The platform announced that it had changed its usage policies to prohibit the repeated dissemination of fake news.
It was in an official press release released on Thursday that Twitch drove the nail a little further in its project to fight misinformation. The streaming site said it had changed its terms of use, and that it now reserves the right to ban users who repeatedly post incorrect information on its platform. These new rules should not apply to “individual statements or discussions” of an Internet user, but rather to those “whose online presence is dedicated to the persistent sharing of widely refuted and widely shared topics that amount to harmful misinformation.”
For Twitch, the combination of these elements would create “highest risk of harm, including inducement to act in the real world”. Unsurprisingly, the antecedent created by Donald Trump at the beginning of last year on social networks is still very present. As a reminder, the former president had called for a national uprising after his defeat against Joe Biden in the presidential elections. A speech made on social networks, which had resulted in the violent riots of the Capitol in January 2021.
And freedom of expression?
Faced with this new drastic measure, Twitch wanted to reassure Internet users, stressing that the update of its policy “probably won’t impact you or the streamers you love”. Depending on the platform, “super-spreaders of fake news” are not very common. Their dangerousness would rather come from their repeated online activity, and the lack of control they currently enjoy.
Among the sensitive subjects that Twitch intends to tackle, we find, unsurprisingly, several chestnut trees of disinformation: Covid-19, antivax comments, accusations of electoral fraud, or any other content likely to “damaging the integrity of a civic or political process, or promoting violent or conspiratorial content”recalls the subsidiary of Amazon.
