Twitch plays internet police

By Naga Pramod [+]

Twitch plays internet police, will ban users’ accounts for their behavior off the platform.

A brazen new move from the Amazon-owned platform.

“Twitch has taken moral policing to a whole new level and is now deciding to ban users for their behavior outside of the platform.

Twitch just announced the expansion of its off-service misconduct policy. Simply put, users who Twitch accuses of “harassing” others outside of the platform, either in social media or offline, are going to be potentially banned from the platform. The off-service misconduct policy is now broadly divided into two categories. The first category is when alleged harassment takes place both on and off the platform. For instance, if someone posts a complaint against a user, Twitch will check for harassment on its platform and also take harassment outside Twitch, like on Facebook or Twitter, into consideration when reviewing.

The second category newly updated in the off-service misconduct policy talks about how Twitch would take action against “serious offenses that pose a substantial safety risk to the Twitch community,” even when they take place off-platform. Furthermore, Twitch is planning on having a third-party law firm on board to help assist with the investigations regarding off platform violations and investigations. “For behaviors that take place off Twitch, we must rely more heavily on law enforcement and other services to share relevant evidence before we can move forward,” wrote Twitch in a blog post.

“These investigations are vastly more complex and can take significant time and resources to resolve,” the streaming platform said. Twitch, however, did not reveal the third-party law firm it was going to work with for off-platform investigations. Perhaps incidents such as the one dating back to June 2020 wherein several women accused Twitch that there weren’t adequate measures in place to protect them have influenced Twitch towards making major policy changes.”