Twitch Encourages Antisemitism and Israel Hostility on its Platform
The Twitch streaming platform, at any given moment, is being watched by more people than any TV news network. Annually, 21.4 billion hours of content are consumed on Twitch. And this includes the antisemitism the platform is increasingly broadcasting into viewers’ heads.
If you’re older than a millennial, you probably haven’t heard of Twitch, now owned by Amazon. Three quarters of users are under 35. Twitch began in 2011 as a platform primarily for streaming games and today over 7 million people create Twitch content — ranging from gaming to comedy to, increasingly, videos that are anti-Jewish and pro-terror.
It’s a powerful and seemingly dangerous platform for reaching young minds.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists and thousands of Gazans invaded Israel, conducting the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Less than a week later, while Israelis were still trying to identify the charred remains of innocents burned alive, the Twitch streaming platform appeared to side with . . . the terrorists. Changes to Twitch coding made it almost impossible for Israelis to become members of the platform.
This was first brought to light last May by an Israeli streamer named “Force,” who posted on X, “I’ve discovered around a month ago that A LOT of my longtime viewers have not been able to sign up to Twitch because they’re located in Israel, which is insane.”
Despite public outcry, Twitch took no action.
About a week ago, a subreddit thread noticed the sign-up snafus, too. Then it snowballed. One user posted, “Israeli here!, just checked and indeed found themselves banned from creating new accounts.”
Twitch denied trying to prevent users in Israel from joining the platform post-Oct. 7. Instead, they posted a claim on X that sign-ups from Israel via email were suspended following the Hamas attack to prevent violent content from being broadcast. Twitch claimed that sign-ups via mobile phone devices were still permitted.
But according to a report from Ynet, Israel’s largest media outlet, Israelis were reportedly blocked when trying to register via both email and mobile devices as of Oct. 20 — more than a year after the Hamas massacre. Threads on Reddit by Twitch users support Ynet’s claims. Yet only last month did Twitch finally address and correct the sign-up blocks after strong public outrage.
Worse yet is who and what Twitch does allow on its platform. As another Redditer posted, “They literally have streamers celebrating terrorism against Jews.”
One such streamer is Hasan Piker, who my organization StopAntisemitism named our Antisemite of the Week in April — and who in 2019 said that “America deserved 9/11, dude. F–k it, I’m saying it.”
More recently, Piker declared there was no evidence of mass rape or murder by Hamas last October. Even though the terror group live-streamed their gory pillaging of Israel, Piker-hosted streams where he Source link
