After calls for Twitch to address antisemitism on the platform, the site’s hateful conduct policy now includes “Zionist” as a potential slur. Twitch specifies this is conditional: you’re allowed to discuss the political movement of that name, but not “attack or demean another individual or group of people on the basis of their background or religious belief.”
If you had looked at the link of this post, you would have read:
Twitch specifies this is conditional: you’re allowed to discuss the political movement of that name, but not “attack or demean another individual or group of people on the basis of their background or religious belief.”
I.e. nothing is masqueraded here as long as they keep to this. This seems to be a reasonable policy. I’ve seen a couple of instances of people being derogatorily called zionists just for supporting the people of current Israel not being pushed away out of their now decades-old homes, which is hard to still call Zionist if they don’t support any further expansion and any offensive military action.
There’s almost never anything gained to use “Zionist” on someone as if saying “asshole”.
I guess my pessimistic lens is a little strong and I generally don’t trust large companies to act in good faith. So maybe I’m over scrutinizing here and being a bit of a curmudgeon.
I think your perspective is fair, and it’s likely this is akin to a high school faculty dealing with some random word or idea becoming a meme of sorts and causing problems. So they have to write some new rule that sounds ridiculous or weird.
It sucks there’s so much racism and bigotry driving forces in the world that it’s hard to not be dubious of everything. You always kinda wonder about the actual motivation behind things like this.
Calling zionism what it is shouldn’t be discouraged with dog whistles masquerading as conduct policies.
At the same time I’d like to remind folks that not all Jewish people subscribe to Zionism.
There are a couple Jewish lead organizations that fight for the freedom of Palestine and have been very critical of Israel for many years.
Jewish Voices for Freedom is one group. I wonder how they’d feel about Twitches new policy. I’m genuinely curious what their opinion would be.
If you had looked at the link of this post, you would have read:
I.e. nothing is masqueraded here as long as they keep to this. This seems to be a reasonable policy. I’ve seen a couple of instances of people being derogatorily called zionists just for supporting the people of current Israel not being pushed away out of their now decades-old homes, which is hard to still call Zionist if they don’t support any further expansion and any offensive military action.
There’s almost never anything gained to use “Zionist” on someone as if saying “asshole”.
I guess my pessimistic lens is a little strong and I generally don’t trust large companies to act in good faith. So maybe I’m over scrutinizing here and being a bit of a curmudgeon.
I think your perspective is fair, and it’s likely this is akin to a high school faculty dealing with some random word or idea becoming a meme of sorts and causing problems. So they have to write some new rule that sounds ridiculous or weird.
It sucks there’s so much racism and bigotry driving forces in the world that it’s hard to not be dubious of everything. You always kinda wonder about the actual motivation behind things like this.
Further to this, the majority of zionists are christians.