The U.S. Army's Twitch account seems to be in the hot seat of news lately, and now it's been caught doing fake giveaways to its viewers as a recruitment tactic. And, surprisingly, Twitch responded to the accusations.
The United States Armed Forces has esports Twitch channels where they take aim at gamers, especially those who might be in poor financial situations, in order to recruit them for service. They broke into the esports market in the last couple of months with Twitch streams with active-duty soldiers playing games such as Call of Duty: Warzone. More recently, the US Army Twitch channel began banning users asking about war crimes, as it seems the channel is prone to heavy censorship.
While the mentioning of war crimes was somewhat of a ploy by users to annoy the channel, the American Civil Liberties Union slammed them for the bans, calling them unethical and unconstitutional. Following this, reporters over at The Nation looked deeper into the Twitch channel and found that it's been scamming its viewers with fake giveaway claims.
While the soldiers play Call of Duty or Valorant, they will repeatedly post in the chats about giveaways to win items like Xbox Elite Series 2 controllers. Again, this can take advantage of users with unstable financial income or unideal living situations, people who wouldn't normally be able to afford these items, because the links don't actually lead to giveaway registration pages. The vulnerable teens would find the links to redirect them to recruitment pages for the US Armed Forces, "with no additional mention of a contest, odds, total number of winners, or when a drawing would occur," The Nation writes.
Twitch responded to these claims, but not until users and streamers criticized Twitch for its active silence, and only privately. "The silence from Twitch on the latest wave of criticism regarding the military using the site to scam kids into sharing personal info speaks volumes," one user writes on Twitter. This certainly isn't the first time Twitch has been accused of double standards. The platform recently banned Dr Disrespect, but some believe streamers like Alinity are only given light reprimands despite numerous incidents that violate Twitch's policies.
Twitch reportedly wrote to Kotaku that they would require the US Army to comply with the platform's streaming policies, and would henceforth be requiring the channel to remove any claims or links to the false giveaways. But it doesn't look like any further action is being currently taken by Twitch to reprimand the US Army's channel for its deceptive actions.
Source: The Nation, Kotaku