The famous and often controversial streamer Hasan Piker is back onTwitchonly 24 hours after he was temporarily banned from the platform.Twitchinitially suspended him mid-stream over a copyright claim, but the livestreaming platform appears to have reconsidered its decision.Twitch streamer Hasan “HasanAbi” Pikeris known as much for his politics as his streaming. A self-described Progressive, Marxist, and Democratic Socialist, he started his career as an intern and later host for the news commentary showThe Young Turksbefore he began streaming on Twitch in 2018. While his political activism has sometimes led to controversy, he remains a popular streamer on Twitch, with over 2.3 million followers on the platform. Hasan also won the 2022 Streamy Award for News.RELATED:YouTube Streamer Ludwig Gets Twitch Logo Tattooed on HimselfHasan, who was alsobanned from TikTok in September, was suddenly banned from Twitch in the middle of his Stream on December 6. Viewers received a message stating that the platform removed the stream on copyright grounds. Hasan subsequently shared a screenshot of an email he received from Twitch. The streamer redacted the claimant’s email address in his tweet. However, the email attributes the copyright claim to Censored.tv, a subscription-based media platform founded by the alt-right podcaster Gavin McInnes.
Hasan had apparently been criticizing Censored.tv during his Twitch stream and accused McInnes’ platform of abusing Twitch’s copyright system to silence criticism. Hasan also suggested that Censored.tv’s copyright claim was both hypocritical and specifically targeting him. “lmao the free speech defenders own cto himself issued the takedown (just for my channel btw),” read one of Hasan’s tweets after the ban. The streamer made a similar comment responding to the StreamerBans Twitter account. He called the right-wing platform “pathetic” and noted how it claimed to defend free speech while attempting to silence critics.
Regardless of howHasan found himself banned from Twitch, the streamer is again back on the platform. Twitch does not generally reveal information about its bans, so it is unclear why the platform let him return 24 hours into what was supposed to be a 48-hour ban. However, the platform may have agreed with Hasan’s allegation that Censoredtv made the copyright claim in bad faith. Hasan’s popularity may also have encouraged Twitch to expedite his appeal process.
This also isn’t the first time that Hasan was banned from Twitch. In December 2021, the political content creator was suspended for using the term “cracker,” which Twitch considers a slur. Other past controversies include mocking US Representative Dan Crenshaw in 2019 and whenHasan purchased a $2.7 million house in West Hollywood in 2021. Some felt the latter was hypocritical, given the streamers’ Socialist political beliefs, while others dismissed that accusation as Hasan’s political opponents holding him to an arbitrarily higher standard.
