Speedrunning Thread - Page 104

On November 21 2013 22:34 Danglars wrote:
End of the drama train (please god let it be so)? End of the drama train soon when more undeserved bans get reversed?

On November 21 2013 21:26 zeru wrote:
So wait a minute, this drama is because a gay furry twitch staff member made a global twitch icon for his underaged boyfriends favorite furry-characters penis, then the some SRL streamers make fun of him which causes the gay furry twitch admin to ban them, which then causes a chain reaction to where we are now?

On November 22 2013 00:11 zeru wrote:

What parts are wrong and what would be correct

On November 22 2013 00:16 Rockmonsterdude wrote:


It sounds pretty much correct.

On November 22 2013 00:33 Conti wrote:

The part about the twitch icon (Nothing to do with penises), and the part where the admin bans multiple streamers. AFAIK, he only banned one, the others got banned by other twitch admins. But hey, it's much easier to put all the hate on one person. Especially if he's a gay furry.

Disclaimer: this does not constitute an official Twitch response. I am an employee of Twitch attempting to present facts which may be unknown to the general public. EDIT: This post isn't intended to address the merits of any specific bans. Those are being sorted out right now by another team.

Twitch admins are not paid employees, but community volunteers who police site behavior. They are different from Twitch Staff members who are indeed employees. Twitch admins in no way speak for Twitch as a company any more than a subreddit's mods speak for reddit (though Twitch admins' moderation powers are farther-reaching).

To my knowledge, Twitch did not contact reddit in any official or unofficial capacity to request thread removal. The actions misrepresented here as an official Twitch request were undertaken by one of the volunteers of his own volition and not at all under direction from Twitch.

Removal of Twitch streamer Cyghfer's subscriber emotes came when we received reports they weren't original art, which is one of the prerequisites for a subscriber emoticon. One of the job functions of the lead admin is to handle subscription emote submissions, so it fell to him to remove it. It is unrelated to the other issues.

The Twitch admin who banned the speedrunner for making an off-color joke is the lead admin of Twitch, and is the only admin who is also a paid employee of Twitch.

Other members of the speedrunning community took to Twitch to demand the unbanning of other speedrunners while simultaneously petitioning for the removal of Twitch's lead admin.

It is not against the Twitch Terms of Service to to express an opinion, even one critical of Twitch. However, it is explicitly against the Terms of Service (Section 12.i) to "defame, harass, abuse, threaten or defraud Users of the Twitch Service", admins and Staff also falling under the category of "Twitch User".

As a result of this movement, the lead Twitch admin became the target of a coordinated harassment campaign that included, among other things, use of the Twitch service by broadcasters to encourage viewers to personally attack Twitch's lead admin and his then-boyfriend via social media. You can peek at his Twitter @ mentions for a sampling of the harassment endured.

Not every broadcaster participating in the coordinated petition was also encouraging harassment. Behavior ran the gamut from personally directing attacks to not making a reasonable effort to stop their chat from carrying out attacks to actively attempting to prevent the harassment from occurring.

Unfortunately, all the petitioners were using the same slogan to rally viewers and support, which resulted in the mass of unruly users moving en masse from chat to chat while conducting their harassment. Admins followed and asked broadcasters to, among other things, remove the slogan in an effort to stave off the problematic users. The intention was not to stifle opinion, but to halt the harassment.

Some broadcasters were understanding and complied to help defuse the situation. Others were either already participating in the harassment or were swept up by their sudden influx of users and adopted their stance, becoming combative themselves.

It is very unclear after the fact where each of the bans issued last night falls, and our admin team is still sorting through the unban requests. At time of writing, I have unbanned werster, duke bilgewater, and have reached out to peaches regarding unbanning, but have yet to hear back. I do not know if any of the other streamers have been unbanned or had their ban appeals rejected.

We're still sorting through this mess, and the important takeaway is there's not just two sides. It's a spectrum between the various broadcasters, viewers, and even among the Twitch staff and admins. I expect to see some changes come from this and other existing moderation plans accelerated as a result. However, I am not able to share specifics regarding those plans or their timeline.

On November 22 2013 03:05 LuckoftheIrish wrote:
FuzzyOtterBalls, one of the actual paid Twitch folk, posted this on reddit:



Quite a bit more over there as well. It definitely makes me agree with the characterization of the company as being run by manchildren.