Former Twitch staff have claimed that some streamers, such as Tyler1 and Ricegum, escaped bans from the platform due to their popularity, based on a leaked ‘do not ban’ list that was supposedly in use by Twitch around five years ago.
A data breach on October 8 revealed a ‘do not ban’ list supposedly used by Twitch. The list included well-known streamers and Twitch employees, as well as what appeared to be instructions concerning possible reports about their accounts.
However, former Twitch employees claim that this list is outdated and no longer in use. Former staffers told the Washington Post that the list was around five years out of date. Furthermore, the list was not intended to provide blanket protection for these broadcasters, but rather a precise set of instructions to not ban them in certain situations and instead escalate the case.
Ricegum and Tyler1 were two of the most well-known names on the list. They were two of the biggest names on the platform back in 2016, with millions of followers and continue to be famous today.
“RiceGum got his partnership removed way back in the day,” according to one former Twitch staffer, “but Twitch refused to ban him outright because he got viewership.” Despite the fact that he was no longer a partner, he was treated like one and given the option to speak with staff “instead of being suspended by the admin team.”
Likewise, Tyler1 was thought to be in a similar predicament as the former twitch staff noted; “I do remember RiceGum and Tyler1 both being given way more grace than they should have been, and if one of us admins reported them [to the partner conduct team] anyway, we were told to kick rocks and pay attention to the do not ban list.”
Despite the fact that the “do not ban” list didn’t provide comprehensive protection, some streamers were given more opportunities or powers than others.
Ice Poseidon and NoSleepTV, two Twitch streamers who have subsequently been banned, were reportedly offered extra chances before their indefinite suspensions were enforced.
Twitch appears to have abandoned the contentious “do not ban” list in favor of a more “standardized” moderating method. One of the former staffers, though, believed it was still feasible that some streamers are granted “extra slack,” but that if this were the case, it wouldn’t be kept hidden behind a secret list of names.