Twitch, Others, Ban Amouranth Yet Again, Once Again With Zero Transparency
from the how-is-this-so-hard? dept
Regular readers here will by now likely be familiar with Twitch streamer "Amouranth". She has made it onto our pages as part of the year-long mess that Amazon's Twitch platform appears to be making for itself, during which it has demonstrated its willingness to both treat its creative community quite poorly and fail to properly communicate that poor treatment to much of anyone at all. For instance, Twitch has temporarily banned or kept Amouranth from live-streaming several times, all likely due to the content of her streams. That content seems nearly perfectly designed to poke the line on Twitch's streaming guidelines, including so-called "hot tub streaming" and ASMR streams. Twitch has never been great about explaining the reasons for bans like these, but in the past it has at least linked to the offending content so that a streamer knows which videos were objectionable. But with some, including Amouranth, Twitch often times doesn't even bother doing that, such as when it demonetized Amouranth's videos without warning or explanation.
So, while Twitch, quite frankly, now has far, far bigger issues on its hands, it's worth pointing out that Twitch has yet again banned Amouranth without warning or explanation. Though, it appears this time Twitch has some friends tagging along in Instagram and TikTok.
Popular streamer Kaitlyn ‘Amouranth’ Siragusa has had Twitch channel, TikTok, and Instagram pages banned within quick succession, but what actually happened and what is she doing next? On October 8, Amouranth received her fifth ban from Twitch but it seemed to come pretty out of the blue. While there is usually a clip to point to that mostly explains the suspension, that hasn’t been the case this time around and the exact reason is up for speculation.
And not just speculation by the public. It appears that at the time the ban-hammer was brought down on her, Amouranth had absolutely no idea why she'd been banned across multiple platforms. Perhaps she's playing coy, but publicly she actually asked others to let her know if they found out the reason for all of this.
If you find out please let me know
— Amouranth (@Amouranth) October 8, 2021
Why Twitch can't seem to get communication and basic public relations right is an ongoing mystery. But whatever that reason is, it seems like they just can't. The wrinkle here would normally be that Instagram and TikTok have followed along the same path... except that Twitch actually reinstated Amouranth a few days later. She remains banned on the other platforms, though, making this all remarkably strange. Ban, unban, ban, unban, and all without proper communication to a member of Twitch's creative community.
Now, Amouranth will be fine. She makes most of her money from OnlyFans, after all. But that really isn't the point. How much harm Twitch is doing to creators by not bothering to communicate with them isn't as important as why any of this harm is occurring at all.
If that keeps up, she may never have to make a return to streaming. Though, YouTube could be an option seeing as Indiefoxx – who was in a similar situation to Amouranth with being banned – has recently made the switch herself.
She’s also talked about starting a venture capital fund that focuses on the “grey market space” of things that are not entirely brand-friendly. Though, who knows if that’ll happen anytime soon.
And, while Amouranth is a very visible creative whom this is happening to, there are plenty of others. And at some point, those people are not going to put up with this concept of a platform being managed by whim any longer.
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Filed Under: amouranth, asmr, content moderation, hot tub streaming, streaming
Companies: amazon, twitch
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Regular readers?
What's a regular reader? I consume TechDirt via RSS exclusively, and this is the first time I've heard of this Amouranth person.
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Re: Regular readers?
P84 is correct. If I click on "Filed Under: amouranth", I get only this current article. Ditto for clicking on "hot tub streaming", this article only. I vaguely recall mention of her, but the tagging/filed under system seems to be out of kilter on this one....
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Re: Re: Regular readers?
I'll be honest, the name wasn't familiar to me, but the later description of the content is familiar. That's probably me just taking a sideways interest in the subject matter and not having a direct interest in the content itself.
If you do a search for the name rather than just click on the link at the top of the article, there's definitely other stories that I do remember seeing, though. Maybe someone just needs to adjust the tagging of the previous articles.
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Re: Re: Regular readers?
Look under "Twitch", probably. I recall at least 2 other articles which included Amouranth.
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Re: Regular readers?
Because TD's previous posts on the subject have primarily been about Twitch dropping the banhammer over bizarre and wondrous reasons while including "Amouranth" under her real name as the textbook example of one of the more popular victims, I suppose.
I recall reading the story but I also didn't have a clue as to who that specific streamer was.
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Re: Regular readers?
See the "likely"? Congrats, you may be an outlier!
Or I am be assuming too much :)
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Re: Regular readers?
the link is in the first paragraph of the story: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210519/11113446830/twitch-yanks-advertising-revenue-popular-hot- tub-streamer-with-no-warning-dialogue.shtml
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Re: Regular readers?
I recall a handfuls.
TD turned me into a follower for her.
Not because of the actual content but because she’s just… strange? It’s fun to watch someone bounce from quite normal to wow, that’s bizarre.
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Every platform should have a policy that gives the reason.
Even if they lie about why they are locking you out, at least there is a reason.
The randomly ban unban ban unban with no information is a stupid policy & shows a lack of critical thinking.
Half assing the ban unban merry go round not only will cost you that content creator, but other content creators will be looking for a platform that promises to give more detail when they ban & have a clear system to reach unban.
Given how a competitor could stumble across a torrent & build their own Twitch clone really easily, they should be working on this massive failure of explaining themselves.
Twitch isn't the only platform out there & as they annoy more creators they'll start being that platform people used to use.
Someone could launch a half assed platform that had clear rules & clear ban explanations & people would flock to it.
Not having to worry what if this time the red bikini gets a ban but never the blue one... until someone decides to rule differently with no update to policy.
Let creators focus on their creating their content thats within the spelled out lines not fuzzy lines that move in the breeze.
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Re:
"The randomly ban unban ban unban with no information is a stupid policy & shows a lack of critical thinking."
And in the end harms the platform a great deal. In this case it's pretty obvious the stated reason would have been "indecency" or something like it, because girls in bathtubs wearing standard beach apparel is - oh, horror - corroding the morals of youth.
Honestly, how hard could it be to just build a standard drop-down menu of the dozen most common reasons a moderator drops a banhammer?
It might also answer a few questions the alt-right trolls keep posing around why comments centered around racism and bigotry...oops..."conservative values"...are consistently blocked from most platforms.
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The fact of the matter is that the general “hot tub meta” and the adjacent ear-licking ASMR stuff that started a bit after that to continue pushing the boundaries is selling sex. Full stop. If people want to sell sex for a living, cool. But Twitch doesn’t have to allow it and we need to learn when to call a spade a spade instead of calling it a ‘moral panic’ when people are irritated at streamers on Twitch doing ear-licking ASMR while posing like this.
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What does this have to do with the parent message, which didn't say they had to allow it but did say they should simply tell people why they're banned?
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Re: Re: Re:
"But Twitch doesn’t have to allow it and we need to learn when to call a spade a spade"
But they should explain their rules openly & clearly rather than randomly freaking out over some people who violated an "unwritten" rule.
I mean there is nothing in Insta's rules about male bodyhair, yet "community standards" is often used to pull photos that haven't broken any rules other than they aren't a shaped, toned, waxed male.
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Re: Re: Re:
"The fact of the matter is that the general “hot tub meta” and the adjacent ear-licking ASMR stuff that started a bit after that to continue pushing the boundaries is selling sex. Full stop."
Let me see, what was that word...ah, yes. BULLSHIT.
By that argument a car salesman is "selling sex" if parts of his audience have a car fetish. Any advertising of stockings, shoes, or any other form of vestment imaginable would be a sale of sex. Let's not even discuss the "sexy gun" crowd of the NRA. We'd have to reclassify every monster movie as porn because 'Vore' is a thing.
And also by your argument, if a girl in a bathtub who is wearing a bathing suit is selling sex then the average american beach must be classified as a public orgy and every bathhouse and theme park reclassified as a brothel.
Here is where you get the chance to go "Hot damn, didn't think about that"...or double down on what was broken logic to begin with.
"Selling Sex" is a debate we can have after we refrain from expanding the definition to include beach pictures, clothing commercials and sports.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"The average american beach must be classified as a public orgy and every bathhouse and theme park reclassified as a brothel."
A worthy inclusion in a campaign speech somewhere.
I'm off to buy shares in Victorian bathing machine manufacturers.
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'And now that attention has shifted, the banhammer.'
Given the ban-unban-ban back and forth at this point I suspect that someone moderately high up in the company just really doesn't like them for whatever reason and keeps trying to throw them out only for the company to have to backtrack when enough attention is drawn to the issue.
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Re: 'And now that attention has shifted, the banhammer.'
Or the other possibility is there's a group of prudes/idiots out there mass-reporting her Twitch channel.
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Re: Re: 'And now that attention has shifted, the banhammer.'
"Or the other certainty is there's a group of prudes/idiots out there mass-reporting her Twitch channel."
Had to fix that for you. If there's one thing we can guarantee it would be that if a woman chooses to show off her body there will be a bunch of christian-version taliban screaming that she should cover herself for the public good. Or, lately, a bunch of hilariously derailed feminists trying to shame her into covering up because it "sends the wrong message".
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Why do they need a reason?
Along with youtube, facebook and all of the other "social media/streaming/snakepit" sites, the owners of the site have the sole discretion to ban or not ban anyone at all for any reason or none.
Those who don't like it are free to set up their own service and use that instead. (See Twitter-Parler-"From the desk of Donald Trump" for one example of how this is supposed to work.)
Franchisees put up real money to obtain their franchise, decorate their building, stock it and staff it, all to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the franchise owners can still just take the whole thing away from them on what amounts to a whim. (See Subway franchises for several examples of this happening.)
"Creators" who perform for Twitch, youtube and the like generally put up an investment of $0 and have no formally negotiated contract or servicing agreement with the companies that they decide to pin their livelihoods on. They aren't even paying any rent for use of the company's facilities. If the company decides that the amount they make from their cut of the advertising revenue is no longer worth the hassle, that's a decision they are entitled to make.
I really don't see where these folks have a lot of room to complain when they get the vaudeville hook. "I've been using this service for free and now they don't want me any more."
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Re: Why do they need a reason?
But streamers are paying plenty of rent in the form of Twitch's cut: Streamers who make no money pay no rent, just like people who make no money pay no income taxes. Streamers who do make money are paying Twitch for the ability to do so, quite handsomely in most cases. To argue that it's different because Twitch is taking the money out before writing the check rather than asking for it back afterwards seems silly to me. Employees still pay social security tax even though that money is never in their bank account. It wouldn't make sense to say that someone paid no income tax because it was withheld from their paycheck rather than them paying it directly.
People don't have to pay up front to create something in Unreal Engine, either. But if your studio is a year into development into its game, having paid thousands of dollars to employees, freelancers, and software licensers, only to have Epic turn around and revoke your ability to use Unreal for no reason and with no warning, you'd rightfully be pissed. You could technically go write your own engine, or use another one, but both of those options would involve a truckload of extra time and expense.
No one here is saying Twitch doesn't have the right to do this. They have the right to make whatever moderation decisions they please. Just like the community has the right to pillory those decisions when they're objectionable.
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Re: Why do they need a reason?
Your plaint falls on deaf ears, seeing as how you failed to read the room.
The article isn't castigating the users for not moving on to friendlier pastures, it's castigating the platform(s) for being arbitrary and capricious. Look at it this way; we have rules of the road for driving, no? Well, they are there so that everyone can expect the same behavior of every other driver on the road, at all times.
Samo-samo here. The platforms (Twitch, in this case) can't seem to get together a set of rules, and then adhere to them. This lowers both expectations and enjoyment for all of the platform's users, both creators and viewers. In any sense of how to run a business, that's not good for the bottom line.
IOW, "Twitch, the MySpace of creator's platforms." is likely to become a reality, unless they get their shit together. And soon.
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Re: Why do they need a reason?
"I really don't see where these folks have a lot of room to complain when they get the vaudeville hook. "I've been using this service for free and now they don't want me any more.""
True enough.
But it still makes for an interesting debate of social issues. In this the stupidest of times where racism and bigotry are pushed as conservative values and girls in bathing suits are considered indecency, it's certainly worthwhile to bring the discussion of platform values to the table.
Twitch certainly needs to answer to no one. They are obligated to no one but their shareholders. But bringing the debate when a business does something stupid is in itself worthwhile, because how else are people going to select or discard their chosen venue of entertainment?
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Re: Re: Why do they need a reason?
It’s not just “girls with bathing suits”. It’s also ASMR ear-licking and the camera showing Amouranth wearing yoga pants and spreading her legs at an angle like this. Lines have to be drawn somewhere. I’d say that drawing the line there is a damn fine idea.
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Re: Re: Re: Why do they need a reason?
Then draw the fucking line instead of leaving Streamers in the dark with an unclear TOS!
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Re: Re: Re: Why do they need a reason?
Here's the question I have: If you don't go the her stream and watch her, why do you have a problem what with she is doing on her stream?
Or perhaps you actually watch her stream so you have something to complain about?
I don't get what you are actually complaining about, because to see content like that you have to actively seek it out. And when it comes to content like hers, the only people wanting "lines drawn" are people who feels morally superior and want to impose their morals on everyone, plus the odd assortment of misogynists who can't stand see women do want they want while earning good money.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Why do they need a reason?
It’s not just her doing these streams and it’s not just people individually choosing to go to the stream to watch her. When streams where people do stuff like this get lots of viewers and hit the front page of Twitch where people can wind up seeing it whether they want to or not, that becomes a problem.
Or maybe there are people who are fine with women doing what they want but don’t believe that Twitch should be the place for women to earn money by posing in provocative ways while licking a microphone when others sites exist where women can do that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why do they need a reason?
So shouldn't Twitch have some sort of filter to filter out that stuff if people don't want to do that? That seems more like a "filter" moderation problem (e.g. allowing certain people to see certain content if they wanted to) than a "ban"/"kick" moderation problem (e.g. removing users from their service).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why do they need a reason?
So, if someone is a pacifist should they get upset that the front page of Twitch is full of streams showing virtual war and killings, should they then demand that those games move to another platform because they think it is a problem?
The thing is, what is provocative is entirely up to the viewer. There are people who find female game-characters in skimpy clothes provocative, I don't hear you saying that that is a problem and people playing those games should move to another platform. What you are complaining about is that it happens to be a real woman doing something that is so common in videogames, women being provocative, but with a video-game the player has control.
If a woman wants to show some skin, so what, it's her choice, but you are so indoctrinated on how a woman should behave and what she should wear you find it offensive if she stray outside those norms.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why do they need a reason?
"Or maybe there are people who are fine with women doing what they want but don’t believe that Twitch should be the place for women to earn money by posing in provocative ways while licking a microphone when others sites exist where women can do that."
So if I want to watch a horror movie I need to visit a porn site to find it because 'vore' is a disturbingly widespread kink?
If I want to purchase a car I need to visit a brothel because there are people who find cars to be an object of desire?
I visit a bathhouse I'll need to find one with a sex sale or stripper's permit because those girls stretching before and after they've swum a few laps are showing off their camel toes?
'indecency' in any western nation usually includes baring a few strategic places completely. You are literally delivering the pro-burqa argument of a sharia advocate when they discuss how women shouldn't be 'encouraged' to indecency.
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Re: Re: Re: Why do they need a reason?
"Lines have to be drawn somewhere. I’d say that drawing the line there is a damn fine idea."
The place you draw the line would ban people in biker outfits from performing yoga out-of-doors. Beachgoers from stretching. People in general from wearing too thin or contoured clothes.
So...congratulations, you've just delivered, almost line by line, the argument of Iranian mullahs from thirty years back, on how it's a laudable idea to not allow women to dress or act provocatively.
Aren't you living in the wrong country if those are your ideals?
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Re: Re: Re: Why do they need a reason?
A crotch oh, the horror!!!
Then they should say…
Something.
Anything!
Instead… 🦗
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Re: Why do they need a reason?
If you're not given a reason for being banned/restricted/whatever, it's rather difficult to change whatever the objectionable behaviour was that led to the punishment. On the flipside, if the issues that led to the punishment were actually false positives, then the system won't be changed and more innocent people will be affected.
So, identifying the reason is beneficial for both sides, for the streamers being able to avoid being banned, and for the service to avoid pointlessly banning material that will help them profit. Your complaint about initial investment is a red herring, as these services are making money off the content even if they do it via means other than direct rent collection.
I agree that people should do better at diversifying their audience and not depending on a single service that destroys their entire business if something bad happens (which might not be them being banned, if the service goes down for any other reason they would be similarly affected), but the nature of their contract should not be an excuse if they're making it impossible to do business under that contract.
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Re: Why do they need a reason?
There is a long standing position about moderation at Techdirt that you have failed to grasp.
Twitch does not need, legally, to provide a reason. Why do they need a reason? They don't. Legally. This is the "can they" discussion. The typical response from Techdirt and the commenters here is that those banned from one platform can go find other platforms to host them, what you have posited here. The problem is the article is not having a "can they" discussion. Techdirt is addressing the "should they" discussion, as in "why should Twitch provide a reason".
Techdirt believes that Twitch's decision is a bad business decision. Techdirt is not advocating for Amouranth's reinstatement. Techdirt is discussing the long-term implications of Twitch's behavior in the light of a company reeling from multiple scandals and multiple competitors actively looking to exploit the mess.
When twitch just banned Amouranth it was odd, but when it opened up 'hot tub streams' as a valid option and reinstated her, Twitch seemingly knew what it was letting in, and so the repeated banning and unbanning of Amouranth since sends mixed messaging. And it feeds a perception that policing Amouranth's sexuality is more important to address than say basic, security 101 concerns like not letting one email verify unlimited bot accounts, or having any security at all (they literally do not have anyone dedicated to the security of the platform or their trade secrets and stated they had no intentions to hire digital security staff a few weeks prior to the breach). That is not good messaging to send to creators you need using your platform.
Twitch makes money selling ads, selling ways to bypass ads, and by getting a cut of all streamer revenue (which overlaps with the first 2, admittedly). That relies on popular streamers to generate views. Streamers rely on the platform. Symbiotic relationship. Twitch pulling the rug out on a creator is bad form. And it can lead to a hallowing out of the up and coming twitch streaming base if newbies consider the platform unreliable, posing a long term risk to Twitch's stability as burnout and changing tastes/trends lead to turnover in content and creators. This is another long standing position at Techdirt. Neither the content nor the platform hold value without the other. Doesn't matter how good your platform is, you don't make money if you don't have creators. And vice versa, no matter how good the content, the creator needs a platform with lots of viewers to be successful. Twitch can piss its creators off all it wants, but it is bad business as it needs its creators.
Your arguement against the discussion of whether Twitch can ban Amouranth is good, but it does not address the question of if Twitch should or if Twitch should be more transparent with why her content keeps being taken down.
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What are the odds that this turns out to be part of an organised mass reporting campaign by chuds to punish her for being one of the few female creators to be fairly high up on the leaked list of twitch earners? She was posted front and center on articles on right wing asshole tabloids like The Sun as though she was #1 on the list, and the internet being what it is, loves nothing more than to go after women, LGBTQ+ creators and minorities to punish them for the crime of existing.
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Re:
I follow multiple LGBTQ+ creators on Twitch. They play games, draw art, and more. They don’t do ear-licking ASMR while wearing yoga pants and having the camera at a good angle of their butt.
Are women streamers who are upset with this bullshit chuds as well?
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Re: Re:
You don't have to watch, and you certainly do not have to spread examples of what you object to try and stoke a moral outrage.
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I’m not trying to “stoke a moral outrage”. I’m trying to point out that the issue is more than just ladies in swimsuits and you gotta call a spade a spade sometimes. This is selling sex. Twitch should draw the line at selling sex.
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Post once and you have made you point, keep on repeating the same thing, with a link to a gratuitous image, and you are stirring vigorously.
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But you are, you just equated selling sex with what Amouranth is doing and you are displaying all the characteristics of someone who is morally outraged about the whole thing.
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When people say “selling sex” or “sex sells”, it doesn’t refer solely to nudity or pornography. The old Carl’s Jr. ads with scantily clad ladies were using sex to sell burgers. Axe used to use sex to sell their body spray. I remember the episode of South Park with the Jonas Brothers and “Purity Rings” where they made the point that Disney was using that combo to sell sex to girls in the form of hot dudes around said girls’ age. The Backstreet Boys were selling sex. Nicki Minaj sells sex. Amouranth was selling sex on Twitch in the form of posing provocatively while licking a microphone. So yes, I am equating what Amouranth is doing to selling sex because that’s what she was indeed doing. If she wants to do that, more power to her and any other individual that chooses to do so. That doesn’t mean that every platform should be required to allow them to do so.
Twitch needs to give her and her fans a plaintext explanation for her current ban and set clearer guidelines for the future rather than having rules that super-lucrative Twitch Partners can repeatedly break until a nebulous for-reals-permaban point like what we’re seeing happen right now with Amouranth, and regular Twitch Affiliates and smaller Twitch Partners will have their accounts nuked from orbit near-instantly for breaking those same rules.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"When people say “selling sex” or “sex sells”, it doesn’t refer solely to nudity or pornography. The old Carl’s Jr. ads with scantily clad ladies were using sex to sell burgers."
And context matters. It's shady as hell when a bunch of men decide to set the rules that, for example, women's tennis or volleyball has to use provocative uniforms for females. When a corporation mainly governed by older men decides to present their hair spray on a scantily clad female body or drape a bikini girl as a hood ornament for the new car model they intend to sell...that's skeevy as all hell, and a direct outcome and encouragement of a rather stale brand of sexism.
This type of behavior is rooted in stale chauvinism and needs to be addressed - by, for example, simply making it clear to Axe, Disney and GM that they're better served to use other advertising business models.
But when a woman, on her own, chooses to expose herself or make use of her body then you either get the fuck out of the way...or you place yourself in the shoes of a taliban quran scholar when you raise the exact same argument that "For the public good" she needs to stop exposing herself or teasing people provocatively. Because yes, she may feed into a tired old trope, but that's a less bad choice by far than deciding to condemn a woman for not being...."decent" enough
Is "Her Choice, Not Your Business" beyond you? Has it really gone that far that "equality" today means to condemn those women who choose to own their own bodies?
I couldn't care much less about Amouranth specifically...but the arguments you keep raising do not sound like something I'd expect to hear from anyone this side of an Iranian q'uran study group.
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Why should Twitch draw the line at selling sex?
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That's really up to them to decide. As long as they're clear with their rules and boundaries it's not really a problem. The issue here seems to be that they'rve not been clear or consistent with those rules.
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"This is selling sex"
As is the majority of marketing since the 1950s, at least, within the social constraints at the time.
Twitch are free to define the boundaries of what is acceptable within their own policies to accept such advertising, and the people who pay the, the revenue they make from ads on their platform are free to define what they deem acceptable places for their ads to appear, but the idea of sex being used to advertise a product has been around long before any of us were born.
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Re: Re:
'If you don't like hot tub girls you're a chud...' Yes, that's exactly what I said.
It's perfectly fine to dislike hot tub girls, but if you're organising or participating in harassment campaigns against them you're in the wrong.
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Re: Re:
"Are women streamers who are upset with this bullshit chuds as well?"
If they're getting their knickers in a twist over a woman choosing how she wants to display her body then yes, definitely.
Because at that point theirs - and your argument - become that of the iranian mullah or afghani taliban saying that it is wrong for the woman to be the sole person in charge of her own body - and right for society to condemn and ostracize her for exposing it.
Tell me, when you follow your "multiple LGBTQ+ creators" on twitch, let me guess that's only the ones who have the common decency never to mention anything around their sexuality or gender identity? Or is that just a glaring double standard you see fit to apply?
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I'd take their opinions far more seriously than yours, simply because people like you defined what women can and cannot do, and still want to define what women can and cannot do.
In 2021, no less.
Reminder that Amoraunth does what she does simply because people like YOU defined the roles she has to PLAY to earn YOUR money.
If you can't even understand that fucking point then I am not even surprised that you're stirring up shit to justify a position YOU helped create.
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Re: Re: Re:
"Reminder that Amoraunth does what she does simply because people like YOU defined the roles she has to PLAY to earn YOUR money."
He won't get it. There is nothing more sickeningly self-righteous than the "morality outraged" squawking in hysteria over a woman choosing to show herself off provocatively - and who then try to portray it as coming from high moral ground rather than what it is; Yet another man trying to marginalize a girl uncouth enough to own her own body on a webpage he had to actively seek out and watch.
And just to back it all up he feels compelled to insert the "some of my best friends are <insert suppressed minority>" in case we all don't chow down on his bullshit straight away.
I mean, I may not decide her page is something for me but at least I have the common decency to realize it's not any of my business and if I get upset at someone showing herself off on her own online channel then I'm the asshole.
"If you can't even understand that fucking point then I am not even surprised that you're stirring up shit to justify a position YOU helped create."
He can't, because people so eager to hate other people for what they do in places you have to voluntarily choose to visit in order to see are entitled fuckwits who believe the other should be allowed to exercise their personal freedoms only insofar that their desires to express them aligns with the bigot or misogynist in question. And such fuckwits always utterly lack self-awaremness.
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Crowdfunding works when you can attract a crowd and get some of them to a fund you. if you like what I do, you can fund me here works, while pay to find out what I do is much less successful.
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Mystery
Doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me why Twitch doesn’t moderate competently. Being uncommunicative and vague is the least amount of work of any option. They don’t have anywhere near enough staff to handle the heavy load of moderation required to keep so many simultaneous streams safe for children. They set themselves an extremely difficult task and then didn’t staff it properly. More and more new rules were announced as time went on, but new admins were not added at the same time to compensate for the increased workload.
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Re: Mystery
And, if the old grapevine was right their current leaders don't have the mental maturity to actually manage themselves properly, let alone make sweeping decisions that affect their entire business.
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You know…
This is someone who could pull it off. A huge following across multiple platforms.
I think the internet, the mainstream internet, has become to common centrist! (Yes I’m limiting this to American companies conforming to American views).
The problem isn’t who is getting banned, or even how or why. It’s the machete method. It’s like a real life Jason or Mike. Slaughter everything:silently.
Both parties here are at fault. It’s a bloody fucking arse. And it’s sexual.
So what?
I hope she does create a new platform. It’s about time we get another IDGAF platform.
One made by a content creator who has been banned!
With good communication, logical rules, and a motivation to filter and move, over deletion.
Because I get it. Yoga pants bother your Victorian prudish lack of sensibilities.
Omg, front page war. The horror!
Ped pizza.
Ban it all culture! That’s what we’re looking at today. That’s what we have today.
Race notices on every film. Gender warnings before a show starts.
Ban any discussion that doesn’t fit the host as conspiracy. Left or right. Doesn’t matter.
2 years ago I warned on this very site this was coming.
Now everyone just bans everything and nobody knows why! Well, they do, to some degree but creators aren’t told anything.
Yes, these people push the boundaries. That’s what a liberal society does! Test the boundaries. Be it science or sex. That’s how we grow. Learn. And when necessary, adapt!
The problem with censorship is €{}*+#%=
At least have the strength to say WHY someone was cut off!
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Re: You know…
"At least have the strength to say WHY someone was cut off!"
It does go both ways. In this case, it seems clear that this particular person was cut off in an inconsistent way without an explanation as to how they violated rules and how they can improve, which is wrong. In other examples, you have shitheads who were clearly cut off for their transphobic / homophobic / misogynistic attacks and try to claim foul because they didn't specifically state that instead of pointing to a "no abuse" policy, and pretend it's because they were right wing instead of common variety hatemongers.
The answer to this should be the free market, but too many people opt to complain instead of act.
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Re: Re: You know…
I stumbled across a ToeTag shorts montage the other day and it started with a notice that it was offensive. Uh, DUH!
When you come across something called ToeTag presents Brain Butcher Collection… you should expect that. No?
Like, it’s supposed to be offensive.
And I’m not complaining about tagging and flagging etc.
It’s exactly what allows content to stay up.
But there should be zero doubt what both parties are looking for with legal changes. Censorship. ‘My opinion, not yours’!
Well, with platforms now panicking about social responses AND congress… the whole take down thing is turning into a circus.
Everyone is flagging everything no matter what the content is.
I’d love to see what these people would do with the nightly news broadcasts. Say:
The following show contains acts of violence, drug use, criminal activity, war, and corruption. AVLDAlCbEFGHIJKL…
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