Twitch is once again proving to be an unreliable place for streamers, especially those who may depend on it as a source of revenue.
Body painter who goes by the name ForkGirl has found this out the hard way, when her channel on the Amazon-owned platform reportedly got deleted without any prior warning.
The streamer announced the news on Twitter on Friday, saying that her account was deleted by Twitch, who didn’t even bother to inform her about this in an email.
That goes against the giant streaming platform’s usual policy of emailing users ahead of time that their account would be suspended or banned due to guideline violations – although the company doesn’t explain what caused the decision, instead merely stating which guideline was violated.
Since Twitch is not commenting on this or other cases as a matter of policy, ForkGirl and those reporting about her case are left to speculate about what might be behind the decision.
The moderation rules enforced by the platform seem so unclear to streamers that it isn’t even obvious if ForkGirl’s previous bans may or may have led to this unannounced and unexplained deletion of the channel.
The rules that could have been broken, meanwhile, pertain to the nature of body painting that is described as “contentious” on the platform, even if this type of content is allowed as an artistic expression.
Ostensibly in order to avoid it slipping into nudity for nudity’s sake, Twitch is eager to enforce these rules – but the streamer insists she was not violating any of them with her work.
In her tweet announcing the ban she includes her two most recent works to prove that point, and also shares that she was planning to make June a month of Tim Burton paints, that she invested time and money into planning this, and even came up with custom panels and graphics – only to see that effort go down the drain thanks to Twitch’s mysterious move.
Many of ForkGirl’s fans were angry at this turn of events, tagging Twitch Support to remind them that they asked to be held accountable for their moderation decisions.
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