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- President Trump's Twitch account is temporarily banned, the Amazon-owned video streaming company announced on Monday.
- Twitch cited Trump's own words for the temporary ban, which it said are in violation of the company's hateful conduct rules.
- The two prime examples given by Twitch were from two Trump campaign rallies — one in 2016, and another from late June in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
- Twitch is the latest social platform struggling with moderating the speech of the US president.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
President Trump's Twitch account is temporarily suspended, Twitch announced on Monday.
The account is suspended for violating the company's hateful conduct rules, a Twitch spokesperson said. Two examples given by Twitch were directly pulled from Trump's campaign rally speeches.
"Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch," the statement said. "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."
The first of two examples Twitch cited as representative of "offending content" that violated the company's hateful conduct policy came from a Trump campaign rally in 2016.
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people," Trump said at the 2016 event.
In another example given by Twitch, from Trump's recent campaign event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the offending content was a fictional anecdote Trump offered.
"Hey, it's 1:00 o'clock in the morning and a very tough, I've used the word on occasion, hombre, a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or whatever he may do," Trump said during his speech in Tulsa. "And you call 911 and they say, 'I'm sorry, this number's no longer working.'"
It's unclear how long the suspension will last, and Twitch isn't saying.
Other major tech companies with social platforms, from Facebook to Twitter and YouTube, have struggled with how and when to moderate the current US president. Though Trump has repeatedly tested the limits of Facebook's moderation policies, the company has more or less declined to moderate Trump.
In a recent example, Trump posted the same message to both Facebook and Twitter.
"When the looting starts, the shooting starts," Trump said on Twitter and Facebook, a direct quote of a notoriously harsh Miami police chief who invoked the phrase against black Americans during the race riots of the late 1960s.
Since Trump posted his messages to social media platforms, which have their own rules of conduct on free speech, his message was flagged by Twitter for "glorifying violence."
In order to see the tweet, you must click through a warning that explicitly says the message violates Twitter's usage policies "regarding the glorification of violence based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today."
Trump's identical message posted to Facebook went untouched — despite violating Facebook's Community Standards for conduct. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly called Trump personally to ask him to tone down the post, apparently to no avail. Since that decision, Facebook employees have been openly speaking out in defiance of the company's inaction.
Currently, going to Trump's Twitch channel leads to a message that says, "Sorry. Unless you've got a time machine, that content is unavailable."
White House and Trump campaign spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment as of publishing.
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