Veteran Twitch streamer Steven ‘Destiny’ Bonnel has been banned from the platform — for good — revealing that he was suspended permanently due to an apparent violation of Twitch’s community guidelines on hateful conduct.
Destiny has faced multiple bans from the platform in the past, and lost his partnership in 2020 for what Twitch said was “encouraging violence.”
His content is often politically focused, hosting debates and conversations with people from across the political spectrum, which can at times lead to tensions coming to the fore.
On March 23, his account was made unavailable and he was suspended once again. As he is not partnered on Twitch though, he was able to continue broadcasting on another platform, moving to YouTube.
It looks like his platform of 650,000 followers will be shifting to the Google-owned site permanently, with the star confirming his suspension is permanent.
Why was Destiny banned from Twitch?
On his YouTube stream, Destiny confirmed the cause of the ban came under Twitch’s rules for hateful conduct, but that he wasn’t told specifically what he did or said to prompt the punishment.
This is standard for Twitch bans, where streamers will be told what rule they broke, but not how exactly they broke it.
“Twitch never tells me why I get banned,” Destiny explained. “They said that a violation occurred on stream, and then the three possible [reasons] they gave were: posting a combination of words and emotes in chat to promote denigration based on race, praising or supporting a hate crime.
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“And then the third one, this would blow my mind if it’s the third one, ‘advocating for the exclusion of a group of people based on their disability.’ There’s no way right?”
The related segment starts at 5:47:10.
When a viewer suggested it could have been a ‘hate raid’, Destiny responded, “I don’t believe my community does hate raids. I don’t believe that.”
The streamer later theorized that it might be “because of my claims that transwomen shouldn’t compete with ciswomen in women’s athletics.”
Twitch’s guidelines prohibit “calls for subjugation, segregation or exclusion…based on a protected characteristic.”
The only way Destiny can get his Twitch account back is if he successful in an appeal — however his first one failed. If he tries again and misses the mark, his 11-year career on the platform is done for good.
