already breached their harassment and hateful conduct policies. His account was previously suspended in June last year for showing old campaign rallies spouting his usual nasty rhetoric.
Imagine someone causing this level of violence and unrest, and media platforms going, "yeah we'll ban them for a bit, maybe, I dunno." Apparently, that sort of stuff is nowhere near as bad as showing off your midriff in workout clothes and almost getting banned permanently.
It's worth noting that in the wake of the Capitol attacks Trump has also been banned "indefinitely" from Facebook, and was suspended for a rather pathetic 12 hours on Twitter.
Twitch have also removed the PogChamp emote from their streaming platform, after the emote's star made inflammatory comments about the riots.
