Twitch confirms that it has removed a police emote over concerns that it will be misused by users. The streaming platform is one of several gaming companies to have made changes following global protests against racial injustice and police brutality, with Sony choosing to delay its PS5 reveal event because of it.
Speaking to The Verge, Twitch said that it had removed TwitchCop, an emote which shows a cartoon character in a police uniform blowing a whistle, from the site "to prevent misuse." The Twitch spokesperson also said that "we are constantly evaluating our policies to ensure we are addressing emerging behaviors and language on our platform."
Twitch has removed emotes over usage concerns before like last month when it took down several "simp" emotes as they could be used for harassment. The decision to remove TwitchCop, a global emote which was available to all Twitch users, is unlikely to cause as much controversy as the removal of the simp emotes. Rod "Slasher" Breslau, a streaming and esports journalist, tweeted that he "didn't even realize this was an emote in the first place" with many of the responses from Slasher's followers saying the same thing.
It's not surprising to see that Twitch has concerns over the misuse of an emote. Trihard, an emote featuring Twitch streamer Trihex, is known for being misused. In 2018, xQc was removed from Overwatch League team the Dallas Fuel after being suspended for using a "racially disparaging" emote while streaming on Twitch. Given how quickly memes can spread and how fast the language of Twitch can change, the site will have wanted to preempt any misuse before it really took hold in the community.
The decision has been met with some calls for Twitch to do more, though, as racist language and offensive content from popular streamers has been known to get overlooked by the site's moderators. Just this week, Twitch banned Xbox content creator Mil Grau, but this came after a multi-year long campaign to get him banned on the site and to get Xbox to cut ties with him.
Twitch has been making some moves to make its platform more inclusive. In May, the company announced the Twitch Safety Advisory Council which could potentially help Twitch handle issues like this. It's difficult to say whether any real change is headed to the site but viewers and streamers who have found themselves being harassed over racial issues will be watching things closely.
Source: The Verge