As if banning Dr. Disrespect wasn’t a big enough deal, Twitch has issued a suspension on President Donald Trump’s Twitch channel. Now, to be clear, he wasn’t having a heated gamer moment or streaming any games content but it was used as another social media platform for his campaign.
Twitch issued the following statement after suspending Donald Trump’s channel: “Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream”
We’re not sure what was said on stream to invoke this suspension but it likely could’ve been something at one of his rallies which have been livestreamed. Bernie Sanders livestreamed many of his rallies through Twitch during his campaign in an attempt to engage with younger voters.
Reddit also banned some Donald Trump subreddits among 2,000 other subreddits on their site as part of a new set of rules. In reference to r/The_Donald, CEO Steve Huffman claimed they’d been breaking the rules of the site for a while.
“The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations,” Huffman said.
“Reddit’s mission is to bring community and belonging to everybody in the world, and there is speech in the world and on Reddit that prevents other people from doing so,” Huffman told reporters. “Harassing speech or hateful speech prevents people from coming to Reddit and feeling safe and sharing their vulnerabilities … So if we have speech on Reddit that’s preventing people from using Reddit the way that we intend it to be used, or that prevents us from achieving our mission, then it’s actually a very easy decision.”
This isn’t an effort to censor political beliefs so much as keep the conversation civil and healthy, according to Huffman.
“Political speech continues to be safe,” Huffman said. “But all communities, including our political communities, have to abide by our policies. And while we will do everything we can to help bring them in line, if they fail in doing so they are not allowed on Reddit.”
Many Twitter users have called for Donald Trump to be banned on that platform for spreading misinformation and doctored content. Twitter hasn’t banned him as they believe keeping the president’s account is of public interest. Instead, Twitter often puts disclaimers on his tweets if there’s something controversial about what he tweets.
We’ll update this article if the situation develops or President Donald Trump responds.
