For years, people have been urging social media platforms—primarily Twitter—to suspend or ban President Donald Trump from their sites. The President and his campaign frequently use social media to disseminate false information, conspiracy theories, and offensive or bizarre memes.
It appears that the popular livestream app Twitch is the first notable social media platform to heed these calls. The site announced that it would suspend Trump's account after the campaign rebroadcast his infamous 2015 campaign launch, in which he referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.
In the livestream of Trump's sparsely attended rally, he recounted the story of a "tough hombre" breaking into a woman's house.
A spokesperson for the site told HuffPost:
"Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trump's channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed."
It's unclear how long the suspension will last.
Whether it's Twitter flagging Trump's tweets for glorifying violence or Twitch temporarily suspending his platform, Trump's allies erroneously equate private companies determining who uses their platforms to censorship. The same cries are brought forward in defense of deplatformed extremists like Laura Loomer, Jacob Wohl, and Milo Yiannopoulos.
Though Trump's supporters aren't on board with the decision, many still applauded Twitch for keeping his behavior on the platform in check.
Others were surprised to learn that Trump even had a Twitch, considering it's typically a platform for people to stream themselves playing video games.
Some are calling for Twitter—Trump's most famously used platform—to follow Twitch's example.
The move came the same day that Reddit banned the popular subreddit The_Donald for hate speech as well.
