Trump's Twitch account gets banned temporarily over 'hateful conduct'
The streaming platform has suspended President Trump's channel and removed the offending content.
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Twitch has temporarily suspended President Trump's account.
Twitch has temporarily banned President Donald Trump's channel, citing "hateful conduct." The suspension was issued due to a rebroadcast of a 2016 campaign rally as well as his recent rally in Tulsa, according to the streaming platform.
Twitch has zero tolerance on hateful conduct, which it describes as promoting, encouraging or facilitating discrimination, objectification, denigration, harassment or violence based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, medical condition or veteran status.
"Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch," a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "President Trump's channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed."
The rebroadcast of the 2016 rally contained comments from Trump that Mexico is sending "rapists" and "drugs" across the US border. The recent Tulsa rally saw the president make more racist statements related to his concerns with defunding the police: "A very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or whatever he may do. And you call 911 and they say, 'I'm sorry, this number's no longer working.' By the way, you have many cases like that, many, many, many," he claimed during that rally.
Twitch said it had warned Trump's team last year when they opened his account that he had to adhere to the platform's guidelines and terms of service just like any other user. "We do not make exceptions for political or newsworthy content, and will take action on content reported to us that violates our rules," Twitch told the president at the time.
The move was announced the same day Reddit banned controversial forum The_Donald as part of sweeping changes to its hate speech policies. The subreddit sprang up as a forum for supporters of Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign, but soon became known for playing host to racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and other problematic content.
Twitch has been cracking down on its users. Last week it suspended the account of popular gaming streamer Dr Disrespect for reasons unknown, and reportedly permanently, and it also said it would begin issuing permanent bans following a wave of accusations of sexual abuse against popular Twitch streamers. Twitch removed the accounts of streamers including IamSp00n, BlessRNG and DreadedCone.
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