Ian Alexander has allegedly been suspended from Twitch after being on the receiving end of racism and transphobia from viewers.
The actor, who most recently appeared inStar Trek: Discovery and picked up a bit of a gamer following after voicing Lev in The Last of Us: Part II, said that they were in the middle of streaming when some trolls started causing trouble.
“I was receiving racist and transphobic troll comments where they were saying slurs,” he wrote on Wednesday. “I censored them, told the trolls to touch some grass, and then my account got suspended mid-stream. I appealed the suspension, idk when I’ll get my channel back.”
\u201c\ud83d\ude11 @Twitch suspended my account. i was receiving racist and transphobic troll comments where they were saying slurs. i censored them, told the trolls to touch some grass, and then my account got suspended mid-stream.\n\ni appealed the suspension, idk when i\u2019ll get my channel back\u201d— IAN - ACAB (@IAN - ACAB) 1658355550
The screenshot appears to show that Alexander was indefinitely suspended for “violent hate speech” — which makes very little sense according to their account of how this all went down.
One viewer who claimed to have been watching the stream when Alexander’s account got banned seemed to back his version of events up.
\u201c@ianaIexander @Twitch (To be clear, the "crock" was Ian getting banned for morons being morons. Curse this inability to edit texts... and my brain being Swiss cheese.)\u201d— IAN - ACAB (@IAN - ACAB) 1658355550
Several others suggested that this was likely the result of a targeted raid against them because of their identity, with one claiming that groups specifically targeting LGBTQ+ streamers “make comments that violate TOS and somehow Twitch sees that and suspends the streamer instead of the trolls.”
\u201c@ianaIexander @Twitch I'm sure you got raided. Hopefully, this gets fixed. Pretty fucked up but this is kind of the reality of social media. You can pretty easily weaponize against small and medium sized content creators, too. Doesn't even take that many people.\u201d— IAN - ACAB (@IAN - ACAB) 1658355550
\u201c@ianaIexander @Twitch There are trolls who specifically target LGBTQIA+ streamers. They make comments that violate TOS and somehow Twitch sees that and suspends the streamer instead of the trolls. Broken system.\u201d— IAN - ACAB (@IAN - ACAB) 1658355550
\u201c@ianaIexander @Twitch Sure is convenient how often hateful trolls can abuse these systems against us. I hope your stream is restored asap\u201d— IAN - ACAB (@IAN - ACAB) 1658355550
Social media platforms have received a lot of criticism over the years for failing to adequately protect members of the LGBTQ+ community and other vulnerable groups, or even disproportionately allowing their accounts to be penalized.
Twitch in particular claimed to have been working against these sort of targeted attacks back in March, saying that they “continue to take these activities seriously.”
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