The Real Reason Twitch Banned President Donald Trump
Twitch suspended President Donald Trump after hundreds of Trump supporters stormed their way into the Capitol in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, Jan. 6, resulting in four deaths and dozens of arrests so far.
"In light of yesterday's shocking attack on the Capitol, we have disabled President Trump's Twitch channel," a Twitch spokesperson said in a statement to Polygon. "Given the current extraordinary circumstance 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."
Twitch is among a growing number of social platforms that have taken stronger measures against the president to curb possible violence after Wednesday's events, including Twitter, arguably the president's favorite platform. Others include Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook.
Wednesday's violence was met with condemnation from leaders in the U.S. and abroad, many of whom blamed President Trump for his baseless claims about the results of the 2020 election.
The president's Twitch channel, which had about 150,000 followers at the time of this writing, is still live and its archived videos are still available, but the channel is unable to broadcast during the suspension. This isn't the first time Trump has lost access to his Twitch account, however. Twitch also suspended the president from its platform this past June for two separate videos that violated its terms of service regarding "hateful conduct."
Twitch has become more popular among other politicians, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. President Trump first joined the online streaming service in late 2019 in preparation for his 2020 reelection campaign amid an impeachment inquiry into an alleged abuse of the president's power. The president's first live broadcast was from a rally in Minneapolis where he lashed out at Rep. Ilhan Omar and Somali refugees living in Minnesota.
In related news, Twitch also said on Wednesday that it was removing the PogChamp emote from its service after tweets from Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez, who the emote depicts, encouraged the violence at the Capitol.
"We've made the decision to remove the PogChamp emote following statements from the face of the emote encouraging further violence after what took place in the Capitol today," Twitch said in a statement on Twitter on Wednesday. "We want the sentiment and use of Pog to live on – its meaning is much bigger than the person depicted or image itself– and it has a big place in Twitch culture. However, we can't in good conscience continue to enable use of the image."