Twitch has once again proved to be a breeding ground for political controversy, as Joe Biden's official campaign account on the platform is seemingly making the same mistakes as the U.S. Army esports team. While Joe Biden's Twitch isn't recruiting viewers to the armed forces, Biden's campaign managers don't want the Twitch channel to be a space to discuss uncomfortable topics.
In June, current U.S. President Donald Trump was suspended from Twitch after using hate speech during two live broadcasts. Trump's suspension lasted two weeks before it was lifted, and an even bigger Twitch controversy involving a portion of U.S. government followed shortly after. The U.S. Army/Navy esports teams spent a fair amount of time in the crosshairs of the media following a few unethical actions. The U.S. military faced harsh criticism for using the streaming platform to lead viewers - some of whom were minors - to recruiting sites, while aggressively censoring its chat and banning users who asked questions about war crimes.
With October being the final stretch before the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden's campaign team is making another effort to reach out to voters by creating the official VoteJoe Twitch channel. While Biden does make appearances on stream every so often, the majority of the channel's content is lo-fi hip-hop music played over videos of trains or other relaxing activities. However, a recent live stream featuring a young woman drawing Vice Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris had a few users in chat asking questions about war crimes, which resulted in moderators banning them. Twitter user tjotimmy8 (elitepeanutbag on Twitch) posted images from the stream's chat of before and after they and another user were banned.
While elitepeanutbag has specifically used the wording "war crimes," justintime4763 was banned for discussing the details of Obama-era support for Saudi attacks on Yemen. After a moderator banned both users, their comments were erased from the stream, but elitepeanutbag was able to document them before they were removed. While Joe Biden himself probably had nothing to do with this incident, the situation is eerily similar to that of the U.S. Army esports censorship. The Army account briefly stopped streaming after stirring up controversy, but hasn't faced official consequences from Twitch.
Joe Biden's campaign team has made various efforts to reach the younger voting population, but censoring uncomfortable topics on Twitch certainly doesn't paint the candidate in the best light. However, President Trump also had his own Twitch controversy. It is a little disappointing that both presidential candidates struggle to maintain a positive image on one of the internet's largest streaming platforms. If anything, 2020 has proven that Twitch and government don't mix.
Source: tjotimmy8