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> no other choice if they want to reach viewers > are incredibly few esports careers that could survive a Twitch ban (emphasis mine) People have never been e
by ohazi 6y ago
> no other choice if they want to reach viewers
> are incredibly few esports careers that could survive a Twitch ban
(emphasis mine)
People have never been entitled to a sports career, or to celebrity status by reaching viewers on someone else's platform. These platforms have democratized the "rags to riches" story, but whether it was the '30s or the '60s or the '90s, you've always had to play by the rules of the prevailing media empire. This is no different.
Companies are generally allowed to set arbitrary criteria for who they're willing to work with. There are some very specific exceptions around discrimination against a very short list of protected classes. Other than that, rules restricting conduct are usually legal. Note that I'm not claiming that rules like these are moral, I'm just pointing out that they're usually found to be legal when challenged.
The fact that you can sign up for an account in your bedroom in pajamas instead of signing documents at a lawyer's office in Hollywood doesn't magically make this a public square subject to a different set of rules.
- max1984_2 6y agoI can't stand comments like this that obviously miss the overall point being made and tbh it is entirely done disingenuously. The terms of service are not in anyway enforced consistently or fairly. The way the terms and service is written is that they can basically boot you for any reason. It is well known that the "tiddie streamers" regularly get away with ToS violations, where some dude wearing a red hat will get a ban (and I mean a red hat, because that exactly what happened to one guy, he didn't even have a MAGA hat). "Behaviour off platform" can mean anything and will be like the current Terms of Service be not be enforced in any manner that is consistent or fair. Twitch is a monopoly in this space and it is abusing its position. This combined with the fact that the mobile phone platforms can remove an App for any reason it wants means that there is no open market where a competitor that has a different ToS can reasonably become competitive.
- beaner 6y agoNo, it just means your eligibility for a professional career may come down to whether or not a random mod on a streaming platform simply thinks it's "funny" to ban you.
- ativzzz 6y agoThen maybe you should reconsider your choice of professional careers if that's a risk factor and your risk tolerance isn't high enough.
- beaner 6y agoImagine this response in the context of a sport like the NBA. If the ref is secretly racist and bans you from the sport because it's "funny" as their excuse, would you react this way? The nature of videogames doesn't make the professional sport of them juvenile and less worthy of rigorous standards for inclusion.
- ativzzz 6y agoThe NBA is an organization who's job it is to set rules that teams, athletes, and referees can participate in. They can choose to fire refs who behave this way, and they would because they make more money if the refs aren't racists (especially now that they're getting more into racial activism) Twitch is basically the NBA of their streaming platform, as in they set rules for how streamers, viewers, and moderators interact. Twitch can create whatever arbitrary rules it wants to maximize their revenue. If advertisers stopped caring about controversy, or if Twitch suddenly found a better revenue source, they would surely pursue it.
- malandrew 6y agoThe irony of your comment is that once upon a time, these professional sports leagues made more money by being actively racist and excluding people of color from their leagues lest they upset their white fan base.
- ativzzz 6y agoI don't know how long ago "once upon a time is" but they seem to have increasing revenue very successfully since the 80s at the least based on some googling. Maybe before then, but I don't know if we can find any data to support that.
- CBLT 6y agoPretend Harvey Weinstein is talking to you. And that he's reading the top-most comment (by newbie789) on this story: that he owns the company, so he can ban you at his discretion. Or gaslight you. Or show you shock porn. That this is fine, because it's how its always worked here. I'll tentatively assume you got some of the same visceral recoil I got from that mental image. And that we agree that following everything Hollywood does is probably not for the best. So I'll ask you: if you could solve this however you'd like (by passing laws, let's say), how would you do it?
- ohazi 6y agoFWIW, I agree with you about the visceral recoil, thoughts about Hollywood practices not being ideal, etc. I'm not trying to claim that this state of affairs is good, just that it's basically identical to what we've had previously, and that the relevant laws don't appear to be affected by unprecedented scale or automation. Passing laws to address this might work, but I think it would be difficult, and I would expect them to be challenged mercilessly. In order to actually work, I think this would require "Civil Rights Act" or "Equal Employment Opportunity Act" caliber landmark legislation, and I'm skeptical that this would be politically tenable any time soon.
- kansface 6y agoI wholeheartedly disagree about the current state of affairs. Our relationship to the internet has profoundly changed. It’s deeply entwined in our daily life, inescapably so, in exactly the same way that forums were not.
- wongarsu 6y agoBut it does elevate Twitch bans far above the "this is just like a forum admin doing as he pleases, move along" of the original comment.