As a streamer, I understand how important a role Twitch has had in nurturing me into the content creator that I am today for my team and for my community. It has made me into a role model and has shown me numerous amounts of new friends. It's a wonderful place where I consistently have fun and can enjoy my days. But that may well be because I have not had to deal with the other side of the TTV Banhammer.
Twitch as a platform has been the staple of inconsistency as regards the execution and adjudication of its terms of service. As of July 2021, multiple creators have lost their platform or have been banned by the service team for breaches of their terms of service, some of which may have gone completely unheard of. I am going to break down a few situations where Twitch has quite simply got it wrong.
Without a shadow of a doubt, I am going to start of with Natalia “Alinity” Mogollon. Alinity has been in the limelight for multiple reasons as of late. For starters, in a clip of her stream from July 2019, Mogollon throws her cat into the air, possibly causing it harm, and is not served a ban, nor a warning by Twitch staff. However to completely contradict this, one of my good friends “Paddy”, a professional Fortnite Player, was on a stream by “Navsix”, a content creator, was shown throwing a Chicken a similar distance (when chickens by their very nature are made to land and fall from longer and taller heights) was served a ban for animal cruelty.
Enclosed you will also see a picture of Mogollon intentionally feeding Vodka to her pet cat, causing it to convulse and fall away from the screen. Another image of illustrious and ludicrous animal cruelty. Yet Twitch staff turned a blind eye for that matter. Now since then there has been multiple incidents, including use of a racial slur, and quite literally, flashing her breasts to her underage audience, and the only punishment she suffered for any of which was a 3 day suspension for the nudity.
One of my personal favorite stories about how ridiculous Twitch can be is when Turner “Tfue” Tenney hosted a small streamer, (sent over tens of thousands of viewers) after a stream, and woke up to find out he was banned as his chat members joined the hostee and started using slurs without “proper moderation”. Not to mention prior to this, Tfue was banned for use of a “racial slur” when referring to a player resembling a raccoon in a game of Fortnite, using his colloquial language, (as he based out of Florida), and shortening the phrase to “Coon”, saw him banned off the platform. He was shortly reinstated as a streamer following proper review.
It is well awaited for a statement or some sort of address by Twitch themselves, or by CEO Emmet Sheer (enclosed) on the discrepancies between their rules and how defunct they have been from the standpoint of a true content regulator. There is no inordinate subjective body to appeal to. Twitch can end someone’s career with the flip of a switch, no questions asked. When will we see true black and white when it comes to the ruleset? Are we to sit and stream in fear that every frame could be our last? That every stream could be our last? That our genuine living could be stripped from us just because of one member of Twitch Staff seeing one shred of content out of context?
The other issue with Twitch is another difficult one. The serving of DMCA notices and the termination of channels. Multiple channels have been hit with DMCA copyright strikes for the use of unlicensed music without prior permission of the recording label associated with the song used. Comically to counter this, Twitch released a playlist that was “copyright free”, yet somehow a creator on Twitter from a few months ago (Apologies, I can not find the exact tweet) tweeted about a copyright strike he received from the owner of a song that was placed on the Copyright free list by Twitch themselves. The current system does not work as regards punishments for use of the materials. I do believe that artists should not have their work ripped off them like such and that DMCA is somewhat of a fair mechanism, but for the sheer volume of notices that Twitch is being served, they need to quote on quote “Staff Up” and issue warning and penalties for use of the licensed music, while simultaneously trying to work with labels to get their music used on Twitch as a site.
Finally, an issue I would personally liken to daylight robbery. Twitch has a System of pay-out where they take 50% of a streamers revenue, by nature of “bits”, a currency used on the platform, and Subscriptions, where consumers pay to use emotes and to chat in their favourite streamers chat. How is this not a serious vocal talking point? To get gifted 100 subs on twitch would cost someone $500, but they would only receive $250 of such in revenue. at the end of the month. A system that feeds off of the consumer and doesn’t return the favor to the creators. Twitch as a provider of content is something else, a force to be reckoned with. But their willingness to provide for their actual creators is something completely different, something that I can only describe as sexist in its manner, and inconsistent in its execution.
Twitch is a platform I will continue to stream on, however I stream everyday in fear of losing it all, in one split second.