Mizkif Criticizes Twitch TV Show Meta After Pokimane Ban: “It Was Not Worth It”

No content creator on Twitch, even the most prominent names in the industry, is above the guidelines for the platform. Last night, Imane Anys, more known as Pokimane, was at the center of controversy after receiving a ban on Twitch for 48 hours. The Moroccan-Canadian streamer was banned after watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on stream with about 25,000 other viewers on her channel.

While the reason for her ban was not outright confirmed, it’s pretty obvious that her stream, along with her channel was taken down because of an obvious DMCA violation. Since Twitch has become subject to stricter DMCA rules, lots of copyrighted content was almost outright avoided to prevent any bans similar to this. Streamers had to go as far as to not play any song they want in fear that there’d be complications with the copyright law.

Matthew “Mizkif” Rinaudo spoke on the matter, stating that this “was not worth it.” This fairly old “reaction” meta was what he was referring to. He was doing the same but quickly acted to scrap his clips and streams that would fall under the same grounds for copyright takedowns.

The backlash that Pokimane has been getting for her ban is warranted to a degree. DMCA laws have been in place for quite some time. With a platform as large as hers, it only painted her as a larger target. The content was not transformative to really warrant it to be her own.

This ongoing Twitch “meta” does seem to be coming to an unsurprising end, though. People on other platforms have seen similar things happen to their channels as part of similar 3-strike systems. It’s a lazy way to cash in on essentially taking other peoples’ works.

There have been other “metas” established in the past that had many people putting Twitch in hot water. Namely, the more recent gambling, “sexy ASMR”, and hot tub metas have made the community push back against the legitimacy of streamers and their professions from cashing in on lazy, uninspiring, and controversial trends.

Since Twitch did start as primarily a gaming platform, it has seen its expansion for IRL and other categories. While those aren’t at the forefront of discussion any more, this latest one will once again spark up conversations about fair use and other copyright laws.

Luckily, this story ends on a rather light-hearted note. Pokimane’s channel will be reinstated by Monday. She has announced that she’ll be back Monday morning for a “12-hour comeback stream”.