If you’ve been following the life of Fortnite star Ninja, also known as Tyler Blevins, you would know that he recently came under fire due to his use of a racial slur during a livestream. Ninja’s use of the slur was heard as he was rapping a song, a song that didn’t have any mention of the slur in it. Since then he has apologized, and while still coming under criticism from some, has managed to get away from the whole debacle seemingly unscathed and without any known consequences.
However, since then, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CG:GO) commentator, Matthew “Sadokist” Trivett, has been suspended after using a racial slur and telling someone to go kill themselves. This led to others asking what are Twitch’s guidelines and why do some streamers seem to get away with more hateful speech than others?
Responding to Polygon asking questions about their guidelines, Twitch had this to say. “When reviewing reported content or activity, we will consider its intent and context. The use of a racist or derogatory term falls under the hateful conduct and speech section of Twitch’s community guidelines.” Twitch then went on further to say that it would “consider a number of factors to determine the intent and context of any reported hateful conduct.” To put it simply, Twitch will take each case individually and look at the context of said hateful conduct. These guidelines, however, mention that racist behavior is hateful conduct, therefore you would be forgiven for not understanding why Ninja’s behavior is acceptable in comparison to Sadokist’s.
Twitch further clarified that ” the team considers a number of factors to determine the intent and context of any reported hateful conduct”. It is perhaps due to the fact that Sadokist directly challenged and threatened another member of the community that led to his suspension, whereas Ninja’s slur was just him singing. Regardless of circumstances, this does not bode well for Twitch from an outside perspective, as it indicates that racist slurs are sometimes acceptable if you either have a good reputation or a ‘good enough excuse’.
We will have to wait and see where Twitch goes from here in terms of its guidelines, though considering they just laid off over 25 staff members, this year is not looking good for the streaming website.
