Not too long ago, The US Army’s official esports Twitch channel was caught banning users who asked questions or brought up the subject of war crimes. To bring more attention to this issue, an influx of users began flooding the chat with the same topic, with the intention of being banned. The US Army’s Twitch channel is already somewhat of a controversial topic because active soldiers are using the platform to get recruits for their respective branches.
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Some organizations followed up on the bans with heavy criticism. The American Civil Liberties Union slammed the US Army and was one of the first to call out its response as unconstitutional, saying that “calling out the government’s war crimes isn’t harassment, it’s speaking truth to power.”
And today the Knight Institute’s legal department subsequently followed up with the same err of criticism and highlights that because the US Army is using Twitch to recruit young people, “this issue is about much more than just esports.” The letter outlined the military recruit’s constitutional right to ask critical questions pertaining to government politics, so suppressing speech relating to war crimes is therefore unconstitutional.
The Knight Insitute’s legal team claimed that by opening up a “space for expressive activity to the public at large,” in this case, a Twitch channel, users are then protected by First Amendment rights. The Army and Navy aren’t legally allowed to delete comments or ban users for bringing up topics they would rather avoid.
The US Army’s Twitch was also caught running fake giveaways to its users. During livestreams, soldiers would offer up giveaways for products like Xbox Elite Series 2 controllers. The links for said giveaways would lead to recruitment pages, where some young minds would be compelled to enter in their personal information. According to Twitch, however, the streaming platform responded by forcing the US Army to stop the false giveaway claims.
The US Army looks to be in the hot seat of Twitch news lately due to the unconstitutional bans, and the Knight Institute is certainly correct in that this is a much bigger issue than just online gaming and streaming fun.
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Source: Knight First Amendment Institute
