Twitch has unbanned Donald Trump, which means the former president is now officially allowed back on all major social media platforms.
Like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, Twitch banned Trump in 2021, in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill attack. Twitch specifically said Trump’s “incidendiary rhetoric” was dangerous, and that it made the decision to ban him indefinitely in order to “prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence.” (It also gave him a two-week ban earlier, in 2020, for violating its rules against hateful conduct and harassment.)
But, since Trump has been named the Republican candidate for the upcoming 2024 presidential election, Twitch is changing its mind.
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“We reinstated former President Trump’s Twitch channel,” a Twitch spokesperson told PC Gamer. “We believe there is value in hearing from Presidential nominees directly, when possible.”
They added that Twitch will “continue to enforce our Community Guidelines and take necessary enforcement action when we identify violations of our rules. Twitch doesn’t have a ‘public figure policy,’ meaning all channels are equally subject to our guidelines, regardless of whether the channel belongs to a public figure.”
Trump’s channel has just under 150,000 followers, and his campaign is already actively using it: Its last broadcast went out July 20, a two-hour stream chronicling his and VP nominee JD Vance‘s visit to Grand Rapids, Michigan. That stream’s VOD has 30,000 views.
Like we mentioned, Twitch’s unbanning means Trump is now reinstated across the internet’s biggest social gathering spaces. It was the final platform to hold out. Here’s a quick look at how long other platforms’ bans lasted:
- Twitter: Banned Jan. 8, 2021 / Unbanned Nov. 19, 2022 (after Elon Musk took over)
- Facebook and Instagram: Banned Jan. 7, 2021 / Unbanned Jan. 25, 2023 (with some of the last lingering moderator “guardrails” being removed from his accounts just two weeks ago)
- YouTube: Banned Jan. 12, 2021 / Unbanned March 17, 2023
Platforms generally give two reasons for unbanning him: one, like Twitch said, is because he’s the Republican nominee, and Twitch believes what he has to say should be heard; and two, platforms believe the risk of him inciting violence has lowered.
YouTube, for example, released a statement about its decision to unban where it said, “We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.”
Trump is making use of his reinstated YouTube channel (3.1 million subscribers) and Facebook (35 million followers) and Instagram accounts (26 million), but has yet to return to Twitter, opting instead to keep short-form text rambles to his own platform, Truth Social. (He did post his mugshot in 2023, though.) He’s also on TikTok (9 million followers), which never banned him.
This announcement is one of what’ll likely be many policy updates we’ll see from interference-leery platforms in the leadup to the 2024 presidential election, where current VP Kamala Harris is set to take on Trump.
