A protester takes a selfie in front of police dispersing the Capitol riot. (Photo: Tasos Katopodis, Getty Images)
Twitch’s relationship with misinformation is complicated. In 2020, platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter grappled with their outsized roles in the creation and cultivation of conspiracy movements like QAnon. Misinformation troubled Twitch in a different way, but the platform emerged curiously un-plagued by a comparable extremism epidemic. Now, midway through 2021, Twitch is finally gearing up to combat misinformation.
New York Times published a story about extremism on Twitch that overstates the scope of a much more nuanced problem, making it sound like a significant number of far-right influencers fled to Twitch after getting the boot from Facebook and YouTube. The story proceeds to only cite a small handful of specific streamers, one of whom appears to have given up on Twitch a month ago and none of whom have large audiences by Twitch standards.