Twitch bans Trump ‘indefinitely’ after he leaves office
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Your support makes all the difference.Twitch has banned Donald Trump “indefinitely”, fearing his account could be used to incite violence.
The video streaming site had already temporarily suspended Mr Trump’s account after the attacks on the Capitol. It said then that the account had been “disabled”, and that it would be reviewing what to do with the account when he left office.
Almost as soon as that happened, Twitch said that it was removing Mr Trump from the site. He will have no chance to appeal the suspension, cannot create another account, and may never be allowed to return to the service.
It also means that the content that was hosted on the page has been removed. The previous suspension meant that the account remained live, but new videos could not be posted.
Mr Trump did not appear to be involved in the videos that were posted on his Twitch channel, marking a difference from Twitter, from which Mr Trump was also banned in the wake of the attacks.
But his team made heavy use of the platform to live stream his rallies and post other campaign videos.
Twitch said that it had made the decision to remove the account entirely out of fear that tit could be used to endanger “our community and the general public”.
“We have indefinitely suspended President Trump’s Twitch channel due to the ongoing risk of further incitement of violence," Twitch said in a statement. "The President’s statements continue to be interpreted as calls to action, and we are taking this action to remove the potential for harm to our community and the general public.
"Twitch has clear rules that prohibit hateful conduct, harassment, or incitement of violence on our service, and we consider off-service events when making enforcement decisions.
"However, the events of the past weeks have highlighted a gap with respect to rhetoric that encourages violence, regardless of whether or not it was directly streamed on Twitch. We will be updating our policies as a result of our consideration of this situation.”
Mr Trump’s suspension in the wake of the violence in Washington, DC was not the first time he had been censured by Twitch. Over summer, it temporarily banned him over “hateful conduct”, after his team uploaded speeches that included a variety of racist comments.
The former president has now been banned, temporarily or permanently, from just about every mainstream social media and content sharing platform. That has included everything from Facebook and Instagram to online retail service Shopify.
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