> Twitch Bans Misinformation Super Spreaders

Every day, people come together on Twitch to build communities that celebrate a variety of interests, passions, and talents. We’re proud that Twitch can bring people together – but we do not believe that individuals who use online services to spread false, harmful information, have a place in our community. While these individuals are not prevalent on Twitch, they could cause significant harm if allowed on our service. That’s why today we’re updating our Spam, Scams and Malicious Conduct Policy to prohibit Harmful Misinformation Actors from using our service.

Before we continue, we need to make one thing clear: this update will likely not impact you or the streamers you love on Twitch. Our goal is to prohibit individuals whose online presence is dedicated to spreading harmful, false information from using Twitch. We will not enforce against one-off statements containing misinformation.

So far this policy change seems pretty forgiving. We get it, accidents happen and people misspeak. Besides Twitch already has policies for dealing with the other stuff.

There’s some notable specifics though. Emphasis mine:

We’ve partnered with over a dozen researchers and experts to understand how harmful misinformation spreads online and ensure our approach to mitigating its risks in our community is effective for Twitch. We’ve learned that Harmful Misinformation Actors account for a disproportionate amount of damaging, widely debunked misinformation online. Together, we’ve identified three characteristics that all of these actors share: their online presence – whether on or off Twitch – is dedicated to (1) persistently sharing (2) widely disproven and broadly shared (3) harmful misinformation topics, such as conspiracies that promote violence. We’ve selected these criteria because taken together they create the highest risk of harm including inciting real world harm. We will only enforce against actors who meet all three of these criteria, and our Off-Service investigations team will be conducting thorough reviews into each case. You can report these actors by sending an email to OSIT@twitch.tv with the account name and any available supporting evidence.

I think Twitch is taking the right approach here: Be gentle until you can’t. Behave if you want to stay on our platform. But don’t just behave because we tell you to on our own platform, behave everywhere else as well. It does no good to kick someone off one platform for them to go onto another and continue spreading this stuff. And nobody has the traffic Twitch does. It would be like getting kicked from YouTube and going to Vimeo. I can’t imagine any prominent streamer would want to risk losing their revenue stream over dumb stuff. Especially if it’s my main source of income or a solid secondary income.

Your move Spotify.

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