Twitch Suspends President Trump’s Channel, Citing ‘Hateful Conduct’

President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., on June 20, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Twitch, Amazon’s live-streaming site, temporarily banned President Donald Trump’s channel, claiming that some content on the channel violated the platform’s community guidelines against hateful conduct.

“Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed,” a Twitch spokesperson said in a statement via email.

A message on the Twitch channel for President Donald Trump on June 29, 2020. (Screenshot)

According to a transcript included in Twitch’s statement, two comments streamed on the president’s channel allegedly violated the rules:

• 2015 campaign kickoff, recently rebroadcast on Twitch: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They’re sending us not the right people.”
• Tulsa Rally: “Hey, it’s 1:00 o’clock in the morning and a very tough, I’ve used the word on occasion, hombre, 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. Whether it’s a young woman, an old woman, a young man or an old man and you’re sleeping.”

Twitch told The Epoch Times that they communicated with Trump’s team and reminded them that “politicians on Twitch must adhere to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines” with no exceptions.

The channel was not restored at the time of publishing. It’s unclear how long the suspension will last.

Earlier that day, another social platform, Reddit, banned a Trump fans subreddit.

Some content in r/The_Donald, the influential pro-Trump community, broke the rule against promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability, content manipulation, and antagonizing other communities, Reddit claimed in a statement.

Reddit renewed its content policy and banned about 2,000 subreddits on Monday. The Trump supporter community is one of them.

“Alongside the change to the content policy, we are initially banning about 2,000 subreddits,” the social platform stated. “The vast majority of which are inactive. Of these communities, about 200 have more than 10 daily users. Both r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse were included.”

The move from Twitch and Reddit came after Twitter started adding warnings to Trump’s posts. The company says that it is a normal procedure for it to use “public interest notice[s]” for posts that “violate the Twitter Rules.”

The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The president and the Trump administration have repeatedly accused internet companies, including Twitter and Facebook, of exceeding their role as an online platform by stifling and censoring user viewpoints that it does not agree with, in particular, conservative viewpoints.

Janita Kan contributed to the report.