US congressman Matt Gaetz has started a Twitch channel. The Republican politician announced his new channel on Twitter on September 22nd, and went live shortly after with his first broadcast.
The congressman, who allegedly masterminded a potentially illegal human trafficking operation within the US, peaked at around 7k viewers on his debut stream. During the Twitch broadcast, a simulcast of Firebrand with Matt Gaetz, the congressman’s reactionary video podcast, Gaetz focused on Ray Epps, an Arizona man at the center of a conspiracy theory that the January 6th Riots were a false flag attack by the US Government.
Gaetz has been in the mainstream news recently after it came to light he had asked for a preemptive presidential pardon for crimes committed during his time as congressman. Now Gaetz joins Twitch at a time when the platform is under intense scrutiny.
Twitch’s bad week
The beginning of Gaetz’ channel couldn’t have come at a worse time for Twitch. The site started the week reeling from the Slicker allegations, where it emerged that the variety streamer had borrowed and scammed over $300,000 from friends and acquaintances.
After quickly acting to seemingly ban gambling, although not really, Twitch proceeded to shoot itself directly in the foot by announcing a restructuring of its revenue share to the top 10% of its streamers. It also denied an increase in revenue share ratio for the rest of its creators.
All this on the backdrop of a site undergoing a meltdown of its entrenched streamer aristocracy. Allegations of sexual assault, crypto scamming, virtue signalling, and other depravity have tarnished the cloth of almost every big-name streamer on the platform.
Now the Republican congressman, who embraces the firebrand moniker, has joined the site. Arguable, in just a single stream, Gaetz has already violated multiple rules, especially those within the Off Service Conduct guidelines.
However, whether Twitch will decide to act on this remains to be seen. In their own post about gambling, Twitch admitted that it hadn’t enforced many of its own rules. And the platform is notorious for its selective enforcement of its guidelines. Whatever the case, it’s just another mark against a site that seems driven to nose-dive into the ground as fast as possible.
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