Twitch is criticized for content about the Israel-Gaza war on the platform

In recent years, Twitch has become a hub for political pundits. YouTubers regularly stream debates about political issues, and some politicians — including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — have appeared on the platform to discuss politics, sometimes while playing video games. However, unlike other social media platforms, Twitch has been able to largely avoid controversies between Israel and Gaza over the last year.

However, critics of the platform – including Torres – have argued that hate against Jewish people has been prevalent over the past year, despite Twitch's community guidelines, which “do not permit behavior motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance.”

When reached for comment from a Twitch spokesperson, NBC News referred to a Nov. 1 blog post from Twitch CEO Dan Clancy.

“There is no place for racism, hate or harassment of any kind on Twitch, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia,” Clancy wrote in the blog post addressed to the Twitch community, adding that the platform “works hard to ensure that our community “This is a safe place.”

Piker, who has 2.7 million followers on Twitch, said the attacks on the platform were unjustified.

“They're just trying to shut down Twitch completely because it committed the crime of not punishing me,” Piker, who goes by his usernames HasanAbi and HasanTheHun online, said in an interview with NBC News in response to Torres' letter.

The Turkish-American streamer said he had been “doxxed and beaten” by bad actors on the platform, citing alleged past incidents that he said made him consider leaving Twitch.

But Piker said he has “actually fought anti-Semitism” throughout his career as a public broadcaster, dating back to his time on the progressive YouTube show “The Young Turks,” created and directed by his uncle Cenk Uygar.

“You just have to cut out things about complex geopolitical situations in 15-second increments to say, 'Look, he means exactly the opposite of what he says,'” Piker said of the clips in Torres' letter.

The criticism of Piker came the same month that Twitch was accused of disabling some users in Israel and the Palestinian territories from signing up for the platform.

The platform apologized on October 20, writing that after Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, it had “temporarily disabled registration with email verification in Israel and Palestine” to “prevent uploading of graphic material in the to prevent connection with the attack”. to protect the safety of users.”

According to Twitch, sign-ins to the platform were not completely disabled as users could opt to sign in with phone verification. However, the platform said it “inadvertently…re-enabled email verification sign-ups for neither region.”

“We deeply regret this unacceptable omission and the confusion it has caused,” the platform said. “We have fixed the issue so that all affected users can log in with email confirmation.”

That same week, Twitch imposed a 30-day ban on a group of streamers, many of whom are Arab, for “hateful behavior” during their panel discussion at TwitchCon in San Diego in September.

Streamers CapriSunnPapi, Fr0gan, Raffoulticket, DenimsTV and Vio discussed which popular streamers on the platform are allowed to use the Arabic term of endearment “Habibi” and which are not, which translates to “my love”. Their list placed pro-Israel streamers at the bottom and Arab streamers at the top. They were ranked from “Arabic” to “loves Sabra,” an American and Israeli brand of hummus.

“Ngl. I'm going to take a few days off and go live again and review hummus just to prove my point. #hummusgate,” wrote CapriSunnPapi on X.

Raffoulticket, who is Jewish, called the panel's critics “so anti-Semitic that I'm the one who made the list asking 'Who can say Habibi' and they are trying to use this as 'Frogan ranking people of Arabs.' “to 'Jews',” he added. Critics should “keep Jews out of their mouths.”

DenimsTV retweeted author Jake Steinberg, who referenced Piker and wrote that he was “truly grateful to have such a knowledgeable Jewish ally like Hasan, who is so prominent on the internet.”

NBC News has reached out to the temporarily suspended creators for further comment.

While there was initially no backlash at TwitchCon, online criticism grew in October when streamer Ethan Klein, host of the H3 podcast on YouTube, posted a video titled “Twitch has a big problem” in which he said, that he thinks the panel is “somehow Arabic” good, Jew bad.”

“I suspect that Twitch has an anti-Semitism problem,” Klein, who is Jewish, said in his Oct. 18 video on YouTube, which mentions the TwitchCon panel.