Who runs Twitch? Hochul calls for streamer to be held as accomplice to Buffalo hate crime
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has blasted the streaming giant Twitch as an "accomplice" in the deaths of 10 people who were shot and killed in a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket on Saturday, May 14.
18-year-old Payton Gendron live-streamed his massacre on the social media platform, which is popular among video gamers. Hochul accused Twitch of enabling killers like Gendron to show off their crimes to massive audiences, thereby possibly encouraging copycats. While the clip had reportedly been removed in under two minutes from when it was first shared, Hochul said it should have been taken down within seconds.
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"The social media platforms that profit from their existence need to be responsible for monitoring. They can in a sense become an accomplice if not legally, but morally," the governor told reporters in the aftermath of the massacre. "These outlets must be more vigilant in monitoring social media content and certainly the fact that this act of barbarism, this execution of innocent human beings could be live-streamed on social media platforms and not taken down within a second says to me that there is a responsibility out there. And we're going to continue to work on this and make sure that those who provide those platforms have a moral and ethical and I hope to have a legal responsibility to ensure that such hate cannot populate these sites." Hochul added, "Because this is the result when you have individuals who use these platforms and talk to others who share these demented views and support each other and talk about the techniques that they’ll engage in and post these ideas and share them with others in the hope that they can all someday rise up in their demented view of the world."
A Twitch spokesperson told the Daily Mail that they were "devastated" after learning that the shooting was live-streamed on their platform. The gaming giant said Gendron's live stream was removed from their platform in less than two minutes using a combination of human review and proactive AI detection. It is now screening for any duplicates that may be shared on the platform.
Hochul, who is set to stand for election for a full term as New York governor, said she believes "social media platforms" should be able to wipe off violent live streams "in a second," although she didn't mention Twitch by name. "The fact that this act of barbarism, this execution of innocent human beings could be live-streamed on social media platforms and not taken down within a second says to me that there is a responsibility," the governor added.
"We are devastated to hear about the shooting that took place this afternoon in Buffalo, New York. Our hearts go out to the community impacted by this tragedy," Twitch said in its full statement. "Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind and works swiftly to respond to all incidents. The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content."
Just to show how sinister this white supremacist Payton Gendron was during this anti-Black terrorist attack in Buffalo…
— Tariq Nasheed 🇺🇸 (@tariqnasheed) May 15, 2022
in between targeting Black victims, he spared the life of a white man he almost shot, and apologized to him pic.twitter.com/D2jvnrz3W6
Who runs Twitch?
The streaming platform is operated by Twitch Interactive, which is currently a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Content on the site is viewed either via live stream or video on demand. The service was originally founded in 2007 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear under the name JustinTV, which was divided into several different categories with gaming being the fastest growing of them all. This led to the creators branching out and creating Twitch, a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform. The popularity of the new platform overshadowed that of its general-interest counterpart. Amazon purchased Twitch Interactive on August 25, 2014, for $970 million in cash.