The US Army’s official esports Twitch channel has started banning users who make references to war crimes in the channel’s chat. In response, an influx of Twitter users have flooded the chat with the intention of being deliberately banned, forcing the channel to enter follower-only mode.
This latest round of controversy comes days after Twitter users flocked to the US Army’s official esports Discord channel andattempted banning speed runs in the wake of a viral tweet. The speedruns are intended as a form of protest against topics ranging from general censorship, to the army’s involvement with war crimes, as well as the controversial ruling that banned transgender individuals from serving in the military. Many Twitter users also accused the US Army using esports and Discord as unethical recruitment tools to court gamers into service.
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Similar protests erupted on Twitch after gaming and esports consultant Rob “Slasher” Breslau posted a video on Wednesday night that showed him getting banned during Green Beret Joshua “Strotnium” David’sCall of Duty: Warzonestream. The video demonstrates the phrase “war crimes” are now auto-moderated on the channel. After rephrasing his initial question “whats your favorite us war crime,” with numbers in place of vowels, he posted a link to the Wikipedia page for US War Crimes, and was permanently banned from the Twitch channel.Amidst a storm of recent streamer bans and controversies, this new friction could spark a broader conversation about censorship on the streaming platform.
Twitch also made political waves by suspending Donald Trump’s channelafter it aired a 2016 political rally where Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” The streaming platform stated that hate speech is not tolerated on Twitch in any capacity. Breslau, the same consultant who demonstrated the auto-moderation ban for mentioning war crimes, told Fox News that the decision was Twitch’s way of declaring politicians would be held to the same standards as SimpLord69—a name chosen to represent a random user on the website.
This isn’t the first time the US Army has come under fire for leveraging video games and related technologies to garner the attention of gamers—a demographic that heavily overlaps with their target recruitment age-range.The US Army has spent over $32.8m developing America’s Army, a free, online shooting game intended to serve as a promotional tool, supplemental training program, and recruitment platform. From the moment the game was originally announced in 2000, it was derided as propaganda, and criticized for its allegedly inaccurate portrayal the realities of military service.
