The U.S. Army says it will restore Americans’ God-given right to shitpost on its esports channel, the premier destination for watching your favourite former sniper shoot up digital Middle Eastern villages. The Verge reports that the Army has decided to unban pesky anti-war Twitch commenters, with caveats ensuring that, in all likelihood, they’ll be banned again.
Last month, the Army and Navy’s esports teams automatically deleted comments and banned hundreds of anti-war protesters from both Discord servers and Twitch streams. Posting phrases such as “war crimes” would result in automatic deletion. In one recorded example, a Green Beret replied to a commenter who asked, “what’s your favourite u.s. W4r cr1me?” with “Have a nice time getting banned, my dude.” The Army told Gizmodo at the time that it had banned around 300 users for “harassing behaviour” over the course of three days.
After free speech organisations and the media protested over censorship on a government forum, the esports team told Gizmodo, it simply can’t do as a government forum for speech. The list stipulates that users can’t harass, spam, or disrupt the stream. Arbitrarily, the esports team gives itself permission to moderate messages that “are not constructive, topics outside the scope of the USAE, and pushing personal agendas.” Protesting w4r cr1mes, for instance.
And then there’s the “User Agreement,” which reads:
The Department of Defence reserves the right, but undertakes no duty, to review, move or delete any material submitted as a comment to the information provided for display or placed on the social media and streaming sites in its sole discretion, without notice. Comments submitted to these sites will be reviewed and a representative sample may be posted on the site or inappropriate comments may be deleted at the sole discretion of the Department of Defence.
“The User Agreement is not enforceable,” Gilens told us, “at least when it comes to censoring speech based on its content or viewpoint.”
It’s unclear whether a “review of the policies” will include removing the user agreement, and the Army has yet to respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
So go back and find out. Is the Army esports team ready to rumble? Can they allow the insubordination to stand? Can they handle the allegations that they’re grooming 13-year-old kids to perform drone strikes on children when they’re just trying to host a friendly death match over here?
Update 7/8/2020 3:10 a.m. AEST: Activist Jordan Uhl, who authored a piece for The Nation on military esports teams and was banned for mentioning “w4r cr1mes,” told Gizmodo that he’s still banned. “I suspect they said that yesterday just to placate the Knight First Amendment Centre attorneys because the deadline to respond/remedy the situation was yesterday,” he said, adding, “I’ll believe it when I see it, I guess.” The Knight First Amendment Centre had sent a letter to the U.S. Army and Navy on behalf of Uhl’s constitutional rights. Uhl also noted that bans are still active on the Navy’s esports channel, which is still streaming.