Twitch removed a video showing the full details of George Floyd’s death, which was shown during the trial of Derek Chauvin, the officer charged with the murder of Floyd. The Amazon-owned video streaming platform claimed the video violated its policies.
Unicorn Riot, a non-profit news site, said that Twitch suspended its account for 30 days for showing the court footage of the death of George Floyd. The video was shown to trial witnesses.
Twitch did not directly comment on the suspension of Unicorn Riot. Instead it referred to its general policy on violence.
“Our community guidelines prohibit any content that shows gore or extreme violence, and we remove this type of footage when it is reported to us,” a spokesperson said.
Unicorn Riot’s cofounder, Dan Feidt, said to The Verge that they had been streaming the trial for days and did not expect censorship and suspension.
“We had just started getting into Twitch in the past few months,” said Feidt. “We were essentially trying to build up a new audience, and this seemed like a great opportunity.”
The outlet streams on other platforms, including YouTube and Periscope, owned by Twitter, which is due to close down shortly.
Like Twitch, all other platforms have policies against violence. However, most of these other platforms have exceptions for news-worthy content.
But a Twitch spokesperson confirmed that Twitch does not have such an exception.
For now, Twitch has evaded much of the criticism on content censorship of larger platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter face. However, according to The Verge, the platform “will have to balance the value of keeping potentially controversial material with the opportunity to offer users a platform for broader political expression.”
Unicorn Riot will not be using Twitch for the next few weeks but it is not giving up on the platform.
“My personal opinion right now is that it would still be good to use as many of these services as we can, including Twitch, in whatever way possible,” said Feidt in the report.
