Late last week, Twitch dropped the precise kind of announcement a company often saves for the end of a week: Going forward, streamers would have to apply the “political and sensitive social issues” label to broadcasts that include “discussions about elections.” , civic integrity, war or military conflict, and civil rights,” as well as conversations about “legislation related to a sensitive social issue such as reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, or immigration.” This last provision in particular proved unpopular. Twitch has since clarified some of the rules, although streamers still feel they are setting worrying precedents.

In the days following Twitch’s announcement on Friday, numerous streamers spoke out against this use of Twitch’s labeling system, which allows viewers to hide content with specific labels — making it less discoverable — and allows brands to exclude tagged broadcasts from their ad campaigns. Nearly 40,000 Twitch streamers and viewers voted on a post on Twitch’s official feedback page urging the company to remove the “sensitive social issue” item from the rules.

“LGBTQ+ people, immigrants and reproductive rights are not ‘sensitive social issues’, they are common sense issues where one side simply wants their freedoms to remain intact,” read one Twitch user’s post. “The controversy lies entirely on the other side of the argument that it is about taking away those freedoms. Especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ individuals, the idea that the discussion about their existence is politically absolute nonsense.”

On Monday evening, Twitch locked the post on its feedback page and clarified its rules.

“We want to make it clear that you don’t have to label your stream when talking about your lived experience,” Twitch wrote on Twitter. “We have also made it clear that a label is only required if the discussion about the topics mentioned is central to the stream. Our goal here, as with any other content rating label, is to give viewers and brands more information about what’s happening in a given stream so they can make an informed decision about what to watch and engage with. ‘

Twitch also published a revised version of the rules with the aforementioned clarifications, as well as a notable removal of the word “immigration.” The new bullet points contain slightly more specific language, such as ‘streams’ focused about discussing topics such as gender, race, sexuality or religion in a polarizing or inflammatory manner” (emphasis ours).

So if you read between the lines, Twitch’s goal here is to make it easier for brands to avoid politically focused streamers, just as it once did when it created an entire category for pools, hot tubs, and beaches after advertisers opted out. fussed about Kaitlyn. “Amouranth” Siragusa and other hot tub streamers in 2021. Twitch has not been profitable for quite some time and has made many unpopular changes in pursuit of a stream it considers arguably more important than that of the live variety: revenue. These include a substantial focus on advertising, shuttering operations in Korea, and multiple rounds of mass layoffs.

The specific context here is more labyrinthine: In October, Twitch faced criticism from Israeli media and Israel-friendly content creators following a login snafu in which the company accidentally blocked email authentication in Israel and Palestine for a year. , as well as a TwitchCon panel in which several streamers of Arab descent ranked other creators based on who can say “habibi,” an Arabic term of endearment — of which the top tier was “Arab” and the bottom tier was “Loves Sabra,” an objective bad brand of hummus from a company with Israeli military ties.

Big names like YouTuber Ethan “H3H3” Klein claimed this constituted overt anti-Semitism, while streamers who participated in the panel – including the list’s creator, Raffoulticket, who is Jewish – vehemently denied these accusations. Nevertheless, the Anti-Defamation League, a notorious supporter of Israel, got involved, prompting Twitch to suspend Frogan, who was considered the leader of the panel, and the other streamers who participated for 30 days. This after it imposed a two-week suspension on Asmongold following a much undeniably racist tirade against the Palestinians.

There are some notable ties here: Klein podcasted regularly with Twitch’s biggest political creator, Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker, until the two had repeated verbal blows over Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Piker has been an outspoken opponent of Israel and – as he has repeatedly emphasized during broadcasts – not the Jewish people for years, as a result of what the World Court deemed an apartheid state in the occupied Palestinian territories. He has led younger generations to conclude that Israel is responsible for human rights abuses, despite years of propaganda linking anti-Israel sentiment to anti-Semitism – the latter of which is clearly a problem, but not intrinsically linked to Israel.

Piker, whose streams and videos reach millions of viewers and rival traditional news networks in terms of numbers, is also partly responsible for politicians like Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turning the spotlight on Twitch, starting with a Among us stream in 2020 with a peak of almost 500,000 concurrent viewers. This, as well as the Republican Party’s influencer-centric tactics, have clearly shaped the Harris campaign’s approach. In recent months, Harris has launched a Twitch channel, Bernie Sanders has learned what a vtuber is, and AOC and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz have streamed Crazy taxi to an enthusiastically receptive audience (who at various times spammed Piker emotions in the chat). Due to rules against hate speech that are generally better enforced than on other platforms (with some glaring exceptions), and a more left-leaning audience, Twitch is home to few significant conservative political influencers.

Frogan is Piker’s former moderator and member of his community, as well as someone who has pursued Klein several times. Amid the suspension of Frogan and her associates following Klein’s period of sustained outrage, Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres has taken up the case, publishing a letter last week raising “alarm over Hasan Piker’s amplification of anti-Semitism on Twitch” and ominously concluding that “no company in America – not even Twitch – is above congressional oversight.”

In addition, Digiday published a piece about a creator-led campaign that reached more than 100 advertisers with evidence of alleged anti-Semitism on Twitch, including a segment in which Piker claimed that reports of mass rapes committed by members of Hamas on October 7 were never confirmed. (Piker was referring to a March 2024 UN report that admitted a lack of forensic evidence of sexual violence; the offending clip comes from a stream in which Piker nevertheless argued with a viewer that there was likely sexual violence – the opposite of what the campaign also claimed, as others, like Torres, have claimed – but also that none of this justifies the genocide of the Palestinians.)

Not long after Torres spoke out, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy published his own letter saying that “there is no place on Twitch for racism, hatred or harassment of any kind, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.” Now here we are, with Twitch suddenly moving in a direction similar to other platforms like Instagram, which suppresses content it deems political by default.

Some streamers are concerned that Twitch is caving to external pressure instead of addressing real issues.

“I just think (Monday’s update to the political rules) creates a lot more problems for them than it solves,” said Bret “Cinemarxism” Hamilton, a documentary filmmaker and streamer who spent time with pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside TwitchCon in response to TwitchCon’s Chevron sponsorship deal, Aftermath shared. “Creating more rules around it and ‘clarifying’ it will always require them to make choices and take positions on what qualifies and what doesn’t, and then people will be outraged by the enforcement or lack of enforcement. I think the previous one (terms of service) was actually great and well enforced. … They capitulate to bad faith actors who are not genuinely interested in justice or anti-racism; they just don’t like Hasan and want him banished.”

“I think that the implementation of a separate category for politics to combat anti-Semitism is a wrong starting point. Existing as a minority person, especially in a predominantly white male space, is a political act,” Austin “Gremloe” MacNamara, a left-wing politics streamer, told Aftermath. “If Twitch is serious about combating hate speech on the platform, the five banned Arab content creators are a perfect group of people to talk about it, as they have all begged Twitch to add (Middle East and North Africa) their Twitch census data turned up nothing. It’s cynical at best and cowardly at worst.”

Piker himself is also skeptical about the motivations underlying the events of the past week. He told NBC that excerpts cited by Torres and others as evidence of anti-Semitism had been taken out of context. Piker isn’t sure what to make of Torres’ actions, other than that it fits a pattern set by the politician, who recently insulted a university teacher for talking about “Israeli genocide against the Palestinians” during class.

“I think it’s really weird for Ritchie Torres to try to issue a takedown notice five or six days after an election with huge consequences against a progressive content creator who is the biggest progressive voice not just on Twitch, but in general. in North America,” Piker said during a Monday broadcast: “A very strange way of working.”