Twitch Permabans Could Be Reversed, Says CEO

Twitch's CEO sees a future where permabans are reversed.

By Cade Onder

Twitch seems to be loosening its restrictions on permabans. Twitch is one of the biggest platforms on the entire internet and has grown a lot since its inception. The platform began as a place for people to broadcast games to other people, but has grown to include IRL streams, elaborate productions with game shows and events, and much more. Creativity is encouraged and you don't really have to be put in any kind of creative box, so long as you're not being overly lewd. It's a platform where people with no budget or a massive budget can thrive. Some of the biggest streamers don't have anything beyond a nice computer and a webcam, but pull in more viewers than some television broadcasts.

However, Twitch hands out bans pretty liberally. Sometimes it's justified, sometimes it's confusing and leaves people scratching their heads. Typically, they're temporary and only last a handful of days, but sometimes they're "permanent". That could be changing, though. Twitch streamer Quin69 interviewed Twitch CEO Dan Clancy and stated that the company is looking to find a way to give users who were permabanned a "second chance". Clancy noted that they don't know what that looks like yet and are actively trying to figure it out, but it is, as you may expect a tricky and slippery slope.

"The tricky thing is, you need to do this in a scalable way… Whenever you talk about one specific example, one specific person, but people forget that we need to have a similar opportunity for that affiliate that had five concurrent viewers that did it, as we do for these big streamers. Because there's a lot of small streamers and figuring out a way to do this where when you give people a second chance, you do it scalably and you do it fair. It's important, and it takes some time to figure out how to do that right."

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There are quite a few notable streamers permabanned from Twitch. DrDisrespect, IShowSpeed, and Adin Ross are all banned from the platform. It's possible that they could revert this if Twitch figures out how to do it fairly. DrDisrespect is probably the most unlikely of the bunch to return due to the fact there was a ton of legal drama surrounding his ban. It may not be possible for him to be on Twitch ever again.

[H/T Dexerto]

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