Twitch Has A Politics Problem And It’s Not The One You Think
It's clear that lately a two-tiered system of moderation has emerged on the platform and it's one that has allowed anti-Semitism to foment among the communities around its largest political streamers.
Editors Note: This is an opinion piece that I started writing two weeks ago about the state of Twitch. Since then this publication was approached by several parties with information from behind the scenes at Twitch and made aware of a United States congressman’s intent to call for action. It seemed appropriate at that moment to delay publication and focus on the information that had been shared with me, the results of which will likely be published in the coming days.
On the 16th October popular Twitch stream Zach “Asmongold” Hoyt was suspended for two weeks under the “hateful conduct” rules of their terms of service. The comments that triggered the ban included that he didn’t have any sympathy for Palestinians as they had “genocide baked into their laws” and that they represented an “inferior culture.” The fallout from these comments didn’t just extend to the Twitch suspension but also cost him a number of business relationships, as he elected to step down from roles with content creators One True King and computer manufacturers Starforge Systems. As our times demand he has since issued a public apology and a pledge to “do better.”
For many they felt a suspension was a long time coming. After all Twitch has made their stance on what types of speech are acceptable on their platform, something they police carefully given the impressionable nature of the wider Twitch audience and the huge numbers that streamers can reach with their opinions. For instance it would be unacceptable for a streamer to make an argument about the utilitarian value of raping rich women on American college campuses. It would be unacceptable to state that rapes occurring as a byproduct of war don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. It’d be unacceptable to explicitly call for the murder of those who own property. It’d be unacceptable to post a schematic of a home made firearm as a reply to a sitting US senator in an implicit call for assassination. It’d be unacceptable to play terrorist propaganda on stream, to platform and normalise members of terrorist groups that have historically engaged in rape and murder or to say that terrorist attacks are justified. Any of these offences would carry a significant penalty for anyone that engaged in them as the suspension of Hoyt proves.
In reality, Twitch’s enforcement of policies has been wildly inconsistent and subjective for years. Every single instance of the behaviour listed above came from the number one political streamer on the Twitch platform; Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker. His appeal is clear. He’s a good looking thirty-something LARPing as a twenty-something, spitting out college campus approved hot takes about breaking news to an audience looking to channel youthful righteous indignation. He has made a lot of money leaning into that and by extension has made Twitch a lot of money too. His value to the platform can’t be overstated. As such it’s pretty clear that he is deemed “too big to fail” and will be granted clemency for behaviour that would see anyone else sent packing to Kick.
For sure, this applies to many other streamers too with the aforementioned Hoyt likely being one of them. The key difference between those streamers and Piker is they don’t have the CEO of Twitch, Dan Clancy, actively promoting them. Clancy is on record saying that he “particularly” enjoys Hasan’s content on the basis that he likes “the frankness and bluntness. He’s comfortable saying what he believes.” He has had his employees line up to sing Happy Birthday to Piker. With such a full-throated endorsement then is it any wonder that Twitch’s Trust & Safety team feel they have to turn a blind eye to transgressions that explicitly violate rules that are enforced for streamers Clancy is less enamoured with?
Another question worth asking is what exactly is Clancy co-signing with his endorsement? Since becoming CEO in March 2023 the amount of antisemitism on the platform has increased considerably which is perhaps not a shocking revelation if you’ve recently peered through the American left’s Overton window. Critique of the Israeli state’s response to the atrocities of October 7th has blurred with barely veiled contempt for Jewish people and such is the appetite for this type of content many are making money from producing and platforming it. Twitch, these days as much a place for news and discussion as gameplay footage, has benefitted from the not so blind eye it has turned to content of this nature. Not only that but whether knowingly or not Clancy has directed his customers towards it.
For those unfamiliar with his content a generous description of Hasan Piker would be a “polemicist.” Despite his claims to the contrary he isn’t a journalist despite enjoying the nepotistic benefits of an internship at The Young Turks media company. He, like all of those who pose as sources of news on Twitch, has no editorial oversight or guardrails. He has been frequently wrong and has presented stories to his audience that mainstream media outlets would later go on to correct without ever returning to share that crucial detail. A cursory glance at his YouTube channel will show you the standard news digest culture war slop replete with clickbait headlines and little expert input beyond a reaction to the headline of whatever article he is reading. To be clear none of this is a problem in and of itself. This type of content is successful for a reason.
As the Israel and Palestine conflict has escalated Piker and his orbiters have become increasingly focused on coverage of the conflict. Their personal biases are clear and to be fair sympathy with the plight of the Palestinian people isn’t an extreme position by any conceivable standard. What has become a staple of the content has been an othering of American and Israeli Jewish people, in their world the “bloodthirsty Zionists” who are driving the conflict and diminishing the volume at which the Arab world can speak of their own plight. This isn’t hard to notice and when combined with the prior instances of platforming terrorists it takes on a sinister implication. The American left is obsessed with concepts such as “stochastic terrorism,” “dogwhistling” and how online content can radicalise young men. That scrutiny seems conspicuous by its absence when assessing the content Piker and co are putting out on Twitch.
For instance, Piker’s latest verbal tic is to use the word inbred when referring to certain types of Jewish people. Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank? Inbred. Orthodox Jews in Israel? Inbred. Celebrating Jerusalem Day? Sounds like something “inbred hicks” would do apparently. A Jewish student at Columbia being accosted and called inbred? Hilarious! This is what you are treated to at Dan Clancy’s favourite source of news, which would lead me to ask him if there were any other ethnic groups he was comfortable seeing habitually labelled as “inbred.” Perhaps he could work with Hasan to produce a racial tier-list along these lines so we know which ethnicities it is acceptable to malign in the name of news programming.
If you thought that last part was a tasteless joke you might not be up to speed with what has become acceptable on Twitch of late. In September at their TwitchCon event in San Diego a panel of streamers – crucially featuring one of Piker’s long-standing collaborator and moderator Morgan “Frogan” Majed – hosted a panel that rated content creators as good or bad based on how Arab-coded they were. The highest tier was “Arab” and the lowest was “loves Sabra.” That category was explained away as meaning their preference for a mass made brand of hummus was disqualifying but it’s worth noting the word “Sabra” is also used to describe people born in Israel. In a clip from the panel that went viral another streamer, DenimsTV, is seen saying “you guys are missing a category for Zionist” before going on to rate Jewish content creator Ethan Klein and placing him the lowest tier of the chart. Clancy’s iteration of Twitch not only saw no problem with this “Arab good, Jew bad” roundtable but they even happily attached large corporate sponsors like Chevron and Samsung to it.
Twitch would later go on to take action against the streamers involved banning them for thirty days each but that seems to miss the real issue. The content of that roundtable was approved by someone at the company. Twitch staff aired it, watched it and then allowed it to be posted publicly without any concern for weeks. Simply put they had a blindspot to the anti-Semitism contained within it. It didn’t register as being a potential problem because, most likely for all those that viewed it, it wasn’t. It should then come as no surprise to learn that Majed was selected as one of Twitch’s “legendary women” on the platform. Given that she has a small audience, averaging only 144 viewers per stream, and has no other real achievements of note one could reasonably assume the award was another benefit of being associated with Clancy’s favourite streamer. Or maybe it’s because she publicly celebrated the October 7th attacks calling it a “revolution.” At this point that seems as likely an explanation as anything else.
Back to Piker and it’s clear that due to being handed CEO approved immunity from any consequences for his actions he has become emboldened in the lines he is willing to cross. A few weeks ago he played a celebration video from the Houthi terrorist group which he described as a musical. During the segment he stated his admiration for the group and how they would record themselves “walking over the American and Israeli flag side-by-side.” While appearing on another streamer’s broadcast he also said he “didn’t have an issue” with Hezbollah despite them being designated a terrorist organisation by the United States. In explaining who they are he compared them favourably to Nelson Mandela. Twitch’s public guidelines on this could not be any clearer, that any content that depicts, glorifies, encourages, or supports terrorism, or violent extremist actors or acts, will lead to a suspension. It even uses displaying terrorist propaganda as the example of what would constitute a bannable offence. Piker has done this repeatedly with impunity and is unlikely to stop any time soon.
Ultimately, though is it fair to lay it on the doorstep of the content creators that Twitch executives such as Clancy have enabled? Moderation policy on the platform has always been a joke with the enforcement largely coming down to which employee noticed the alleged transgression. A sex worker “accidentally” turning on their stream instead of recording them spreading their labia constitutes a three day ban. Someone saying a word that sounds like a slur to some oversensitive Trust & Safety Team member is two weeks. Asking if the shooting of Ashley Babbit on Jan 6th will lead to riots off the Twitch platform is a permanent ban and unpersoning. Promoting a terrorist group that fires missiles on Jewish civilians earns you an endorsement from the CEO and front page promotion. That’s a strange reality to live in when according to the media it was considered a national crisis when in 2017 American neo-nazis marched through the streets with TIKI Torches stating that “Jews will not replace us.” These days if you want that energy you needn’t take to the streets. You can just tune into the Twitch politics section and enjoy the show.
Great article.
Richard Jewish strikes again