Twitch began its week by correcting what it deemed an “unacceptable miss”: Many users in Israel and Palestine haven’t been able to sign up to use the site for a year. Yesterday, the issue finally roused Twitch, evidently asleep at the wheel, following recent viral social media and Israeli media posts. As a result of those posts and others, Twitch today went on to suspend five streamers who participated in a TwitchCon panel over perceived antisemitism. In so doing, it managed to clean up one mess and immediately make another.
"Following the October 7, 2023 attacks, we temporarily disabled sign ups with email verification in Israel and Palestine,” Twitch’s official support account wrote on Twitter. “We did this to prevent uploads of graphic material related to the attack and to protect the safety of users."
Twitch’s track record of actually preventing real-world violence from appearing on the site is spotty, but it has at least prioritized speedy responses to mass shootings and other tragedies in recent years.
Twitch says that new users in Israel and Palestine who logged in using phone verification instead of email verification were still able to register, but evidently taking down part of the system still stopped many at the door. So, what happened? Due to some configuration of left hand not meeting right hand, Twitch failed to re-enable functionality in Israel or Palestine. For a year.
"We’ve learned that, inadvertently, we did not re-enable email verification sign ups for either region,” the company wrote. “We deeply regret this unacceptable miss, and the confusion it has caused. We’ve fixed the issue, meaning all affected users can sign up with email verification."
While it’s unclear how exactly Twitch managed to lose track of something so major, it is noteworthy that following multiple rounds of layoffs totalling out to nearly 1,000 employees, the company is running about as lean as possible, with some current Twitch staff recently telling Aftermath that remaining employees are overworked. It’s a recipe for things slipping through the cracks, whether or not that includes this particular situation.
Twitch ended yesterday’s post with a vaguely-worded statement about how it will continue to enforce its rules.
"We’ve also heard concerns about whether our Community Guidelines apply to all content on our service,” Twitch wrote. “We continue to enforce our rules as consistently as possible, and are actively reviewing content and taking enforcement action where needed."
As 404 explains, content creators and Israeli media tried to use Twitch’s sign-up flub as evidence of antisemitism, also pointing to the platform’s unbanning of creators Sneako and Fresh & Fit – who do, admittedly, suck – and a tongue-in-cheek TwitchCon panel hosted by the Ayyrabs podcast a month ago in which the cast allegedly ranked other content creators on a scale from Arab to Jew, but a) actually did not include “Jew” anywhere on their scale, which ranked who is allowed to say “habibi,” an Arabic word meaning “my love,” and b) used the scale to poke fun at themselves, critique wider systemic issues like racism, and take shots at Israel – at least, insofar as they were able from inside TwitchCon, whose sponsorship deal with Chevron drew pro-Palestinian protests outside the convention center.
The "habibi" scale was the brainchild of Raffoulticket, a streamer who is Jewish. “[People calling the panel antisemitic] are so fucking racist they don’t realize I’m Jewish,” Raffoulticket said on Twitter. “Weaponizing ‘antisemitism’ like this is ANTISEMITIC.”
Now, following a conversation with the notoriously pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League, Twitch has suspended all five of the streamers from the Ayyrabs TwitchCon panel: Frogan, Denims, Vio, CapriSunnPapi, and Raffoulticket.
"We appreciate Twitch making the right decision to finally suspend the streamer Frogan for abusing her platform and the TwitchCon event to spread antisemitic vitriol during this time of intense apprehension for the Jewish community," reads a post from the official ADL account on Twitter.
Frogan is a Lebanese streamer who has repeatedly been targeted by big names like Ethan “H3H3” Klein, who has claimed that Frogan’s anger at Israel and the military industrial complex constitute antisemitism. In the creator-sphere, Klein, who had a falling out last year with former collaborator Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker after conflating hatred of Israel with hatred of Judaism, has been one of the biggest voices expressing outrage over the Ayyrabs TwitchCon panel – which, again, took place a month ago, and which Twitch allowed at the time.
“30-day ban for saying people like bottom of the barrel hummus, but other people get two weeks for advocating for the genocide of Palestinians. Got it,” Frogan wrote on Twitter, seemingly referencing Twitch star Asmongold’s recent suspension following an anti-Palestinian rant.
Vio confirmed to Aftermath that her suspension will also last 30 days.
"It’s wild ‘cause I literally have been ignoring this whole drama and didn’t even say anything,” Vio told Aftermath. “I just existed as another Middle Eastern person on the panel."
Aftermath has reached out to Twitch, Frogan, Denims, Raffoulticket, and CapriSunnPapi for more information.
Twitch’s decisionmaking on this front has some content creators baffled.
“These streamers were on stage at TwitchCon streaming on the Twitch page and had the [video on demand] remain up for a month before a hate raid was launched against them,” wrote Alex Naivety, a creative director and channel manager for multiple creators. “Doesn't matter what you think about their politics; Twitch had the capacity to stop them at any point and didn't.”
"Them getting 30 days while Asmon gets just two weeks so he can return for election coverage would be one of the grossest Twitch conduct rulings I’ve seen," said popular Twitch streamer ConnorEatsPants.
