Twitch has reportedly been banning intact Israeli and Palestinian accounts on the platform since October 7, 2023.
As reported by 404 Media, intact users from both areas have apparently been unable to register on the streaming platform with the phone and email verification guide to the error pages.
Twitch addressed the condition on social media the day before, clarifying that it had “temporarily disabled sign-ups with email verification in Israel and Palestine” following the October 7 attack.
“We did this to prevent the upload of graphic material related to the attack and to protect the safety of users,” he wrote. “The registrations were not disabled and we continue to see registrations from both regions.”
The company went on to explain that email verification had “inadvertently” not been re-enabled for any of the patches.
“We deeply regret this unacceptable error and the confusion it has caused,” he said. “We have fixed the issue, which means all affected users can register with email verification.”
Twitch added: “We have also heard concerns about whether our Community Guidelines apply to all content on our site. We continue to enforce our rules as consistently as possible, and we are actively reviewing content and taking enforcement action where necessary.”
On the other hand, 404 Media alleged that when it tried to create an intact Twitch account from Israel using a VPN, it objected and neither phone nor email verification worked.
This isn’t the first time Twitch has had issues with streaming vivid content on the platform. In 2022, a gunman behind a shooting in Buffalo, New York, livestreamed the development.
Twitch issued a statement saying it was “taking every step possible” to ban the broadcast of the images on the website and remove accounts or content streaming the video.
In 2019, a gunman who killed two communities in Halle, Germany, also livestreamed the development on Twitch. The video was flagged and deleted within half an hour.
