U.S. Army, Navy esports teams block users who reference U.S. war crimes on Twitch; critics say the bans violate First Amendment

Activist Jordan Uhl sent comments about U.S. war crimes and “predatory” military recruitment in the chats of two gaming broadcasts on the livestream platform Twitch — one hosted by the U.S. Army and the other by the Navy. He was quickly banned from accessing both military branches’ esports channels. Lawyers at the Knight First Amendment Institute called the bans unconstitutional discrimination under the First Amendment and demanded the military unblock Uhl and nearly 300 other users who had been barred for posting similar comments, The New York Times reported.

Key Players

Twitch is a live video streaming service with approximately 15 million daily active users. Featuring thousands of independent channels, Twitch specializes in esports competition broadcasts, video game playthroughs, and music broadcasts.

The U.S. military began operating esports channels as recruitment tools in November 2018. The official Twitch channel of the Army, USArmyEsports, has over 20,000 followers. The official Twitch channel of the Navy, AmericasNavy, has about 4,000 followers. In July 2020, the Army came under fire for banning users from its gaming channel on Discord, a chat and video app that features communities for gaming, education, and business. Users posted screen recordings on Twitter showing the Army banning them from the channel after they sent messages, such as a link to a Wikipedia page about U.S. war crimes, in the chat during a broadcast, according to Polygon, a gaming website partnered with Vox Media.

Jordan Uhl is a progressive activist and co-host of “The Insurgents,” a podcast that features “biting leftist commentary & analysis” of current events, according to the podcast’s website. During a Call of Duty: Warzone broadcast hosted by the Army on July 8, 2020, Uhl asked a member of the Special Forces, “What’s your favorite u.s. w4r cr1me?” over the chat funchion. He was immediately banned from the Army’s Twitch channel. Ten days later, Uhl posted about the United States’ “predatory military recruitment process” in the chat of an Escape from Tarkov broadcast on the Navy’s Twitch channel. He was quickly banned from that channel, too.

The Knight First Amendment Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization established by Columbia University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in 2016 “to [defend] the freedoms of speech and press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, and public education,” according to its website. In 2019, the institute successfully argued in federal court that Donald Trump could not block users from his Twitter account because it was a public forum; that decision is on appeal. On July 22, 2020, the institute sent Army and Navy recruitment leadership a letter urging both branches to unblock users from their Twitch channels, arguing their broadcast chats “have all the hallmarks of public forums.”

Further Details

After he saw the Army’s response to criticism on Discord, Uhl was inspired to see what would happen if he asked about U.S. war crimes on its Twitch channel.

“It boils down to an issue of speech,” Uhl said in an interview with Vice. “If the Army wants to recruit with these modern tools and these modern platforms that are widely used by young, susceptible kids — young, impressionable kids — the kids have at least a right to know what the military does and has done.”

Twitch permits channels to establish their own rules and regulations for moderating content and allows them “to ban anyone from their channel, regardless of the reason,” according to Twitch’s FAQ on bans. Both the Army and Navy channels feature rules of moderation that surpass guidelines set by Twitch, prohibiting hate speech, links or advertisements, disrupting the chat stream, or posting in a language other than English, to name a few. A video Uhl tweeted July 20 features a Navy esports player asking his moderator to add “Eddie Gallagher,” a former Navy SEAL convicted of a war crime, to the channel’s list of blocked terms. The banned terms list already included “war crimes.”

Screenshots posted on Twitter show a number of critical messages sent by users in the chat and strings of comments deleted by the broadcast moderator during the Army’s Call of Duty: Warzone broadcast July 8. The Army banned users who referenced U.S. war crimes such as the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War or the Kunduz hospital airstrike in Afghanistan, according to Vice. The Army said Uhl had violated Twitch’s harassment policy when he asked about U.S. war crimes during the broadcast.

“The team viewed the user’s question as a violation of Twitch’s harassment policy and banned the user,” a representative of the U.S. Army esports team said in an interview with Vice. “We fully support users’ rights to express themselves, but we will not support harassment of our Soldiers on our forums.”

“This is an official government space that the military and the U.S. government is funding,” Uhl said. “I’m not going in there and saying, ‘Kill yourself.’ I’m saying, ‘Hey, this is what the U.S. military has done.’ It’s directly about the military’s behavior. I’d argue that’s fair game.”

Lawyers at the Knight Institute argued in their July 22 letter that banning users like Uhl who post critical or unfavorable messages in broadcast chats violated the First Amendment because “@USArmyEsports and @AmericasNavy Twitch channels are government-operated public forums.” The institute claimed Uhl’s comments did not constitute harassment and thus could not be banned under Twitch’s terms of service.

“Mr. Uhl’s messages drew attention to prior U.S. military actions in the context of the Army’s and Navy’s use of Twitch as a recruiting tool,” the Knight Institute said. “His messages were quintessential political speech, which lie at the ‘core of the First Amendment.’ … Nor does the government have the authority, in a forum like this one, to adopt rules that effectively prohibit participants from criticizing the military.”

The letter asked both service branches to “adopt and publish written policies to ensure that others are not banned from these channels in the future based on viewpoint.” 

Outcome 

Army unblocks users following pause on streaming; Navy continues broadcasting, remains silent

On Aug. 5, 2020, the Army announced it would restore access to its Twitch channel for users who had been banned. The announcement came on the deadline for a response set by the Knight Institute. 

“The U.S. Army eSports Team is reinstating access for accounts previously banned for harassing and degrading behavior on its Twitch stream,” the Army told Vice. “The team is reviewing and clarifying its policies and procedures for the stream and will provide all who have been banned the opportunity to participate in the space as long as they follow the team’s guidelines.”

The channel would resume streaming “in the near future,” a spokesperson for the Army told The Verge. USArmyEsports resumed broadcasting Aug. 14 with a video titled, “First Stream Back! w/Goryn.”

“We’re pleased that the Army intends to unban the users who were banned for engaging in core political speech, and we look forward to reviewing the Army’s new moderation policies,” said Meenakshi Krishnan, legal fellow at the Knight Institute. “We will closely monitor how those policies are applied in practice.”

While the Army announced it would rescind bans on users, the Navy did not issue a formal response to the Knight Institute by its Aug. 5 deadline. A spokesperson for the Navy told The New York Times on July 22 it would continue streaming on Twitch. As of Sept. 15, AmericasNavy had continued to broadcast games almost daily.

“We’re troubled that the Navy has not reconsidered its own policies and practices,” Krishnan said. “As we explained in our letter, the Navy’s esports Twitch channel is a public forum for First Amendment purposes and Navy recruiters act unconstitutionally when they ban speakers, or suppress speech, in that forum on the basis of viewpoint.”

Army, Navy streams feature racially and otherwise insensitive usernames

Just a month after the Army unbanned critics on Twitch, both branches streamed broadcasts in which players chose offensive usernames. 

On Sept. 12, the Navy broadcast a livestream of the game Among Us. Personnel Specialist Brandon Chandler announced onscreen he was playing with “close friends,” whose usernames included “Nagasaki” and “Japan 1945,” references to the U.S. nuclear bombing of Japan at the end of World War II. Another username, “Gamer Word,” references a racial slur used against Black Americans. 

Chandler acknowledged the inappropriate usernames, declining to say “Gamer Word” aloud when challenged by his fellow players. The three usernames were changed mid-stream, according to Vice News, and the broadcast has since been removed from the Navy’s channel. According to the Navy, Chandler will no longer be streaming there.

“After the events surrounding the stream of Among Us on Saturday night, where three non-Navy affiliated users decided to use extremely inappropriate in-game usernames, we have paused streaming and are re-evaluating how we vet users who are allowed to play with us on stream in an effort to ensure that this does not happen again,” Commander Lara Bollinger of the U.S. Navy Public Affairs Office told Vice in an email. “We do not condone those usernames and the Navy Goats and Glory team member’s immediate response that night was neither quick nor correct.”

On Sept. 16, a member of the Army National Guard, Axel Torres, shouted out an antisemitic username during a livestream on the Army’s official channel. “Yo, six million wasn’t enough, thank you so much for the follow, I appreciate you,” he said. According to the Army, the incident was “an unfortunate situation and goes against the Army values of fostering inclusiveness and diversity.”

“We are working with our volunteers on the [Army National Guard] Twitch Page to educate them on screen names that may have racial or negative sentiment behind them,” Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Alan Davis of the Army National Guard told Vice. Davis also said streamers would no longer announce “those types of screen names” while broadcasting.