Streaming culture incentivizes this kind of hateful rhetoric.
leonremi sums it up perfectly in their comment:
Yeah yeah. Usual influencer ass hat. He’s saying sorry because we got called out on this and realized it will cost him money.
Eh, usually I would agree but this was the best statement and apology I have seen in a while. He needs to show he means his words though by changing his behaviour.
If it were anyone other than Asmongold I wold agree with you but I genuinely think this guy is incapable of inauthenticity, like he’s either not smart enough or has some other sort of brain worms that make him brutally honest 100% of the time.
I can’t believe these two sentences are in the same article:
Twitch, the biggest name in the space, takes an aggressive approach to content moderation
Twitch suspended [Asmongold’s] channel for 14 days
That’s like an extended holiday…
Half a month’s views, ad revenue, gift subs and bits may be enough for a warning shot, which isn’t super surprising for big cash cows.
Well, I feel like there’s two ways to look at it.
The guy earns his money from this, so two weeks of forced pause may be a big deal. In general, the notion that Twitch decides whether the guy gets to perform his job is somewhat ridiculous.
On the other hand, there’s the ToS, there’s the normal content moderation rules, there’s the fact that most people would get a lifetime ban, if they said that.
In comparison to that, this feels like they’re just sending Asmongoldilocks into the quiet corner for two weeks, because they need to uphold their image, not because they want him to actually stop doing it.I suspect it’s somewhere in between: They don’t want to immediately throw all the revenue they get from him out the window, but they also need to preserve their image. There may be a concern that they’ll get shit for “cancelling” him if they completely ban him right away, so they want to go the “we’re warning you: get your act in line” route first.
Either way, like I said, going with a milder punishment for large cash cows is hardly surprising.
I do think they want him to stop doing things that threaten their PR, but they’re careful about being heavy handed when enough money is on the line. Mind, a temporary suspension keeps recurring subs automatically renewing, while an indefinite one automatically cancels them all and kills that revenue stream.
If I remember from PirateSoftware talking about this, recurring Twitch subs stop if the billing date falls within the ban window, so 14 days ban means losing potentially half of your subscribers.
Weird that there’s no mention of the talk between Hasan and Asmongold. I’m pretty sure that Hasan’s patience while explaining the Palestinian struggle was the biggest thing that made him change on that as much as he did.