Twitch is explicitly not a free speech platform: https://dotesports.com/streaming/news/twitch-isnt-a-free-spe...

"Twitch prioritizes minimizing harm to our users over freedom of expression, and we will limit some expression with the goal of preventing, protecting users from, and moderating hateful behavior and harassment."

This may come as a surprise to the average HN viewer, but not every tech company strives for a libertarian ethos

Twitch isn't a necessary prerequisite to being online. (And it isn't being done at a time where people are actively trying to silence speech such as by DDOSing.) Twitch has very strict rules for what is allowed, more so than even YouTube. To answer your question, this is censorship but it isn't total censorship. CF enacted total censorship of KiwiFarms: but only from an online perspective. KiwiFarms can still operate by mail or by in person gatherings. So it's only total censorship online. The acceptable degree of censorship was what sparked so much outrage. The degree seen here is an everyday occurrence. It's just Twitch updating thier censorship rules.

Twitch already censors a lot of other content and also this isn't just people streaming, they're making money off of it.

I don't think this is comparable to other sites like Twitter banning users because Twitch isn't a communication platform, it's an entertainment one and only allowing certain kinds of entertainment is par for the course.

> Twitch isn't a communication platform, it's an entertainment one

I feel like this is hard to argue in general. Twitch really isn't all that different than live streams on TikTok, YouTube, or Facebook which are general communication platforms where creators can get partner status and share ad revenue.

The thing that ties Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, Cloudflare, Wordpress, Facebook all together is that they're broadcasting corporations available to the public at large. The value prop to their users is the megaphone. How it's accomplished from a tech perspective shouldn't really matter.

> and only allowing certain kinds of entertainment is par for the course

It's the legal issue, though. I personally think that laws against gambling are none of the government's damn business, and if Twitch is doing this only because of laws, then I don't like it, but blame the government, not Twitch. If gambling were legal, and Twitch decided to ban it anyway, I would hold it as equivalent to them banning porn on their platform, and totally legit, at least as long as Twitch was not a monopoly.

is it censorship if its illegal in the country where your company is based?

do you not follow the laws of the country where your company is located?

Can you be more specific about this expected outrage?

I think for something like this, most folks don't generally care, because it's a pretty specific niche of people who watch Twitch streams for gambling content (relatively speaking anyway, those people are probably not here).

The KF story is more contentious because it's rooted in a culture war battle.

Gambling isn't a form of speech. If they were also banning people from playing no-stakes social poker or even talking about gambling, you might have a point.

Preventing a company from choosing what to publish would also be censorship, would it not?

Unless you can make a compelling case that gambling is speech I'm not really sure you could call it censorship unless you really stretch it. I think the best you can say is that it's a private company enforcing gambling rules in their little fifedom that are more strict the laws of their enclosing regulatory environment.

Simple: Gambling is illegal by law in many countries outside of very strict regulations. Running a forum like Kiwifarms (sadly) is not.