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Twitch, the Amazon-owned video streaming platform primarily used by gamers to livestream their games, announced a new policy Wednesday empowering the company to take action against users who display certain harmful behaviors entirely offline.
The policy represents a unique approach among social media peers at a time when the industry has been under escalating pressure to institute strong and consistent content-moderation policies. As lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have threatened to strip online platforms of their liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, many platforms have taken steps to place stronger guardrails on what users can post.
Under the new policy, Twitch can suspend users for up to an indefinite period of time after a third-party investigator determines there is strong evidence the person has engaged in certain offline behaviors. These actions include engaging in deadly violence, terrorist activities, grooming children for sexual exploitation, committing sexual assault or even "acting as an accomplice to non-consensual sexual activities." It will also continue to consider offline harassment in cases where a user alleges abuse online.
Twitch said it will work with "an experienced investigations law firm" to determine the validity of claims, which will rely at times on accessing evidence from law enforcement. The company said it would not take action on a user's account until it concludes its investigation and confirms evidence of wrongdoing.
The harmful offline behaviors do not need to involve another Twitch user to be considered a violation, a spokesperson confirmed. That's based on the notion that people who engage in these types of behaviors are more likely to create safety risks for the Twitch community, the spokesperson added.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday April 13 2021, @04:09PM
What's funny is that the people who most often complain about censorship, also consistently vote for the side that refuses to hold private corporations accountable for their continuing expansion into state levels of power and authority.
Not that Obama was part of the solution; he was part of the problem, honestly. But Sanders, Warren, AOC, Wyden, that's the side of politics that abhors "private companies playing Sheriff". It's also, incidentally, the side of politics that is most likely to applaud Twitch's actions.
It turns out that the "enlightened elite" you speak of was always "a bunch of Karens in their yoga pants and PC morons". Those people would love to break up the corporations to the point that any attempt by the government to regulate speech would be exceedingly difficult. You'd need China levels of control over the internet to censor speech, if the speech wasn't already centralized into a few monopoly platforms.
And contrary to what Trump and his supporters would have you believe, the left actually hates China for its rampant human rights violations. We secretly cheered when Trump took them to task, just like we secretly cheered when he imposed steel tariffs and went after NAFTA. Secretly, because the Democratic party, much like the Republican party, would very much prefer if its supporters would just stop worrying and learn to accept the oligarchy.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?