In a statement, Twitch said that whilst it is a place “for people to express themselves and discuss the world around them”, from now on, any stream that includes discussions about war, religion, or “reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, or immigration” needs to be labelled.
Ok, so what constitutes a “debate”? Is this only for scheduled events or will discussions that turn to those topics also be restricted? Are people allowed to make sarcastic jokes?
Who but advertisers are asking for this?
“Streams containing informational or educational content that aim to share knowledge in a neutral, fact-based manner, rather than engaging in any kind of advocacy for an issue or candidate” are not subject to labelling, however.
Oh boy, can’t wait to see which facts (like transition regret being in the low single digit percentages) get determined to be “advocacy”!
Ah, so people’s literal existence are now being political and sensitive, just the feature we needed for twitch
people’s literal existence are now being political and sensitive
Insert always has been meme here.
The major difference between the 1920s or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s or etc. and now is simply which people’s existence is being pushed as a political issue and that we’ve ceded control of the media to giant corporations who have an overriding incentive to make nobody mad ever because if they don’t, they’ll lose advertiser money because you can’t do anything without half the population disliking you.
That, and we have allowed fascists to control the discussion for decades, rather than stomping them like they rightfully deserve.
Twitch is very much in the wrong here, but let’s not pretend that telling people they’re not allowed to talk about one minority group or another is somehow new.
Looking forward to the new warning labels for streams that mention that women have rights!
This is a way to shut down political discourse so it can be managed more centrally. We’re seeing it on YT, as well as FB. The goal is to effectively shut down any kind of “un-managed” discourse from emerging by effectively de-monetizing any kind of political news or information. The online news industry is literally collapsing and there seems to be a ‘collapsing towards corporate news only’ effort being made. Advertisers don’t want their brands next to “problematic” content; but this is a both-sidings of an issue, as if lgbtq+ rights are somehow contemporaneous with right-wing conspiracy bullshit. It goes more broadly to any socially good, motivated effort to educate people about their rights being equivocated with some of the worst aspect of human nature we see being promoted from right-wing sources.
I think we all as a broader community have to address the question of costs of what it takes to get people to become politically informed versus the reality of bad faith actors, state agent propaganda, and misinformation.
Hell yeah, now trolls have it even easier to find targets! 😀😀
