Anyone: Darksydephil called Dr. Disrespect a fucking moron for streaming teens pissing multiple times at e3!
Twitch: Who the fuck is darksydephil? Also, yeah that's a dumbass thing to do.
Pretty much this. A quick google search shows there were over 27,000 partnered streamers on Twitch at the beginning of the year, and there's over 150,000 general broadcasters. It's not like Twitch staff actively watch every stream on their site. I'm not sure why everyone is always surprised that Twitch isn't run like an authoritarian state. With a few notable exceptions, which I think we can all agree were total bs, they've always been pretty lax with their broadcasting rules. And in most cases, violating their TOS has never equaled an automatic ban. Again, there are exceptions, but these are cases where Twitch was usually overreacting with people rightly pointing out they were in the wrong, and realistically, only making said choices as a PR move.
I realize this is a hugely unpopular opinion, but I think crying TOS violations anytime Phil steps out of line is lame. It reminds me of how a lot of other cows scream on Twitter or other platforms about their critics/people they dislike breaking the rules and getting them banned. If it was any other streamer being banned for saying some other Twitch rando was dumb for filming kids pissing (which is apparently a thing that happened?) I'd say that was dumb, just like a Twitch streamer getting banned for saying there are only two genders.
People use Twitch to talk shit all the time. It does technically break the very loosely defined rules set out in the TOS because you can make an argument that Phil is abusing/harassing them. But if that was applied to all streamers, the site would have been dead long ago because everyone was banned. Hell, just look at all the snarky e3 streams over the past few days. I'm sure there were streamers commenting on people/companies making dumbass decisions, which could certainly be classified as defaming/abuse/harassment under Twitch's extremely vague TOS. Twitch has already showed signs of banning people for wrongspeak in those previously mentioned PR moves. I'd rather see less of that, not more, especially on smaller channels where part of the appeal is the streamer can get away with being more chill (in the actual sense, not the Phil shilling for money sense) and have actual conversations with their audience.
All that being said, there's no denying Phil has done some bigger stuff that should have gotten him in trouble. And honestly, it might have. Like I said before, outside of big PR cases, Twitch doesn't have a reputation of being a strict place. As long as it isn't a legal TOS violation, they tend to issue slap on the wrist warnings. Hell, even in those bigger legal violations, you usually just eat a short temp ban. We've even seen that with Phil before. I have a feeling at least some of the waves of reports have also warranted a slap on the wrist email that Phil probably ignored or quietly got pissy about.
Also, Phil saying dumb shit is way more entertaining than Phil playing it safe and going into corporate Twitch shill mode.
