Two big new pieces of news today from the ongoing battle between social media and politics. Both Twitch and Reddit have made moves against political content, citing violations of terms of service.
Twitch confirmed today that it has temporarily suspended the president’s account. “Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch,” a spokesperson for the streaming giant told TechCrunch. “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.”
Twitch specifically cites two incidents from campaign rallies, uttered by Trump at rallies four years apart. The first comes from his campaign kickoff, including the now infamous words:
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.
The second is from the recent rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his first since COVID-19-related shutdowns ground much of presidential campaigning to a halt. Here’s the pertinent bit from that:
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 tells TechCrunch that it offered the following guidance to Trump’s team when the channel was launched, “Like anyone else, politicians on Twitch must adhere to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. We do not make exceptions for political or newsworthy content, and will take action on content reported to us that violates our rules.”
That news follows the recent ban of the massive The_Donald subreddit, which sported more than 790,000 users, largely devoted to sharing content about Trump. Reddit confirmed the update to its policy that resulted in the ban, along with 2,000 other subreddits, including one devoted to the hugely popular leftist comedy podcast, Chapo Trap House.
The company cites the following new rules:
- Rule 1 explicitly states that communities and users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.
- There is an expanded definition of what constitutes a violation of this rule, along with specific examples, in our Help Center article.
- There is an expanded definition of what constitutes a violation of this rule, along with specific examples, in our Help Center article.
- Rule 2 ties together our previous rules on prohibited behavior with an ask to abide by community rules and post with authentic, personal interest.
- Debate and creativity are welcome, but spam and malicious attempts to interfere with other communities are not.
- Debate and creativity are welcome, but spam and malicious attempts to interfere with other communities are not.
- The other rules are the same in spirit but have been rewritten for clarity and inclusiveness.
It adds:
All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith. We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity. The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations. Until now, we’ve worked in good faith to help them preserve the community as a space for its users—through warnings, mod changes, quarantining, and more.
Reddit adds that it banned the smaller Chapo board for “consistently host[ing] rule-breaking content and their mods have demonstrated no intention of reining in their community.”
Trump in particular has found himself waging war on social media sites. After Twitter played whack-a-mole with problematic tweets around mail-in voting and other issues, he signed an executive order taking aim at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects sites from being sued for content posted by users.
