Additionally, Twitch will not allow banned users to appear on other streams including tournament streams. There was a kerfluffle recently where a Twitch-banned player was also banned from a tournament they tried to compete in, solely because the tournament organizer didn't want to jeopardize their streamability.

I hope I've impressed upon you that a Twitch ban is effectively a ban on all opportunities that involve money in the esports scene. There are incredibly few esports careers that could survive a Twitch ban, and not a single one would be unaffected.

> are incredibly few esports careers that could survive a Twitch ban

(emphasis mine)

People have never been entitled to a sports career, or to celebrity status by reaching viewers on someone else's platform. These platforms have democratized the "rags to riches" story, but whether it was the '30s or the '60s or the '90s, you've always had to play by the rules of the prevailing media empire. This is no different.

Companies are generally allowed to set arbitrary criteria for who they're willing to work with. There are some very specific exceptions around discrimination against a very short list of protected classes. Other than that, rules restricting conduct are usually legal. Note that I'm not claiming that rules like these are moral, I'm just pointing out that they're usually found to be legal when challenged.

The fact that you can sign up for an account in your bedroom in pajamas instead of signing documents at a lawyer's office in Hollywood doesn't magically make this a public square subject to a different set of rules.

Twitch is basically the NBA of their streaming platform, as in they set rules for how streamers, viewers, and moderators interact. Twitch can create whatever arbitrary rules it wants to maximize their revenue. If advertisers stopped caring about controversy, or if Twitch suddenly found a better revenue source, they would surely pursue it.

I'll tentatively assume you got some of the same visceral recoil I got from that mental image. And that we agree that following everything Hollywood does is probably not for the best. So I'll ask you: if you could solve this however you'd like (by passing laws, let's say), how would you do it?

Passing laws to address this might work, but I think it would be difficult, and I would expect them to be challenged mercilessly. In order to actually work, I think this would require "Civil Rights Act" or "Equal Employment Opportunity Act" caliber landmark legislation, and I'm skeptical that this would be politically tenable any time soon.

The terms of service are not in anyway enforced consistently or fairly. The way the terms and service is written is that they can basically boot you for any reason. It is well known that the "tiddie streamers" regularly get away with ToS violations, where some dude wearing a red hat will get a ban (and I mean a red hat, because that exactly what happened to one guy, he didn't even have a MAGA hat).

"Behaviour off platform" can mean anything and will be like the current Terms of Service be not be enforced in any manner that is consistent or fair.

Twitch is a monopoly in this space and it is abusing its position. This combined with the fact that the mobile phone platforms can remove an App for any reason it wants means that there is no open market where a competitor that has a different ToS can reasonably become competitive.

I suggest you ask Colin Kaepernick about how it is in the non-'E' sports world.

(Edit: misspelled name)

The esports guys should take note at what happens to sports athletes who behave "badly". They typically don't get to participate in sports anymore.

People are complaining about something that has been happening since literally forever. Long before Gopher and Mosaic were even released. Why is it "bad" now? The answer is that it is not bad, it's just that it now affects them.

Here's the thing though, waiting until it affects you, is a very poor strategy for changing what you consider to be a "wrong". This has all been litigated at this point. Now your only recourse is a wholesale change of the laws, which is not going to happen.

ValkyRae, CourageJD, DrDisrespect, Anish Giri are some just off the top of my head.

> The company is currently defining “serious offenses” as incidents of violent extremism, credible threats of mass violence, membership in a known hate group, sexual exploitation of children, and nonconsensual sexual activities, among others.

If he became internet infamous and the tv station covers it the business he works at might be obliged to fire him.

So the FCC won't let me be, or let me be me, so let me see...

Yeah, TV stations (like MTV) have been banning people in the past too.

> I can also ban you if I don’t like you. Or if I think it’s funny, or really any other reason.

Say I own twitch, can't I just shut it down? Maybe I mismanaged it, maybe it isn't profitable, maybe it isn't profitable enough to make it worth the trouble, maybe I want to make a statement, maybe I am bored, maybe I am sick. The point is the effect on the users would be the same. If you can't make it illegal for me to shut it down (on the premises that it would risk my users' livelihood) then you can't make it illegal for me to kick users out (on the same premise). So yes, people depending on MY service to earn a living has a lot of thinking and diversifying to do, it is not as risk-free as it seems, and there are nuances around that. In the end though, the owner(s) do and should have the last word.

> In the end though, the owner(s) do and should have the last word.

Thats not exactly true. A relevant counter example would be to look at other major communication services. For example, take telecom. A telephone company cannot just kick users off of the platform, for any reason. They have to follow common carrier laws.

Obviously, the law would have to be changed, in order for these laws to apply to these new platforms.

But, unrelated to any specific moderation policy, I think that there is a very nuanced and interesting discussion to be had, about how common carrier laws have not really kept up to date with some of the many new internet platforms these days.

The parallel doesn't really exist for Twitch. Other than perhaps YouTube, are there any platforms that would get you anywhere close to the pool of potential users on Twitch?

It has a little something for everyone.

But let’s take a step back here - no one is entitled to be a Full time professional streamer. Say you do something egregious (or not) and get banned from all streaming sites - just go get another job? Twitch doesn’t have a monopoly on employment.

But in the Twitch, YouTube, Amazon, etc. cases there is no other platform that pays the same.

Did you not just enumerate 3 different organizations in your comment?

Do "Twitch Streamer" and "YouTube Streamer" really constitute different "jobs"?

(I mean, to the extent that they are "jobs" at all, I consider them the same "job".)

YouTube: Youtuber

Twitch (as discussed elsewhere in the thread): eSports tournament competitors

If I work for a large company, and I go out and do something that may not even be all that bad. Say, publicly berating an Uber driver like that woman doctor in Miami, my organization will fire me. Just as her organization fired her. Especially if people start publicly connecting me to them. This has happened forever, no internet need be involved.

The difference here, at least one side claims, is that the large organization paying your living exists on the internet, and so should be viewed differently than any other large organization. Since those other large organizations are not internet-based? I find myself unpersuaded though, I'm honestly not really seeing much of a difference.

So just so I understand what you're saying, is your position that no large organization should be able to separate themselves from that lady doctor in Miami for instance? Or is your position that only large internet-based organizations should be precluded from separating themselves from her?

(Dr in Miami that berated the Uber driver is just the most analogous offline example I could think of. Large organization with enormous market power paying her living. They fire her, no one else will touch her. I'm sure there are many many more.)

Imagine a town with a single supermarket. The closest next town is a 10 hour drive away. A certain individual commits a crime, and is punished for it by the local authorities. The supermarket then decides that they are going to ban this individual from their store because of "severe misconduct" in the community. Is this fair?

Obviously, Twitch is not the "only" platform online for streaming, but in the past few years we've seen rapid siloing of content and serviced around a few platforms. Defending the actions of these platforms simply further entrenches their roles as the de facto platform for their particular service, making competition even harder.

Back here in reality, a poster child for "politically unpopular people being banned" was Milo Yiannopoulous, who was banned for leading a wave of anti-black abuse: https://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12226070/milo-yiannopoulus-twi...

One could argue that Milo is the one who started the shift we've seen over the last 5 years in social media moderation decisions. He still has a platform, of course. There are approximately infinite platforms, and some of them are happy enough to host open racists. So we aren't at the "100 baby landlords decided to ban" stage yet. As you say, he's just been booted off the popular platforms. Because it turns out a lot of people are no longer interested in supporting open racists.

And it seems like that's where things will stay: Users and companies have unimpinged freedom of association. Racists, etc, have the freedom to build sites that support racists, which are mostly ignored by everybody else. This seems like a fine outcome to me. If it doesn't to you, maybe think about why.

To turn the story around, why should a business that takes it on itself to provide for a remote community be punished for it by forcing them to accept unruly customers?

What if there's a single major provider of groceries in a state and they decide to ban everyone convicted of a felony for life. Would that be ok?

In general I think private businesses should be allowed to decide who they want to do business with.

In the case of Twitch, the question to me is what is the contract the users enter with Twitch - what promise does Twitch make? If it doesn't promise anything, users invest at their own risk.

But I really do not think allowing someone to buy lettuce should be considered a form of speech, or even an "association". Banning someone from using a grocery store - or perhaps more relevant to this example Amazon.com - for actions completely unrelated to the service is wrong IMO, even if it were somehow restricted to 100% accuracy rate of only blocking very bad people.

I haven't seen it happen yet, but if it becomes in vogue to worry that selling a random material good to a customer is some kind of endorsement of that customer, that will lead to a very concerning situation down the line. It is now all too easy to gather information on people, potentially dating back decades. I don't see any reason grocery stores should know anything about their customers outside of what can be observed when shopping.

That's the key. You were not operating a massive media platform with a significant marketshare that many people use to make a living with.

That will change arbitrarily and become more and more vague over time as the people you ideologically disagree with become better at obeying the "letter of the law".

But you're right, it's your website, and (at least for now) somebody else is free to start up a competing website that picks up the users you're throwing away.

Now - is Twitch more like those or is it more like "Bob's Forum"?

https://www.homedepot.com/p/YARDMAX-Powered-Wheelbarrow-YD41...

Having a crew isn't a bright line either since two people will often manhandle a single heavy wheelbarrow.

The brightest line is probably that a bulk freighter floats. Still it's a series of small incremental changes all the way from wheelbarrow to mining dump truck (then there's some lines you cross before you get to a bulk freighter) though which IMO still illustrates my point.

We're kind of nit picking here though.

Some wheelbarrows will float just because they weigh little enough compared to how much water their bucket displaces. Also, I don't think it stops being a wheelbarrow if you strap a couple of empty barrels to the side (I've done that, when hauling junk across a river).

To head off the obvious rebuttal, you could totally attach wheels (or maybe caterpillar treads) to the bottom of bulk freighter, even if nobody has (probably) bothered to build such thing yet.

English reuses terms, but thus that’s not a wheelbarrow anymore than there are wheelbarrows in a wheelbarrow race. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelbarrow_race

“A wheelbarrow is a small hand-propelled vehicle...” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelbarrow while also saying “Power assisted wheelbarrows are now widely available from a number of different manufacturers.”

TLDR; That’s not yet a wheelbarrow, but it might eventually become one.

The difference is plainly obvious, Bob's forum has <100 users, FB has > 2,800,000,000 users

We don’t, though. Can’t drink until 21. Rental cars and credit cards have extra restrictions until 25. Etc.

There are indeed disagreements on the appropriate voting age.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/takoma-park-grants-16-y...

https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/125-democrat...

> We can put an arbitrary delimiter at first and argue about specifics later.

We're in specifics territory, though.

Sure, but my question was about 6 year olds, not 16 year olds.

> We're in specifics territory, though.

Exactly. The first thing to do is to make sure that 6 year olds don’t kill anyone driving recklessly and 30 year olds can vote. The rest is specifics we can argue about. The same thing with the social responsibility of companies.

You're free to quibble with the specifics, but there's your magical mark.

Today, the internet has evolved into a two layered system, where a centralized “social” layer (for lack of a better term) sits on top of the underlying decentralized layer.

Today, anything of consequence happens on the top layer. You can still run a forum on your own, just like you did in the 90’s. Barely anyone will join.

Yes, Twitch is a private company and can do what it wants. Of course they can. But it only takes a few platforms to completely erase a person from any significant social digital interaction. It’s not a good thing.

Yeah, just like a game server admin that banned you simply because he lost to you in a game. Everyone loved them. Just because you can abuse your powers doesn't mean you should.

If social media that are influencing the outcome of the elections (reminder that we're in the middle of Covid lockdowns) are not aware that they shouldn't abuse their powers then it's time for the government to step in.

Sure, these don't have anywhere near the same reach when it comes to live streaming but people have been banned from twitch before and maintained an audience on other sites like these. There's also no "right to livestream".

We'll see how liberally twitch applies this new policy. All sites are literally allowed to do these things already, the only difference is they made it explicit. You can have a "common carrier" argument about regulation of private companies, but there's nothing in this announcement itself that makes twitch any different from others.

Then everybody would know that they were only providing them service under threat of government force.

If Twitch came out and said "I pay the bills, I facilitate your ad revenue - if I don't want you on the platform it's my decision to kick you off and I'll do it whenever I want" .. People would be up in arms and they'd be attacked, but they also wouldn't have to keep up this charade. People getting banned wouldn't have an avenue to complain.

But I guess being a US company there's also litigious reasons they have to worry about that some rinky dink forum wouldn't need to..

I don't know what specific fallacy is this, but stating that how it always worked does not mean it should have worked that way or that it should never change.

Twitch would not exists without content creators. Neither would exist without the other.

In that relationship Twitch has the last word on everything.

I would argue that it shouldn't be this way or at least not this one sided. Content creators should have a say on Twitch's decisions.

They don't own Twitch. They didn't take any of the economic risk to start it. They're not on the hook for covering its server bills if revenue craters. If they wanted to put their money where their mouth is and buy a piece of the company proper, the current owners might be open to that, who knows.

But you don't typically get to run a company you didn't start, haven't invested a dime in, and can walk away from at any moment, unless you're willing to take on some of the risk. Risk is what gets you the rewards.

And yet with all the money in the World Twitch will close doors if all streamers stop streaming. Twitch is literally nothing without the streamers.

In the entertainment industry in general, facing repercussions (including being unable to get any gigs whatsoever) for your actions outside of direct involvement in entertainment has long been the norm. There are several recent examples that people attribute to cancel culture, but the problem goes all the way back at least as far as the 1940s (see the Hollywood blacklist during McCarthyism).

Why should people who stream on Twitch be immune to pressures that those who work for Hollywood have to endure?

You behave badly in a bar or restaurant as a doctor for instance, your hospital or clinic will fire you and good luck getting a job anywhere else.

how many people were on such a forum, and how many of such forums were there out there to get on?

You had, what, 0.01% of the market? It's a lot different when you have >50% (or, well, used to be).

That being said I agree that the argument is disingenuous. Freedom of speech is a human right. The use of someone else's platform on which to speak is not.

At a normal workplace, while people _can_ simply be fired, they typically aren't. That sort of thing kills morale and may even result in protest resignations.

Oligopoly changes the equation and requires more oversight, just as your backyard garden might not require regulation like an industrial food producer would.

There were thousands of fourms. I ran one. Ezboard and other platforms made it easy to host one without even paying server bills.

But there's only one Twitch, and when they ban you, you're gone. Your audience is too.

This is what we get with platform monopolies.

No, they're a website owned by a private company.

If you want there to be a public utility that provides the same service Twitch does, write to your representatives.

Okay, that is actually a great idea

That's a rather shitty thing to do. I understand it has a warning now or doesn't exist or whatever, but no one should have to see it without their consent

This is a hard lesson when a private press takes on near-monopoly scale by choice of clientele.

(If you think I'm exaggerating, Twitch has had a huge run of prominent streamers outed for raping minors, grooming, and the like, and much of the terrible behavior has happened via Discord. Which will be why Twitch are keen to make it clear that you can't say "oh I was grooming on Discord, none of your business.)