[bbor]

Looks like they’ve been doing it since the start of the war, unless we have better source that it’s new than a tweet? I think it’s just coming up now because of twitch con related controversy.

Either way it appears to be an attempt to keep themselves out of the spotlight, controversy wise. Definitely not a political statement, if for no other reason than they haven’t issued any statements. Also, the title is understandable given the relative internet access rates, but the slightly more accurate one would be “Twitch blocks creating new accounts from Israeli and Palestinian IPs”.

Seems like a way, way worse way to avoid controversy than simply banning war streamers, but who am I to say. Also, the obvious hypocrisy of not banning accounts from Sudan, Ukraine, Russia, etc. doesn’t help their image.

ETA: whatever the reason is, it appears to be policy, not technical: https://x.com/not_JayVee/status/1848031193469501473

[marcosdumay]

> Also, the obvious hypocrisy of not banning accounts from Sudan, Ukraine, Russia, etc. doesn’t help their image.

There's a very large difference here. They know what decision about those will get them into trouble and what decisions won't.

Or rather, it's also obvious what decisions will get a large US company into trouble on the context of the Israel wars. Every single one of them, whatever direction they are biased into.

[dtquad]

Russian streamers are still on Twitch including pro-war Russian streamers who did some rather tasteless streams on the first days of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine.