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Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

reuters.com

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Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Held accountable by whom? We didn't elect twitch. Who decides who needs to be held accountable, and for what? Shouldn't that be the justice system? Twitch mentioned proactively banning people who are arrested, without using the word 'convicted'. Which demographics is that likely to affect?

Twitch is a private company (Amazon). Simply don't use it if you don't like it's ToS, or otherwise disagree with how it handles relationships with the creators who've agreed to it.

would you say the same thing if twitch decided to ban black people

Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Held accountable by whom? We didn't elect twitch. Who decides who needs to be held accountable, and for what? Shouldn't that be the justice system? Twitch mentioned proactively banning people who are arrested, without using the word 'convicted'. Which demographics is that likely to affect?

You're thinking of it like a legal process. Think of a private party instead - you're happy to invite lots of people, but everyone heard Adam was a real asshole to someone in public, so you don't want to have him at the party anymore (even though he was never bad at your previous parties specifically). It's a reasonable thing to do and you have about the same level of responsibility for your party as twitch has for t…

They are deciding how they view each user and their actions. Shouldn't I also be expected to have the same privilege?

If I want to see it like a legal process there is nothing they can say, specially after this, to make me change my outlook in the same way they ban people for violating their way of thinking and give them no appeal not even the time of day.

Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#613
post #253

I had to type in this box more times than I'm willing to admit to produce something that didn't violate the guidelines. Let's examine why this is problematic: - This will absolutely be leveraged on anyone in a precarious position. It's their ultimate out. Minority groups, majority groups, it doesn't matter - you're in trouble and need a platform to tell your story? Not happening on Twitch. Expect more to sign on to t…

> or if the perpetrator was not a user when they committed the acts.

if this becomes more widespread, this is one of the most chilling aspects. I don't think it takes much imagination at all for anyone to consider a future where something you said today that is totally acceptable by today's standards keeps you from participating in some aspect of society* in 10 to 20 years time. Think about how many public figures have been canceled for things they did that were socially acceptable 10 to 20 years ago. Now imagine tooling being developed that scans your entire social media existence for the past 10 to 20 years and then throws an automated exception saying that you can't register. Then imagine that you have no recourse because there is no due process and practically non-existent Google quality customer service.

* any sufficiently pervasive social network is a significant aspect of society

Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#614
post #121
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may be arriving at a time and place where we must consider broadening the scope of the First Amendment to not just apply to government. I'm fully aware there's good reason for organizations and companies to limit free speech, but it often (lately) has gone way too far, dabbling in political witch hunting. I can think of few things less inline with classical American Constitutional ideals than to cheer on organizat…

My first thought was that this is likely politically motivated. They are building "cancel culture" into their platform. They're opening the door to threaten influencers making money using their platform that support the "wrong" political party. If they say the wrong thing on Twitter, they will be banned on twitch/fb/google/etc. Incredible times we live in.

Nah, it's money motivated. The less controversy there is with Twitch streamers, the more easily they can negotiate ad deals and make money.

Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#615
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before people had internet it was ~5 media companies that decided what could be said in public and who could say it. It was hardly as "free" as people imagine.

This was never true. Anyone could stand on the street corner and say anything. Anyone with some spare cash could print up political booklets or flyers and hand them out, and many did.

That's a coherent issue if you think that free speech is a purely negative right, which is the traditional liberal position.

However, if you admit this, then you must also admit that Twitch is fully within their rights.

Personally, I believe that the positive right to free speech (subject to exceptions, of course) is much more important, and not up to FAANG to decide.

Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#616
post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I get your point. Like those witches in Salem, they really didn't like being held accountable for performing witchcraft.

The "witches" in Salem weren't actually witches. Racist and violent assholes on social media trying to drape themselves in the false flag of liberty are still racist, violent assholes.

There is no false flag of liberty, that is an oxymoron.

Liberty is having the right to offend people, that’s what it means.

Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of it like a legal process. Think of a private party instead - you're happy to invite lots of people, but everyone heard Adam was a real asshole to someone in public, so you don't want to have him at the party anymore (even though he was never bad at your previous parties specifically). It's a reasonable thing to do and you have about the same level of responsibility for your party as twitch has for t…

> Think of a private party instead The extent to which corporations should be considered private entities does not seem like a settled question to me. Your corporation has no natural right to exist, and therefore does not have the natural right to do business solely as it pleases. > and you have about the same level of responsibility for your party as twitch has for their platform. What responsibility are they exerci…

> If the behavior on their platform is not disruptive to it, then what precisely are they defending their users _from_?

From being surrounded by Adams. Either you act in cases like that, or you become known as "that place that likes to invite Adam (and others)". And it's completely up to the host which side they want to be on. Twitch chose to end the invitation.

> Invite someone on the most wanted list.

That's not even close to the case discussed here.

Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We may be arriving at a time and place where we must consider broadening the scope of the First Amendment to not just apply to government. It would be a violation of the 1st Amendment to require Twitch to host objectionable content against their will. Freedom of association and freedom not to speak is part of the 1st Amendment. I am very doubtful a proposal that mandated that Twitch had to host certain streamers wo…

> It would be a violation of the 1st Amendment to require Twitch to host objectionable content against their will. There are already communication companies that are basically forced to host content that they object to right? Those are called common carrier laws, and they apply to things like the phone company, which are communication companies.

In very rare instances, yes.

You would be hard pressed to get the Supreme Court to rule that the same standards could be applied to a media company. The fairness doctrine met similar objections, and that was never applied to companies using cable, just public broadcasts. In this particular instance, we're talking about Twitch ending partner relationships. It's a hard sell to say that Net Neutrality or rationing limited airwaves is the same as forcing Twitch to pay a streamer money or to put them in a privileged position above other streamers.

And if your plan is to create the same kind of restrictions that you see around, say, Net Neutrality, then that still isn't going to create the environment that you want, because Net Neutrality also protects stuff like harassment, disturbing/gross content, and pornography -- it isn't narrowly applied to a privileged sub-category of speech. In other words, common carrier laws protect your political speech, but they're not specifically designed to protect your political speech. They also protect a lot of stuff that people don't want to see on their Facebook feed.

Even more broadly though, when we talk about revising the Constitution, we're talking about free speech ideals, not just legislation. And while the legislative conversation is worth having, it's also worth acknowledging that community moderation is a free speech ideal. The entire marketplace of ideas is based on the philosophy that some ideas win and lose, and that some ideas become unpopular over time. The entire point of Freedom of Association is that people can form communities and have productive conversations on diverse topics without getting constantly shouted down or harassed. Community moderation and subgroups and forums with strict rules are part of how we encourage a diversity of opinions online; they're why we can have this conversation on Hackernews without someone jumping in and trying to sell penis enlargement pills or telling us all to kill ourselves.

So on one hand if we're having a conversation about laws, it is going to be very difficult to get the Supreme Court to go along with most of the "neutral platform" proposals I've heard[0]. On the other hand if we're having a conversation about ideals, Freedom of Association is something we should care about in and of itself, and we should want to preserve that as much as possible -- we should only be looking at getting rid of Freedom of Association in places where we literally have no other choice. Compelled speech is extremely dangerous, it shouldn't be the first thing we try.

And luckily, we have a lot of precedent on alternative ways to get speech to flourish online. When people refer back to the "good old days" when the Internet cared about speech, there was plenty of moderation back then. There were just also a bunch of independent IRC rooms, independent websites, more freedom to be pseudononymous, and everyone's entire life wasn't tied to a single Google account that could be shut down at any time. So the first thing we try should be to increase platform diversity, because we already have compelling evidence that platform diversity increases speech.

[0]: Particularly a Conservative Supreme Court with people like Barrett, who are probably not inclined to say that 1st Amendment protections shouldn't apply to companies that directly interact with consumers. With the exception of people like Thomas, I do not see much eagerness from Conservative justices to strip free speech protections from companies.

Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#619
post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe you should reconsider your choice of professional careers if that's a risk factor and your risk tolerance isn't high enough.

Imagine this response in the context of a sport like the NBA. If the ref is secretly racist and bans you from the sport because it's "funny" as their excuse, would you react this way? The nature of videogames doesn't make the professional sport of them juvenile and less worthy of rigorous standards for inclusion.

The NBA is an organization who's job it is to set rules that teams, athletes, and referees can participate in. They can choose to fire refs who behave this way, and they would because they make more money if the refs aren't racists (especially now that they're getting more into racial activism)

Twitch is basically the NBA of their streaming platform, as in they set rules for how streamers, viewers, and moderators interact. Twitch can create whatever arbitrary rules it wants to maximize their revenue. If advertisers stopped caring about controversy, or if Twitch suddenly found a better revenue source, they would surely pursue it.

Re: Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site

#620
post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "witches" in Salem weren't actually witches. Racist and violent assholes on social media trying to drape themselves in the false flag of liberty are still racist, violent assholes.

There is no false flag of liberty, that is an oxymoron. Liberty is having the right to offend people, that’s what it means.

And if you exercise your right to offend people in my establishment, I have the right to toss you onto the pavement.

Liberty is a two-edged sword, which is something a lot of people seem to have forgotten.

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