According to posts made on Nysttren’s Twitter account, her channel was officially banned due to “Browsing websites or apps featuring content that violates Twitch’s Community Guidelines.” Unfortunately, this is an even more ambiguous reason for a ban than normal from Twitch, because it doesn’t specify what the content breaking Twitch’s Community Guidelines is. It just cites that it’s a website where Community Guidelines are broken, implying that Twitch has a list of banned websites streamers aren’t allowed to visit no matter what they actually look at on the website.
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In all fairness, banning 4chan or even its not necessarily “SFW” half 4channel is an understandable decision. 4channel, despite being dubbed safe for work, is not so in the slightest. Bigoted slurs aren’t commonly moderated and semi-explicit photos are allowed so long as they don’t cross certain boundaries. It’s not difficult to understand why Twitch would ban looking at websites like 4chan/4channel. Having moderators comb through every frame looking for words or small images that break the rules would be quite burdensome. Not to mention it would probably lead to a lot of surprise bans for streamers who didn’t want to look at bad content but came upon it anyway.
Of course, the apparently new decision to ban all viewing of 4chan is going to stir some controversy. Different popular Twitch streamers have looked at 4channel in the past and don’t seem to have received warnings or bans. It’s a new precedent.
The decision to ban Nysttren is stirring up the idea that Twitch may be stepping up its moderation efforts, again. While banning streamers from visiting 4chan may be understandable given the site’s content, it’s not necessarily something routine. Nysttren’s stream was simply her taking requests from a 4chan thread for art and responding to replies. The strike and ban are unexpected, to say the least.
Nysttren confirmed that they are appealing the strike with Twitch.
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