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There's a point where this kind of ostracism becomes worse than jail. For many Twitch users, streaming is a substantial part of their social environment or even their full-time job. If I had to choose between a couple weeks in jail and a lifetime ban from working in my industry, or a couple weeks in jail and being banned from all my friend group chats, I'd take jail in a heartbeat.


On the other hand, one person's ostracism is another's right of association. It is just as wrong to force someone to work with a person they do not want to work with, as long as that reason is justifiable (i.e. not a protected class)


For Twitch and other corporations it seems like it's not the "right of association", but more the "sin of association" that makes them heavy handed towards individuals with banning, censoring and demonetizing:

The extreme social media dynamics somehow holds these corporations accountable for any wrongdoings someone might post on their platforms which is impossible to prevent or moderate in a timely fashion. They respond with more sophisticated and sweeping algorithms that lead to self-censorship by content creators and unexpected actions like shutting down the demoscene event a few days ago.


Well, I agree with what you're saying, although I'm not sure we're on the same page. I don't think Twitch should be forced to work with people they'd rather ban; I see some proposals in other comment threads to pass a law, and I don't support that. What I want is for Twitch to recognize that this new policy is a bad idea and voluntarily retract it.


Nitpick: The offenses for which Twitch is considering removing users usually result in much more than a few weeks in jail, if convicted.

Further, Twitch is not the entire industry, the same way that Microsoft is not the industry.


Many of the offenses are in that category. My concern is the offenses like "violent extremism" and "membership in a known hate group", which are not generally illegal and very easy to abuse for censorious purposes. (I've seen quite a few people identify mainstream organizations as "hate groups" because of some political dispute.)




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