Twitch, the popular video game streaming website, on Monday announced that President Donald Trump’s Team Trump campaign account has been temporarily suspended for “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,” the company said in a statement.
Twitch’s decision to suspend Trump’s campaign account comes after clips from a 2016 campaign rally, as well as the president’s recent Tulsa rally, were shared on the platform.
The 2016 video was flagged for Trump’s racist remarks about Mexican immigrants. “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 their bringing those problems with us,” Trump says in the footage. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to the 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.”
And at Trump’s Tulsa rally, he shared this problematic statement, which had been previously shared on Twitch: “Hey, it’s 1 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, it’s an old woman, a young man or an old man and you’re sleeping.”
When the Trump administration began its Twitch account last year, the company alerted the president’s team about their “zero-tolerance” policy for hateful conduct. “Like anyone else, politicians on Twitch must adhere to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines,” Twitch wrote in a message to Trump’s team at the time. “We do not make exceptions for political or newsworthy content and will take action on content reported to us that violates our rules.”
Twitch’s suspension of the Team Trump account comes after Twitter flagged several of Trump’s tweets for spreading misleading or dangerous information. Meanwhile, Facebook has taken a permissive approach, refusing to flag some of the same content Twitter has. Brands such as Unilever and Starbucks, among others, have responded to Facebook’s inaction by pulling advertisements from the social media platform.
Reddit has also banned its r/The_Donald political hub, along with more than 2,000 other subreddit groups, following the group’s continued posts promoting violence, misogyny and disinformation that violated the site’s content policies. Of the popular Trump support page — which had more than 790,000 subscribers — Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman said in a statement, “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.”
