By Alexander Lee • October 31, 2024 •
Ivy Liu
A cadre of digital creators is accusing Twitch of antisemitic acts — and pressuring advertisers to pull their spending from the platform accordingly. Thus far, it’s unclear whether brands have changed their approach to advertising on Twitch as a result.
The group of online organizers, led by creator Dan “DanCantStream” Saltman, has centered its criticisms of Twitch around the revelation that the platform had disabled email signups for users located in Israel and Palestine following the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 and the following Israeli military action in Gaza. Twitch lifted the ban earlier this month, but the online organizers viewed the policy as an attempt to prevent Israelis from reporting on the conflict in the region and are using the opportunity to challenge advertisers on brand safety.
When reached for comment about the accusations, a Twitch spokesperson vehemently denied that any of the platform’s actions were evidence of antisemitism and pointed to its community guidelines to protect its spaces for users.
“There’s no place on Twitch for hatred or harassment of any kind, including antisemitism and Islamophobia,” the Twitch representative said in a statement. “We take that responsibility seriously, and are constantly working to improve upon and evolve our approach to safety.”
As an example of the content that Saltman said he is sharing with prospective Twitch advertisers, the creator shared a video of a T-Mobile advertisement playing before a clip of pro-Palestinian streamer Hasan Piker claiming that reports of mass rapes committed by members of Hamas during the attack had never been confirmed. (Piker did not respond to a request for comment prior to this article’s publication.)
“I have tried to do this in a way that gives brands maximum cover. We are privately messaging the brands, media agencies and DSPs and showing them videos of their brands’ advertisements next to the most vile of content,” said Saltman, who told Digiday that his group had already reached out to over 100 advertisers, such as Kellogg’s, Chase and AT&T. These brands, along with 19 others that Digiday contacted, did not return requests for comment. “If the brand confirms to us they have stopped/paused ads, we simply remove them from our list and do not showcase that they have stopped advertising.”
Saltman declined to share the names of specific brands that had responded to his messages, nor did he specify how many had responded. He did not outline his group’s planned approach for brands that did not respond to the campaign.
Saltman and other critics of Twitch have also pointed to the content of an official TwitchCon panel on Sept. 21 featuring livestreamers Fr0gan, Vio, CapriSunnPapi, Raffoulticket and DenimsTV, which they viewed as antisemitic for ranking streamers on a scale between “Arab” and “loves Sabra.” Saltman told Digiday that he also takes issue with Twitch’s approach to content moderation, which he believes is biased toward anti-Israel voices due to its lack of sanctions against pro-Palestinian streamers such as Piker.
Twitch has also publicly responded to the accusations, both by suspending the streamers involved in the controversial TwitchCon panel and by tweeting out a statement explaining that the company had turned off account verification in Israel and Palestine “to prevent uploads of graphic material related to the attack and to protect the safety of users.” Twitch reps also denied that the platform’s moderation policies were biased, telling Digiday that the platform’s “enforcement processes ensure we apply these policies swiftly, objectively, and consistently to protect all members of our community.”
Suspending email signups is one of several tactics that online platforms such as Twitch sometimes use to block the spread of harmful content. The company’s decision to do so at the outset of the Gaza conflict represents an evolution of Twitch’s approach to content moderation, as the platform did not implement this type of policy during the beginning of other recent and ongoing armed conflicts such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Following the attacks of October 7, 2023, Twitch suspended the ability to create new accounts via email verification in both Gaza and Israel. We did this to try to avoid new streamers creating accounts, with only an email verification, who might stream upsetting videos related to the attacks,” said the Twitch rep.
“This action did not fully restrict the creation of new accounts for customers in these locales, as mobile phone verification still worked and represents roughly half of our new accounts created. The suspension was intended as a temporary measure to prevent uploads of graphic content in order to protect the safety of our customer community, but was mistakenly extended until we were made aware of the error this week. Once we were made aware of the issue, it was quickly fixed and new accounts in both Gaza and Israel can now be created and verified by both email and mobile phone.”
With less than a week to go until the U.S. presidential election, most brands are likely to avoid making any public decisions that could be even vaguely interpreted as a political or ideological statement. Thus, there is no public evidence that indicates that any brands have changed their approach to Twitch due to the recent accusations of antisemitism against the platform.
“I can’t say if we’re pulling or not; what I can say, though, is our advertising is absolutely intended to raise awareness about our products to consumers,” said Lloryn Love-Carter, a senior manager of corporate communications for Nissan, which was one of the brands contacted by Saltman’s group. ”That’s our goal — not to make political commentary.”
Scandal notwithstanding, advertisers are growing wiser about the multitude of ways to reach the online gaming community, and they are increasingly diverting their ad spend toward forms of inventory beyond Twitch pre-roll and interstitial ads. This is one reason why Twitch itself has started to invest in alternative methods of advertising, such as an officially branded Fortnite Creative world. Regardless of the impact of Saltman’s campaign, his decision to come after the platform’s ad business signals that online creators currently view advertising as one of the platform’s potential weak points.
This story was updated to reflect Twitch’s response to claims of bias in its moderation.
https://digiday.com/?p=559374
