It might sound strange, but Twitch seems to have actually done something right for once. They’ve actually made a move to clean up their platform. They have removed streamer, Jenna, from their partner program, meaning she can no longer earn money directly through Twitch.
If you don’t know who Jenna is then you’re in for a wild ride. She’s a streamer who mainly streams in the Just Chatting and Runescape genres on Twitch. She’s also been caught doing some pretty reprehensible things. Such as admitting to allegedly sexually assaulting someone, and using several different slurs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HenISb7MmMQ
A little while ago Jenna had her discord chat logs leaked. Looking through the logs makes for some pretty interesting reading. Numerous times she uses ableist slurs, but realistically that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The more worrying incidents are the numerous times she says racist stuff. Equating ‘brown’ people to terrorists is a particular gem. But, she’s also not afraid of threatening to rape members of her discord. Then there are all the homophobic slurs thrown in for good measure.
The chat logs don’t even begin to cover all of the other terrible stuff she’s done . As if using these words in text form isn’t bad enough, there is a mounting pile of video evidence of her using slurs IR L.
Removing Jenna from the partner program is a good move, but is it enough? On the one hand, Jenna has said some terrible things during her time as a Twitch partner. On the other hand, she also seems to be making a genuine effort to understand what she did wrong .
She recently tweeted about being removed from the partner program. Basically, she seems to agree that it was the right move, even ending the tweet with: “If you allow me, I will regain your trust and the community’s with my future actions”.
If this Tweet is genuine, and I see no reason to believe it isn’t, then she clearly wants to make an effort. That seems like a good sign to me. If we start overly punishing people even after they try to improve, then aren’t we teaching people that there’s no reason to try and get better.