Twitch imposed a three-day ban on popular Brazilian streamer Gabriel “Gabepeixe” Baptista for showing Pink Floyd’s Back Catalogue poster during a livestream. Interestingly, viewers could only see the artwork through the video of another streamer who wasn’t banned for displaying the imagery.
That isn’t all, however, as the poster doesn’t even include original album artwork – only recreations in the form of bodypaint displayed on the backs of multiple women. Reddit user “lxzander” summed up the ridiculousness of the entire situation with one comment, writing, “this is some Twitch TOS mental-gymnastics… [it’s] album art that includes body painting which is from another channel but this guy get banned? wat.”
“Wat” indeed. Twitch is already under fire for a chain of inconsistent bans, spreading fear and confusion across the platform over what is or isn’t appropriate. The funny thing is that creators would be more likely to avoid situations such as these if they at least understood what to avoid. Due to a lack of clarity in this arena, streamers are frequently banned for unintended, minor infractions.
In Gabepeixe’s case, it is easy to sympathize with the streamer, especially considering his content is transformative work – like that of most streamers – and therefore it isn’t plagiarism by any means. His frustration is apparent in a short video he recently tweeted out, updating his followers on the whole situation.
For those who don’t speak Portuguese, Twitter user @StrikeeTeam translated Gabepeixe’s message into English. According to the translator, Gabepeixe says that he was informed by Brazilian Twitch staff on Thursday (Sept. 19th) that he would be banned on Friday due to the Pink Floyd imagery that appeared in his stream. The ban did not arrive as stated, however, and his follows abruptly disappeared from his profile on Monday (Sept. 23rd) of the following week. He was then banned officially on Tuesday (Sept. 24th) and was told that it was supposed to be a day earlier.
This disheveled handling of the suspension has come to be expected of Twitch. Since the ban is supposed to last three days total, he should be back on Twitch by Thursday. Gabepeixe also mentioned that he doesn’t agree with being banned, but doesn’t want to talk much about it. Lastly, he announced that streaming is a big part of his life and that he looks forward to being back on Thursday.
This is another strike against Twitch that shows the company’s inconsistency when dealing with content creators. The streaming company continues to make moves that seem to cause confusion rather than solve issues. Ultimately, this tends to bring more negative attention to these situations through the bans themselves. Clearly, Twitch is taking things seriously when it comes to its Terms of Service, but the enforcement of their guidelines seems erratic.
Source: Twitter, Reddit
