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Comment by newbie789 | Hacker News Reader

Coming from the perspective of someone that was an admin of a medium-large forum back in the vBulletin heyday of the early 2000s, I’m somewhat amused by people getting angry at moderation decisions.

The rules were pretty clear: This is my website. I pay the bills and maintain it. Here are some clear rules that if you break them, you will be punished with a ban/suspension/shadow an/redirect to goatse upon login/etc. at my/the admin team’s discretion.

I can also ban you if I don’t like you. Or if I think it’s funny, or really any other reason.

I was happy, my mods and admins were happy and the users (aside from some banned grumps) were happy.

This is literally how the internet has worked forever. There are users, mods and admins on websites. Twitch is a website.

People getting into deep nuanced discussions about moral good and government over/underreach as an outlet for being angry at the mods never changes.

Note: I am not affiliated with twitch, nor have I ever been a user.

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To add a little extra context to what other people are giving you: large, million-dollar digital tournaments stream on Twitch because they have no other choice if they want to reach viewers. ESL signed a deal with Facebook streaming that destroyed their viewership numbers because people go to Twitch to watch, not the website for the tournament. Organizers have clearly seen this and will not move their stream to another provider unless a large amount of money changes hands (like Facebook sponsoring ESL).

Additionally, Twitch will not allow banned users to appear on other streams including tournament streams. There was a kerfluffle recently where a Twitch-banned player was also banned from a tournament they tried to compete in, solely because the tournament organizer didn't want to jeopardize their streamability.

I hope I've impressed upon you that a Twitch ban is effectively a ban on all opportunities that involve money in the esports scene. There are incredibly few esports careers that could survive a Twitch ban, and not a single one would be unaffected.

In a way you have affirmed parent’s point: it’s the shareholders’ website, and they can mod it as they wish.

You just completely missed the point. Everyone knows who's website it is and that they "can" mod it as they wish. But at a certain scale some moral and ethical questions come into play.

Isn’t this just like other sports, where a star is pilloried for some indiscretion outside of their sport which can result in them being dropped from a team etc?

That is up to the team though. This is closer to a TV station banning somebody so now they can't compete in a sport that will be broadcast on that station, forcing the team to kick them off.

Shouldn’t a TV station be able to decide whether they want to promote a pedophile?

That is sort of the start of a strawman argument because Twitch bans for a lot of things, not just being a convicted pedophile. But even in that case I don't think it is fair to completely disallow somebody from appearing on a TV network. That also isn't what I would consider "promotion".

I don’t know if it’s a straw man when the actual policy this article is about mentions it

> The company is currently defining “serious offenses” as incidents of violent extremism, credible threats of mass violence, membership in a known hate group, sexual exploitation of children, and nonconsensual sexual activities, among others.

That is for actions off of Twitch. You can get banned for actions on Twitch that are not bad at all or completely accidental

Which effectively can also happen now. In fact the athlete is likely wealthy and will be ok despite his career crashing. This could in fact happen to the guy who waits on tables down town.

If he became internet infamous and the tv station covers it the business he works at might be obliged to fire him.

>This is closer to a TV station banning somebody

So the FCC won't let me be, or let me be me, so let me see...

Yeah, TV stations (like MTV) have been banning people in the past too.

Like how Lance Armstrong was banned for from professional sport for life for "not a crime"?

That was up to the sporting agencies though right? Not some third party network

USADA is the definition of a third party is it not? He was banned from ALL sports, not just cycling. So it would be like Twitch banning you from YouTube as well.

Like I said it is a sporting agency. Not some TV network or something. Sports aren't forced to cooperate with USADA but they do it for the good of the sport. That doesn't apply with Twitch at all.

I didn’t miss the point, I just have a different opinion.

Well, then eSports stars are getting to be just like regular sports stars.

I'm okay with that. I think sports approaches this with the appropriate level of maturity. Has any sports exec said something to the effect of

> I can also ban you if I don’t like you. Or if I think it’s funny, or really any other reason.

If they weren't dealing with dozens of 7- and 8-figure contracts, and earning millions themselves, but were instead moderating some piddly little forum nobody's ever heard for approximately $0 a year, they probably would have said almost exactly that.

> a Twitch ban is effectively a ban on all opportunities that involve money in the esports scene.

I suggest you ask Colin Kaepernick about how it is in the non-'E' sports world.

(Edit: misspelled name)

I assume you mean Colin Kaepernick.

Thanks.

This is what I don't understand?

People are complaining about something that has been happening since literally forever. Long before Gopher and Mosaic were even released. Why is it "bad" now? The answer is that it is not bad, it's just that it now affects them.

Here's the thing though, waiting until it affects you, is a very poor strategy for changing what you consider to be a "wrong". This has all been litigated at this point. Now your only recourse is a wholesale change of the laws, which is not going to happen.

The dude who landed a big advertising campaign with Nike based on his high-profile activism?

In other words, he changed his line of work from a "sports athlete" to a "marketing guy".

The esports guys should take note at what happens to sports athletes who behave "badly". They typically don't get to participate in sports anymore.

> no other choice if they want to reach viewers

> are incredibly few esports careers that could survive a Twitch ban

(emphasis mine)

People have never been entitled to a sports career, or to celebrity status by reaching viewers on someone else's platform. These platforms have democratized the "rags to riches" story, but whether it was the '30s or the '60s or the '90s, you've always had to play by the rules of the prevailing media empire. This is no different.

Companies are generally allowed to set arbitrary criteria for who they're willing to work with. There are some very specific exceptions around discrimination against a very short list of protected classes. Other than that, rules restricting conduct are usually legal. Note that I'm not claiming that rules like these are moral, I'm just pointing out that they're usually found to be legal when challenged.

The fact that you can sign up for an account in your bedroom in pajamas instead of signing documents at a lawyer's office in Hollywood doesn't magically make this a public square subject to a different set of rules.

No, it just means your eligibility for a professional career may come down to whether or not a random mod on a streaming platform simply thinks it's "funny" to ban you.

Then maybe you should reconsider your choice of professional careers if that's a risk factor and your risk tolerance isn't high enough.

Imagine this response in the context of a sport like the NBA. If the ref is secretly racist and bans you from the sport because it's "funny" as their excuse, would you react this way? The nature of videogames doesn't make the professional sport of them juvenile and less worthy of rigorous standards for inclusion.

The NBA is an organization who's job it is to set rules that teams, athletes, and referees can participate in. They can choose to fire refs who behave this way, and they would because they make more money if the refs aren't racists (especially now that they're getting more into racial activism)

Twitch is basically the NBA of their streaming platform, as in they set rules for how streamers, viewers, and moderators interact. Twitch can create whatever arbitrary rules it wants to maximize their revenue. If advertisers stopped caring about controversy, or if Twitch suddenly found a better revenue source, they would surely pursue it.

The irony of your comment is that once upon a time, these professional sports leagues made more money by being actively racist and excluding people of color from their leagues lest they upset their white fan base.

I don't know how long ago "once upon a time is" but they seem to have increasing revenue very successfully since the 80s at the least based on some googling. Maybe before then, but I don't know if we can find any data to support that.

Your analogy is wrong, and so was mine. It is not the refs banning players, it would be the television sports broadcasters. Makes even less sense.

Pretend Harvey Weinstein is talking to you. And that he's reading the top-most comment (by newbie789) on this story: that he owns the company, so he can ban you at his discretion. Or gaslight you. Or show you shock porn. That this is fine, because it's how its always worked here.

I'll tentatively assume you got some of the same visceral recoil I got from that mental image. And that we agree that following everything Hollywood does is probably not for the best. So I'll ask you: if you could solve this however you'd like (by passing laws, let's say), how would you do it?

FWIW, I agree with you about the visceral recoil, thoughts about Hollywood practices not being ideal, etc. I'm not trying to claim that this state of affairs is good, just that it's basically identical to what we've had previously, and that the relevant laws don't appear to be affected by unprecedented scale or automation.

Passing laws to address this might work, but I think it would be difficult, and I would expect them to be challenged mercilessly. In order to actually work, I think this would require "Civil Rights Act" or "Equal Employment Opportunity Act" caliber landmark legislation, and I'm skeptical that this would be politically tenable any time soon.

I wholeheartedly disagree about the current state of affairs. Our relationship to the internet has profoundly changed. It’s deeply entwined in our daily life, inescapably so, in exactly the same way that forums were not.

But it does elevate Twitch bans far above the "this is just like a forum admin doing as he pleases, move along" of the original comment.

I can't stand comments like this that obviously miss the overall point being made and tbh it is entirely done disingenuously.

The terms of service are not in anyway enforced consistently or fairly. The way the terms and service is written is that they can basically boot you for any reason. It is well known that the "tiddie streamers" regularly get away with ToS violations, where some dude wearing a red hat will get a ban (and I mean a red hat, because that exactly what happened to one guy, he didn't even have a MAGA hat).

"Behaviour off platform" can mean anything and will be like the current Terms of Service be not be enforced in any manner that is consistent or fair.

Twitch is a monopoly in this space and it is abusing its position. This combined with the fact that the mobile phone platforms can remove an App for any reason it wants means that there is no open market where a competitor that has a different ToS can reasonably become competitive.

Plenty of major streamers would tell you them switch to YouTube did more good for their careers than twitch.

ValkyRae, CourageJD, DrDisrespect, Anish Giri are some just off the top of my head.

The significant difference is I (assume) no one depended on your forum for earning a significant part of their income. Once you set yourself as a place where you want people come and earn money, then banning them, and thus depriving them of something of real monetary value, takes on and entire different set of nuances.

Building your business on someone else's property subjects you to a material risk that the owner may someday kick you out. Being a responsible business owner means you recognize that risk and mitigate it as needed for business continuity, and have contingency plans in the event that it happens.

kind of agree with this statement in a free market sense, but the problem with these winner-take-most markets is there are often no reasonable alternatives.

Sure, but the more important factor in these sorts of relationships is that there is in fact usually a binding contract. Twitch refers to these as "Partners" who they have extended a contract to. While I am sure Twitch has the ability to sever that contract essentially at will, it doesn't mean they are exempt from legal repercussions of doing so.

I believe there's precedent for them severing a massive partner at will, in the case of Dr Disrespect.

Yes, but it's always always better to have a policy in place than to make one-off decisions.

Yeah that would be better, people should be able to know in advance what they're not allowed to do. I was just pointing out that they've done it before.

This isn't always feasible or practical. People can't always foresee the future (otherwise gambling wouldn't be a thing). So we can't assume that a policy can cover every possible scenario that might occur. Things happen that practically nobody thought might happen. This is why "escape hatch" clauses were invented--to give parties a way out in the event that the unforeseen occurs.

I think the idea is what once the unforseen does happen, that you encode the decision you made into the rules.

How different is that from at-will employment though? You can be fired at any time and for more or less any non-federally-protected reason (and can quit any time too). That seems pretty uncontroversial in the US at least.

In most cases there are multiple employers for any job who pay similar wages so one can go work for some other employer if one fires them.

But in the Twitch, YouTube, Amazon, etc. cases there is no other platform that pays the same.

But in the Twitch, YouTube, Amazon, etc. cases there is no other platform that pays the same.

Did you not just enumerate 3 different organizations in your comment?

For three different “jobs”, though.

I don't know man?

Do "Twitch Streamer" and "YouTube Streamer" really constitute different "jobs"?

(I mean, to the extent that they are "jobs" at all, I consider them the same "job".)

Amazon: author

YouTube: Youtuber

Twitch (as discussed elsewhere in the thread): eSports tournament competitors

There are thousands of other employers you can apply to and work for. You'll be unemployed in the short term, but getting fired isn't catastrophic long-term, for the most part.

The parallel doesn't really exist for Twitch. Other than perhaps YouTube, are there any platforms that would get you anywhere close to the pool of potential users on Twitch?

It's a good thing that there are 10.75 million employers in the United States.

It has a little something for everyone.

Twitch has reasonable competition - YouTube and to a significantly lesser extent Facebook Gaming.

But let’s take a step back here - no one is entitled to be a Full time professional streamer. Say you do something egregious (or not) and get banned from all streaming sites - just go get another job? Twitch doesn’t have a monopoly on employment.

But nobody owes you a market stall. And if you do have one, then you have to balance your business witht he extracurricular activities. If the latter gets you in trouble or attracts sufficient attention that it reflects poorly on your industry, your brand might suffer and other industry participants will do whatever they need to avoid contagion.

I'm struggling to understand both sides of this argument, so I need help grokking all these positions. I need more information before I know if I can support your position.

If I work for a large company, and I go out and do something that may not even be all that bad. Say, publicly berating an Uber driver like that woman doctor in Miami, my organization will fire me. Just as her organization fired her. Especially if people start publicly connecting me to them. This has happened forever, no internet need be involved.

The difference here, at least one side claims, is that the large organization paying your living exists on the internet, and so should be viewed differently than any other large organization. Since those other large organizations are not internet-based? I find myself unpersuaded though, I'm honestly not really seeing much of a difference.

So just so I understand what you're saying, is your position that no large organization should be able to separate themselves from that lady doctor in Miami for instance? Or is your position that only large internet-based organizations should be precluded from separating themselves from her?

(Dr in Miami that berated the Uber driver is just the most analogous offline example I could think of. Large organization with enormous market power paying her living. They fire her, no one else will touch her. I'm sure there are many many more.)

I don't think there really are "nuances" about what the owners can and cannot legally do. There are nuances about the decisions about people that are willing to participate in the website however.

Say I own twitch, can't I just shut it down? Maybe I mismanaged it, maybe it isn't profitable, maybe it isn't profitable enough to make it worth the trouble, maybe I want to make a statement, maybe I am bored, maybe I am sick. The point is the effect on the users would be the same. If you can't make it illegal for me to shut it down (on the premises that it would risk my users' livelihood) then you can't make it illegal for me to kick users out (on the same premise). So yes, people depending on MY service to earn a living has a lot of thinking and diversifying to do, it is not as risk-free as it seems, and there are nuances around that. In the end though, the owner(s) do and should have the last word.

> If you can't make it illegal for me to shut it down (on the premises that it would risk my users' livelihood) then you can't make it illegal for me to kick users out (on the same premise)

> In the end though, the owner(s) do and should have the last word.

Thats not exactly true. A relevant counter example would be to look at other major communication services. For example, take telecom. A telephone company cannot just kick users off of the platform, for any reason. They have to follow common carrier laws.

Obviously, the law would have to be changed, in order for these laws to apply to these new platforms.

But, unrelated to any specific moderation policy, I think that there is a very nuanced and interesting discussion to be had, about how common carrier laws have not really kept up to date with some of the many new internet platforms these days.

So just like at will employment then? Anyone can fire you for wearing a shirt they didn’t like that day - this is your problem, not theirs.

Absolutely. Platforms like Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, or other giants, reap enormous benefits from being a "platform" which contains the majority (or a huge chunk) of the sectors they play in. It's time they also pay their due price for the benefits they reap.

Oh look, another "but it's a private company" defence of this behaviour.

Imagine a town with a single supermarket. The closest next town is a 10 hour drive away. A certain individual commits a crime, and is punished for it by the local authorities. The supermarket then decides that they are going to ban this individual from their store because of "severe misconduct" in the community. Is this fair?

Obviously, Twitch is not the "only" platform online for streaming, but in the past few years we've seen rapid siloing of content and serviced around a few platforms. Defending the actions of these platforms simply further entrenches their roles as the de facto platform for their particular service, making competition even harder.

That's not an argument against moderation. That's an argument against monopolies and oligopolies. Banning a guy from the store isn't even in the top 10 worst things that will be going wrong in that scenario.

Okay, that's another way to fix the problem then: break Twitch up into 100 baby Twitches, and don't let anyone have ownership/stake/control of more than one of them. If all 100 decide to ban someone, they probably deserve to be banned, and if they don't, then the person can keep streaming on one that didn't.

No because the same social and economic pressures may apply to all of them. That's exactly what used to happen to black tenants when all of the "100 baby landlords" decided to ban them. It doesn't mean they probably deserved to be banned, it's that there was a systemic problem that couldn't be fixed simply by having competition. We already see this with politically unpopular people being banned from all popular social media sites, despite them being separate companies with different owners.

I think it's hilarious that you're using the suffering of black people to give weight to your fears about what's happening the sort of people who are in fact fond of or indifferent to the suffering of black people.

Back here in reality, a poster child for "politically unpopular people being banned" was Milo Yiannopoulous, who was banned for leading a wave of anti-black abuse: https://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12226070/milo-yiannopoulus-twi...

One could argue that Milo is the one who started the shift we've seen over the last 5 years in social media moderation decisions. He still has a platform, of course. There are approximately infinite platforms, and some of them are happy enough to host open racists. So we aren't at the "100 baby landlords decided to ban" stage yet. As you say, he's just been booted off the popular platforms. Because it turns out a lot of people are no longer interested in supporting open racists.

And it seems like that's where things will stay: Users and companies have unimpinged freedom of association. Racists, etc, have the freedom to build sites that support racists, which are mostly ignored by everybody else. This seems like a fine outcome to me. If it doesn't to you, maybe think about why.

Of course that supermarket should be entitled to ban the misbehaving person from their store.

To turn the story around, why should a business that takes it on itself to provide for a remote community be punished for it by forcing them to accept unruly customers?

The point is that they're banning people for things not done in the store.

What if there's a single major provider of groceries in a state and they decide to ban everyone convicted of a felony for life. Would that be ok?

In the case of the supermarket, the person who is banned could pay somebody else to buy stuff for them. In an extreme case, that somebody would have to be the government preventing the person from starving.

In general I think private businesses should be allowed to decide who they want to do business with.

In the case of Twitch, the question to me is what is the contract the users enter with Twitch - what promise does Twitch make? If it doesn't promise anything, users invest at their own risk.

I had no problem with hosts kicking off Parler, and I don't really have a problem with this Twitch policy, but those are very different things than the grocery example. Social media companies, webhosts, etc. are directly enabling speech as a core part of their product. As was mentioned above it would be against the principle of not coercing speech to force one of these companies to continue serving a customer.

But I really do not think allowing someone to buy lettuce should be considered a form of speech, or even an "association". Banning someone from using a grocery store - or perhaps more relevant to this example Amazon.com - for actions completely unrelated to the service is wrong IMO, even if it were somehow restricted to 100% accuracy rate of only blocking very bad people.

I haven't seen it happen yet, but if it becomes in vogue to worry that selling a random material good to a customer is some kind of endorsement of that customer, that will lead to a very concerning situation down the line. It is now all too easy to gather information on people, potentially dating back decades. I don't see any reason grocery stores should know anything about their customers outside of what can be observed when shopping.

>medium-large forum

That's the key. You were not operating a massive media platform with a significant marketshare that many people use to make a living with.

Exactly. The difference is a platform that controls 0.001% of the market and a platform which controls 90% of the market.

> Here are some clear rules

That will change arbitrarily and become more and more vague over time as the people you ideologically disagree with become better at obeying the "letter of the law".

But you're right, it's your website, and (at least for now) somebody else is free to start up a competing website that picks up the users you're throwing away.

I think that works up to a certain scale but it's insufficient if you're Facebook or Twitter.

Now - is Twitch more like those or is it more like "Bob's Forum"?

There is no bright line between Facebook and Bob’s Forum.

There's no bright line between a wheelbarrow and a bulk freighter but even Hellen Keller could tell you they're very different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

There are several bright lines like having an engine.

That's not a really bright line

https://www.homedepot.com/p/YARDMAX-Powered-Wheelbarrow-YD41...

Having a crew isn't a bright line either since two people will often manhandle a single heavy wheelbarrow.

The brightest line is probably that a bulk freighter floats. Still it's a series of small incremental changes all the way from wheelbarrow to mining dump truck (then there's some lines you cross before you get to a bulk freighter) though which IMO still illustrates my point.

We're kind of nit picking here though.

Computer is a job not an object.

English reuses terms, but thus that’s not a wheelbarrow anymore than there are wheelbarrows in a wheelbarrow race. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelbarrow_race

“A wheelbarrow is a small hand-propelled vehicle...” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelbarrow while also saying “Power assisted wheelbarrows are now widely available from a number of different manufacturers.”

TLDR; That’s not yet a wheelbarrow, but it might eventually become one.

> The brightest line is probably that a bulk freighter floats.

Some wheelbarrows will float just because they weigh little enough compared to how much water their bucket displaces. Also, I don't think it stops being a wheelbarrow if you strap a couple of empty barrels to the side (I've done that, when hauling junk across a river).

To head off the obvious rebuttal, you could totally attach wheels (or maybe caterpillar treads) to the bottom of bulk freighter, even if nobody has (probably) bothered to build such thing yet.

When discussing enumerated rights, judicial “strict scrutiny” (to wit: bright line) applies.

What do you mean "bright line"?

The difference is plainly obvious, Bob's forum has <100 users, FB has > 2,800,000,000 users

When discussing enumerated rights, judicial “strict scrutiny” (to wit: bright line) applies. For this case, you must explain why FB gets treated differently just because there are more users. I appreciate the “well duh” but that doesn’t justify adjudicating a suppression of rights for FB.

But it's railroad tycoon discussing these tracks belong to me and rules are simple to a man who built a driveway. Your vbulletin and big megacorp websites don't compare on any level.

At some point a website stops being just a website and becomes a social institution in itself. And with great power comes great responsibility.

That's a easy statement to make until you actually try to define what "some point" actually means.

We agree that kids become adults at 18 and no one has a big problem with this. I don’t believe demarcating this “some point” is far more complicated.

Please do it then. What is this mark? 80% of TAM? Revenue over $250k/yr/employee? 10000 users?

We can start with companies with a market cap over $1bln for example. And tinker the policy based on empirical data.

Sure, 1 million users.

You're free to quibble with the specifics, but there's your magical mark.

> We agree that kids become adults at 18 and no one has a big problem with this.

We don’t, though. Can’t drink until 21. Rental cars and credit cards have extra restrictions until 25. Etc.

We don’t what? Do you see many people who say that 6 year old kids should vote? Do you see many people who advocate that driving should be banned until 40? Do you think that credit card restrictions undermine the concept of the age of majority? No. We can put an arbitrary delimiter at first and argue about specifics later.

> Do you see many people who say that 6 year old kids should vote?

There are indeed disagreements on the appropriate voting age.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/takoma-park-grants-16-y...

https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/125-democrat...

> We can put an arbitrary delimiter at first and argue about specifics later.

We're in specifics territory, though.

> There are indeed disagreements on the appropriate voting age.

Sure, but my question was about 6 year olds, not 16 year olds.

> We're in specifics territory, though.

Exactly. The first thing to do is to make sure that 6 year olds don’t kill anyone driving recklessly and 30 year olds can vote. The rest is specifics we can argue about. The same thing with the social responsibility of companies.

While that’s true, you’re speaking to an earlier time in the internet.

Today, the internet has evolved into a two layered system, where a centralized “social” layer (for lack of a better term) sits on top of the underlying decentralized layer.

Today, anything of consequence happens on the top layer. You can still run a forum on your own, just like you did in the 90’s. Barely anyone will join.

Yes, Twitch is a private company and can do what it wants. Of course they can. But it only takes a few platforms to completely erase a person from any significant social digital interaction. It’s not a good thing.

> I can also ban you if I don’t like you. Or if I think it’s funny, or really any other reason.

Yeah, just like a game server admin that banned you simply because he lost to you in a game. Everyone loved them. Just because you can abuse your powers doesn't mean you should.

If social media that are influencing the outcome of the elections (reminder that we're in the middle of Covid lockdowns) are not aware that they shouldn't abuse their powers then it's time for the government to step in.

Does it ("social media influencing elections->government should step in") also apply to traditional media ?

Both "social media" and "traditional media" are called "media", but it's not really the same thing. I assume by traditional media you mean something like newspapers or whatever, but social media is more akin to a telephone company, as it's a mean of communication between people. If a telephone company was just censoring anything they don't like then my answer would be yes. But to take your question literally, no, I don't think it's necessary.

It’s not just some site when you have no credible alternative because it killed all the competition years ago. The network effects are too strong

YouTube Live exists. DLive exists.

Sure, these don't have anywhere near the same reach when it comes to live streaming but people have been banned from twitch before and maintained an audience on other sites like these. There's also no "right to livestream".

We'll see how liberally twitch applies this new policy. All sites are literally allowed to do these things already, the only difference is they made it explicit. You can have a "common carrier" argument about regulation of private companies, but there's nothing in this announcement itself that makes twitch any different from others.

Would it be okay to like segregate the misconduct accounts under a domain like shitbirds.twitch.tv?

Then everybody would know that they were only providing them service under threat of government force.

If they did that all the popular streamers would end up there pretty fast for microagressions. Lets not pretend this isnt political. I dont think billionaires should decide what is socially acceptable and what isnt.

Being an administrator/moderator is a big responsibly. Sure, if it's a small time forum, maybe nothing really bad would happen if someone gets banned,well you know, because you wanted that way. However, different platforms can have a detrimental impact on ones life, including employment, status in the society and so on. The worst part? You don't start measuring the throne of power immediately, you gradually descend into it. You start normalizing things you couldn't just a few months ago. I know from my own work that ultimate access and control of everything can poison most. You get these little challenges every now and then and you get tested, and eventually, depending on one's nature, you either say 'screw this,I'm not doing it' or you become a despot.

If companies policies and media bites were as clear as a forum moderators, we wouldn't see the same backlash. But because they all subscribe to the corporate koolaid, they make claims about being inclusive and a bastion of free speech - they're shooting themselves in the foot.

If Twitch came out and said "I pay the bills, I facilitate your ad revenue - if I don't want you on the platform it's my decision to kick you off and I'll do it whenever I want" .. People would be up in arms and they'd be attacked, but they also wouldn't have to keep up this charade. People getting banned wouldn't have an avenue to complain.

But I guess being a US company there's also litigious reasons they have to worry about that some rinky dink forum wouldn't need to..

Getting banned from Twitch can have serious career consequences for streamers and potential streamers. I think the real issue is being banned and not having a reliable appeals process to go through. The appeals process takes long enough that it can tank your viewership.

This attitude doesn't translate to market conditions governed by power law winner-takes-all dynamics.

> This is literally how the internet has worked forever.

I don't know what specific fallacy is this, but stating that how it always worked does not mean it should have worked that way or that it should never change.

Twitch would not exists without content creators. Neither would exist without the other.

In that relationship Twitch has the last word on everything.

I would argue that it shouldn't be this way or at least not this one sided. Content creators should have a say on Twitch's decisions.

Why though?

They don't own Twitch. They didn't take any of the economic risk to start it. They're not on the hook for covering its server bills if revenue craters. If they wanted to put their money where their mouth is and buy a piece of the company proper, the current owners might be open to that, who knows.

But you don't typically get to run a company you didn't start, haven't invested a dime in, and can walk away from at any moment, unless you're willing to take on some of the risk. Risk is what gets you the rewards.

> They don't own Twitch. They didn't take any of the economic risk to start it. They're not on the hook for covering its server bills if revenue craters.

And yet with all the money in the World Twitch will close doors if all streamers stop streaming. Twitch is literally nothing without the streamers.

Which they are free to do, but how does that entitle them to an ownership stake?

It entitles them to a say on how things should go and a share of profits.

For people who are saying "but losing Twitch kills your career":

In the entertainment industry in general, facing repercussions (including being unable to get any gigs whatsoever) for your actions outside of direct involvement in entertainment has long been the norm. There are several recent examples that people attribute to cancel culture, but the problem goes all the way back at least as far as the 1940s (see the Hollywood blacklist during McCarthyism).

Why should people who stream on Twitch be immune to pressures that those who work for Hollywood have to endure?

You are using the mcarthy blacklist as precedent for banning peoples ability to participate in a social setting. As far as im concerned, since forever that has been used as a reason to question and challenge censorship.

I own Twitch. Can't I just shut it down if I wanted? Or should I be forced to stay open after becoming really popular because shutting it down would prevent millions of people's participation in a social setting?

If you shut it down, competitors would immediately spring up and become way more popular. If you "just" ban someone you don't like, that won't happen.

Such an advocate for neo McCarthyism.

It's not only entertainment.

You behave badly in a bar or restaurant as a doctor for instance, your hospital or clinic will fire you and good luck getting a job anywhere else.

>medium-large forum back in the vBulletin heyday of the early 2000

how many people were on such a forum, and how many of such forums were there out there to get on?

Quantity has a quality all its own.

You had, what, 0.01% of the market? It's a lot different when you have >50% (or, well, used to be).

If, instead of being a streaming platform, twitch instead baked cakes. Would you still say they can exclude anyone they want for any reason? Or would you say that you’re limited in the choices you can make once you engage in public commerce like most every other type of business.

We really need a public utility alternative for electronic discussion and multimedia sharing. There's no argument that internet is an essential service so where's the internet post office?

You want government-run Internet or a government myspace? No, thank you.

This is what open protocols were for, but those stopped being viable when trapping users to spy on them became more valuable than selling good services and software.

I agree, once it's stated clearly, well it's clear and you are free to decide. The problem was the double standards, which should also be stated clearly.

Same with Apple and its policies regarding closed platform (walled garden). But with such analogy people will go mad. Hypocrisy at its best.

medium-large is not the same as dominant, where users don't have a choice but to engage, e.g. to be competitive in their industry.

It's becoming a big issue because there are people trying to actually make a living being superstars and/or trolls on these platforms, and because they've become a vehicle for large scale political propaganda. There's money and power involved now, and that changes everything.

That being said I agree that the argument is disingenuous. Freedom of speech is a human right. The use of someone else's platform on which to speak is not.

The problem with this for Twitch, specifically, is that Twitch involves money. Many people make streaming a career, and Twitch actively encourages this sort of behavior.

At a normal workplace, while people _can_ simply be fired, they typically aren't. That sort of thing kills morale and may even result in protest resignations.

I would say that many (not all) things Twitch has banned users would not be so far fetched as reasons for terminating employment. Aside from obvious non-comparable things that only pertain to online interactions, there is probably a great overlap between ”would I get warned/banned from Twitch” and ”would I get warned/fired at my job”.

Everyone feels entitled to host their content on others platforms for free.

This isn’t comparable. You weren’t one of five or so corporations that control the majority of communication on the entire web.

Oligopoly changes the equation and requires more oversight, just as your backyard garden might not require regulation like an industrial food producer would.

There is only one Twitch.tv.

There were thousands of fourms. I ran one. Ezboard and other platforms made it easy to host one without even paying server bills.

But there's only one Twitch, and when they ban you, you're gone. Your audience is too.

This is what we get with platform monopolies.

> They're essentially a public utility.

No, they're a website owned by a private company.

If you want there to be a public utility that provides the same service Twitch does, write to your representatives.

Why stop at websites? Why shouldn't airlines, hotels, banks, apartments, stores, and private universities ban whoever they like? How about creating a rule banning people who dye their hair blue?

There is - of course - rules around this. Certain qualities like race and sex are protected classes against which you cannot discriminate. To your example - a nightclub very well might discriminate against someone with blue hair.

Political speech is not a protected class.

This is correct.

I have to ask, what is the point you are trying to argue? That it shouldn't ever be possible to enforce rules on internet communities?

You should not have rules for behavior outside your community. Second, your rules should be restricted to actions that have an effect on your community.

> redirect to goatse upon login

Okay, that is actually a great idea

> redirect to goatse upon login

That's a rather shitty thing to do. I understand it has a warning now or doesn't exist or whatever, but no one should have to see it without their consent

The freedom of the press does not include freedom to use another’s press.

This is a hard lesson when a private press takes on near-monopoly scale by choice of clientele.

It's funny how many people here suddenly want to control the means of production when the boss wants to ban Nazis or pedos instead of unions.

(If you think I'm exaggerating, Twitch has had a huge run of prominent streamers outed for raping minors, grooming, and the like, and much of the terrible behavior has happened via Discord. Which will be why Twitch are keen to make it clear that you can't say "oh I was grooming on Discord, none of your business.)

Please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN. You've been doing it repeatedly and it's not what this site is for, regardless of what ideology you favor. We've warned you about this repeatedly. We ban accounts that ignore such requests. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this, we'd appreciate it.

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