U.S. Army blocked from recruiting via Twitch

The U.S. Army recently drew a lot of attention on Twitch for casually violating the first amendment rights of people exercising their right to critique and question their government. Recently, that attention backfired when the U.S. Army decided to circumvent the local government and ignore Twitch’s rules.

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The U.S. Army streams on Twitch

n-nya >w< *notices ur war crimes* OwO what's this...?

— el smosh (@psychic_terrain) July 2, 2020

The U.S. Army has been running an Esports division in order to appeal to potential recruits.

During the stream, the Green Beret on camera characterized viewers asking about U.S. atrocities as "internet keyboard monsters" and said, "I'm bigger than you." https://t.co/rHp71Tlrwm

— VICE (@VICE) July 10, 2020

During a recent stream, the U.S. Army was flooded with comments in the chat asking the streamers what their favorite American war crime is after a video posted by Rod Breslau on Twitter went viral. The U.S. Army did not provide an answer and instead decided to ban anyone asking the question, an act which may be considered a violation of any American commenters’ first amendment rights.

just having a good time with the US Army esports twitch stream @JordanUhl pic.twitter.com/qnjyxg1KP0

— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) July 8, 2020

The streamer in question was reportedly a 12 year veteran, but apparently that was not yet enough time to develop a thick enough skin to handle internet trolling from a Twitch chat without violating the constitution they claim to defend. As if the ban wasn’t enough, the green beret on camera decided to drive home the point by saying “I’m bigger than you,” as a threat to anyone who would want to challenge him.

U.S. Army eSports team caught red handed attempting to recruit via Twitch

Twitch has blocked the U.S. Army from running giveaways after they were allegedly found to be redirecting to a recruitment page. https://t.co/7GT1yyEybW pic.twitter.com/iTn4QuSNIC

— IGN (@IGN) July 17, 2020

The added attention from this viral video, however, eventually spelled more trouble for the military backed eSports team. Viewers of the U.S. Army stream were reportedly presented with raffles and contests in the chat where they could enter to win a controller. However, when users clicked on these links they were redirected to a recruitment page where they could sign up for the U.S. Army.

The U.S. Army has a history of focusing its recruitment efforts on young Americans, and this seems to be in line with their standard practices. However, this latest scheme ended up being against Twitch’s community guidelines, and resulted in their promotion being cancelled by Twitch.

❌ Twitch Partner "DonaldTrump" (@TeamTrump) has been banned! ❌https://t.co/50dZbS4CcU#twitch #ban #firstban #partner #twitchpartner 👮🏾‍♀️

— StreamerBans (@StreamerBans) June 29, 2020

The U.S. Army isn’t the only Twitch account associated with the American government to come under fire. Twitch also recently suspended impeached President* Donald Trump’s Twitch account for broadcasting hateful content.