Twitch

This was first brought to light last May by an Israeli streamer named “Force,” who posted on X, “I’ve discovered around a month ago that A LOT of my longtime viewers have not been able to sign up to Twitch because they’re located in Israel, which is insane.”

Despite claims by Twitch to the contrary, users in Israel and Palestine were unable to join the platform for more than a year following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists and thousands of Gazans invaded Israel, conducting the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Less than a week later, while Israelis were still trying to identify the charred remains of innocents burned alive, the Twitch streaming platform appeared to side with . . . the terrorists. Changes to Twitch coding made it almost impossible for Israelis to become members of the platform.

Twitch “Trust & Safety” team member Fadzai Madzingira, who was hired by Twitch even though she was place on leave from her previous job due to alleged anti-Israel bias. LinkedIn

One such streamer is Hasan Piker, who my organization StopAntisemitism named our Antisemite of the Week in April — and who in 2019 said that “America deserved 9/11, dude. F–k it, I’m saying it.”

Hasan Piker is one of Twitch’s most-popular and highest-earning creators — who is also responsible for some of the platform’s most virulent anti-Jewish content. Getty Images for Politicon

JTA — A live-streaming platform popular among video gamers updated its hate speech policy Friday to ban the word “Zionist” when used as a coded slur directed at individuals or groups of people.

Twitch has revealed that it is now using content in streams "to train generative AI content models across Amazon," and making matters worse, everyone is opted into the training program by default.

Earlier this month, Twitch introduced a new program that would use its streamers as AI training material. Disappointing, unsurprising, but seemingly optional, what was most distressing was that users were automatically opted in by default. Unsatisfied with the implementation and implications, one creator has launched a class action lawsuit against Twitch and its monolithic parent company Amazon.

Twitch now lets users opt out of Amazon’s use of content from their channels to train Amazon’s “generative AI content models.” The change, announced today, comes more than two years after a company executive confirmed that Amazon was using Twitch content for AI training.

Twitch streamers were surprised this week to discover that their streams and content were being used to train Amazon AI models, according to a setting buried in its menus. It’s not just that the setting was implemented, but that it’s turned on by default for every user, and you have to manually opt-out if you don’t want to be a part of that.

Twitch and Amazon were hit with a proposed class action in California federal court Thursday by a Twitch streamer who says the companies are exploiting and using his live broadcasts, images and recorded videos to train Amazon's generative AI models by default, without obtaining their consent.

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Twitch joins the list of international companies sanctioning Russia over its illegal invasion of Ukraine, telling streamers that it would be withholding payments.

The real problem here is that I’m extremely critical of Israel.” A campaign to pressure advertisers to pull out of Twitch was led by supporters of Dan “DanCantStream” Saltman and people in spaces linked to Steven “Destiny” Bonnell. Saltman has criticized and targeted Piker, and Saltman told DigiDay his campaign’s group had reached out to over 100 advertisers already. In a response to a Bloomberg journalist’s questions, he said “The goal of our campaign is simple: The CEO, Dan Clancy stepping down.” He also said “My ban from Twitch was ceremonial at best – I was in the process of deleting my account when the ban went into place.” Both have been suspended from Twitch for different reasons; Saltman for harassment rules and Destiny for hateful conduct. Many of their fans online on forums such as Reddit want them reinstated. Saltman claims his ban was likely to prevent him from speaking to other streamers about issues on the platform. “When a major media company such as Twitch encourages, promotes and protects virulent antisemitism on its platform, it’s prudent for advertisers to be aware of what spaces they are supporting,” Saltman said in the letter. However, critics allege the some of those campaigning against antisemitism are not acting in good faith. Critics have accused Saltman, Destiny and their supporters or those associated with them of targeting and harassing female journalists and Twitch employees, actions that violate Twitch’s policy. Controversy over streamers Comments made at the “Ayyrabs Podcast” panel, hosted by Twitch partner and streamer Frogan at TwitchCon, are at the center of the controversy. The in-person event is dedicated to the platform, its creators and users and took place in September. Twitch suspended those panelists, as well as separately an account for user Asmongold, after he made racist remarks about Palestinians. It was not specified to CNN how long each suspension was. At the panel, when the panelists were ranking how “Arab” other streamers were, the lowest category on the board was “Loves Sabra.” Sabra, a hummus brand that was previously partially owned by Israeli food company The Strauss Group, was fully

Twitch said it enforces its policies evenly.

Creators on Twitch have waded into controversy over Israel’s war in Gaza in recent months, spooking advertisers and brands who have pulled away or otherwise admonished the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform. JPMorgan Chase pulled out of Twitch advertising in the last couple of months, a source said, though it was part of a broader strategy of brand safety and worries about what content was showing up near their ads. Antisemitism allegations went into those considerations. Chevron, a sponsor of Twitch’s semi-annual convention, TwitchCon, expressed disappointment with Twitch in a statement to CNN after controversial comments were made during a TwitchCon panel of Middle Eastern streamers. At least two other companies, AT&T and Dunkin’ Donuts, also pulled out of advertising on the platform, according to Bloomberg. Twitch told CNN it does not comment on advertisers. The controversy at Twitch underscores how hard it is to deal with sensitive political topics that have become commonly discussed and shared on social media. “There is no place on Twitch for racism, hatred, or harassment of any kind, including antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Twitch CEO Dan Clancy wrote in a November blog post, adding that Twitch works “hard to ensure that our community is a safe place.” Hasan Piker, who goes by HasanAbi to his 2.8 million Twitch subscribers, has been described as the left’s Joe Rogan. Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York wrote a letter to Twitch last month “concerning antisemitic and anti-American propaganda emanating from Hasan Piker, one of Twitch’s largest online streamers.” In the letter, Torres wrote: “Mr. Piker has demonized Orthodox Jews as ‘inbred’ and has dehumanized a Jewish man as a ‘bloodthirsty pig dog.’” Piker told NBC News last month that the videos cited in the letter were taken out of context and he was criticizing the Israeli government, not Jewish people. “I’ve been an outspoken advocate for Palestinian emancipation for the past 10 years, professionally in my media career,” he said in an interview with Wired in August. When asked about antisemitic allegations in an interview with CNN, he said: “Of course not. The real problem here is that I’m anti-Zionist.

Comments made at the “Ayyrabs Podcast” panel, hosted by Twitch partner and streamer Frogan at TwitchCon, are at the center of the controversy. The in-person event is dedicated to the platform, its creators and users and took place in September.

Creators on Twitch have waded into controversy over Israel’s war in Gaza in recent months, spooking advertisers and brands who have pulled away or otherwise admonished the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform.

Short-length video streaming platform Twitch has emerged as one of the most anti-Israel and antisemitic social media platforms.

“There is no place on Twitch for racism, hatred, or harassment of any kind, including antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Twitch CEO Dan Clancy wrote in a November blog post, adding that Twitch works “hard to ensure that our community is a safe place.”

In October, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pro-Israel and Jewish advocacy group that works to combat anti-Semitism, said it spoke with Twitch staff a month after TwitchCon.

Twitch, the world’s largest gaming streaming platform, is coming under some of the same scrutiny for its accessibility to disabled streamers and viewers, especially where it comes to discoverability and captioning.

Much of Twitch’s efforts have been focused on the platform’s physical accessibility — including discussions at a recent Twitch town hall, a million-dollar donation to Able Gamers on stream, and the inclusion of automatic color matching for those with visual disabilities. But all this leaves out one major point of contention for disabled streamers: how difficult it is to get discovered without a dedicated disability tag. Whereas creators from other marginalized groups, like the LGBTQIA+ community, have tags that can be applied to their streams (and, controversially to some, their allies). The same is not true for disabled streamers. Twitch’s list of official tags does list an option for captioning, but this is only applied automatically.

Rikki Poynter is a Deaf streamer and YouTuber who also has chronic pain and fatigue. For her, one of the main issues when it comes to Twitch’s accessibility is the inaccuracy of the captions provided by third-party tools.

Twitch Is Under Fire for Allowing Donations to an Anti-Trans Organization

Amazon’s Twitch bans some channels after researchers find pro-Russia propaganda

The platform has recently been controversial for the way it handled a wave of hate raids against marginalised creators. Last week, Twitch filed a lawsuit against the users allegedly behind the hate raids.

Twitch has implemented a change in its refund policy to protect content creators from chargebacks.

The 2021 Twitch ban of streamer Sukesha Ray, an Asian American woman who streams to the “Just Chatting” and “Hot Tubs” categories, and her July return to the platform (after a month of being banned) exemplifies many of the attributes of the Twitch content moderation process and its potential for streamer-initiated visibility. Under the all-capitalized banner “WE SURVIVED THE INDEFINITE BAN!!!!! WERE BACK!!!!!!!,” which she streamed in the “Just Chatting” and “Hot Tubs” spaces, Ray elicited a flood of comments from viewers asking about her ban, along with a corresponding response from moderators that “Sukes” herself would explain it when the stream officially started (she had been banned for exposing the aureole of her breast in a streamed video). Without the publicity generated by her unban appeal video and the July come-back stream, most Twitch users would have been unaware of both the banning itself and the infraction that initiated it. Ray, speaking about how she took legal action and how she struggled to be officially reinstated, revealed to viewers both the inner workings of content moderation and the emotional toll that such actions can have on those who are moderated.

Twitch, which lets users broadcast themselves playing video games, introduced “transgender”, “bisexual”, “Black” and “disabled” among more than 350 new tags – labels that users can add to their videos., it said.

Follow Social Media Best Practices, Enforce Global Policies Consistently and at Scale, and Increase Transparency: For Twitch to remain a platform for positive political engagement, Twitch must follow best practices set forth by researchers and civil society. First, it must enforce its newly released hate and harassment policies consistently and at scale, meaning it holds all users to the same standards regardless of their status or any challenges Twitch may experience due to many users. As a way to be held accountable, Twitch should release a meaningful and comprehensive transparency report. Twitch released its first transparency report in March 2021, the last major public platform to publish such reports. The report did not include data about how specific communities are targeted by hate and harassment on its platform, a significant omission. Twitch should include this metric in the future to allow the public to track its efforts to support vulnerable and marginalized communities.

One significant lesson is that politicians and public figures interested in engaging with Twitch should connect with experienced community moderators and researchers familiar with the platform to create positive spaces for discussion and political engagement. We also recommend that Twitch require public figures to engage experienced community moderators before hosting events, and the company dedicates additional resources, training, and compensation to ensure a robust pipeline of skilled and experienced community moderators help make the platform a more welcoming space for all people.

Both politicians and video game streamers are not strangers to being targeted by online hate and harassment. Concerned about the risk that an outpouring of public hate could result when these two groups appear together online, ADL’s Center for Technology and Society (CTS) reviewed four high-profile livestreaming events occurring between October 2020 and February 2021 on the social media platform Twitch. The goal was to determine why or why not these events had devolved into hotbeds of bigotry and harassment, as many might assume would be the case. However, our investigation found that—despite the potential for hate and harassment in events co-hosted by prominent politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, and popular video game streamers such as HasanAbi and Pokimane—the events we reviewed were primarily positive and inclusive. After collecting and analyzing the data in the chat at each Twitch event, we arrived at this conclusion, looking at the most common expressions and the number of times that certain potentially hateful phrases, images, or conspiracy theories appeared.

Require Trained Moderators for New High-Profile Streamers: Twitch should prioritize people over profit by requiring prominent public figures who organize streaming events on the platform to have experienced and skilled community moderators involved both before and during the streaming event. The platform should provide well-known public figures with experienced, skilled moderators as part of any white-glove service they may provide to such a figure, and should compensate the labor of the community moderators in keeping the stream respectful and inclusive.

Keep Moderation Resources and Training Commensurate with Platform Growth: Twitch should increase resources devoted to content moderation as the company grows. It should publish a metric that speaks to the number of platform moderators and the number of community moderators on the platform, and how its investment in this area keeps pace with user growth. Twitch should encourage and develop training for moderators and streamers to protect themselves and their streams when moderating political events, learning from the effective moderation practices during the events mentioned in this report and consulting with community moderators about best practices.

Game streaming outfit Twitch has appointed Katrina Jones as its first head of diversity and inclusion.

Amazon-owned Twitch hit by huge data leak

Guy Beahm, better known as popular livestreamer Dr Disrespect, was permanently suspended from Twitch for reasons unknown in June 2020. A year later, he launched a legal action over his ban, saying that the loss of his Twitch channel not only impacted him financially but also did serious reputational damage. That's all water under the bridge now, though, and Dr Disrespect and Twitch are friends again.