- The US Army has launched a
Twitch channel as a means of recruitment, and the streams have opened a dialogue between the military and civilians. That dialogue has mostly been, "How do you feel about war crimes?" - After viewers mentioned US wars and events like My Lai, Haditha, and Abu Ghraib, the Army started blocking commenters on its Twitch channel.
- Some civil rights lawyers now say the Army's blocking of commenters in the Twitch chat may have violated the posters'
free speech rights.
As it looks away from conventional recruitment methods, like billboards and TV spots, the army is now streaming
After the army started to ban that discourse, civil liberties groups got involved. But why the Army has an esports team in the first place is another example of it trying to appear Very Online.
Brands tweeting at other brands is always terrible and should never be encouraged, but some brand interactions are worse than others. Earlier this month, the US Army sent an innocuous tweet replying to Discord, the Slack-for-gamers app popular among the Twitch crowd. The message read: "UwU." (Though you might be inclined to pronounce this as "oo-woo," it's actually a kaomoji – the Japanese equivalent of emoticons like :-). It's supposed to read as someone making a cute face, with closed eyes and a slight smile.)
—U.S. Army Esports (@USArmyesports) June 30, 2020
It's an odd look for one of the most powerful militaries in the world, but not surprising in the grand scheme of things. It's marketing! At the end of the day, the Army is just trying to get people to use its product, by which I mean: support or enlist in the military.
The Army having an esports group streaming regularly on Twitch accomplishes a number of things at once. It reaches a young demographic that is quickly growing old enough to be recruited. It also makes the military seem approachable: Like video games? Join the Army!
It's the latest in a long history of marketers trying to seem cool and on fleek. Earlier this year, the military unveiled a new recruitment campaign aimed at showing that the military had plenty of jobs other than gun guy.
"You're live for hours on end, talking to these people in the chat. You develop a community and know your individual chatters. There is an ecosystem in every Twitch channel," leftist streamer Hasan Piker told The Nation. He described military recruitment via Twitch as "predatory."
It's for the same reason that the military loans its equipment and facilities to Michael Bay movies that make the armed forces look good. A decade ago, the Army even helped develop its own shooter, America's Army, a blatant piece of interactive propaganda. Now a recruit who might not remember 9/11 streams PUBG.
But unlike movies and making its own video games, a social media presence brings new complications. Or really, just one big one: that the audience can respond. The UwU tweet brought a whole new set of eyes to the Army's esports initiative, and that might not be a good thing.
Users created a game out of seeing how fast they could get banned from the Army's Twitch chat, and its corresponding Discord chat server, for asking about war crimes like the My Lai Massacre and human rights abuses like those that occurred at Abu Ghraib.
—Rod Breslau (@Slasher) July 8, 2020
—jordan (@JordanUhl) July 15, 2020
A spokesperson for Twitch would not comment on the US military's presence on Twitch specifically, but did refer to the site's general stance on getting banned from the chat: "Channel owners and moderators are free to ban anyone from their channel, regardless of the reason. Twitch Staff will not assist in reversing channel-specific bans."
Because the military is a government organization, however, things get a little murkier. Much like people suing to get unblocked by Donald Trump on Twitter, the scenario raises the question of what rights to discourse people have with official government presences on social media.
Last year, an appeals court ruled that Donald Trump violated people's right to the First Amendment by blocking them from viewing his tweets. "Once the president has chosen a platform and opened up its interactive space to millions of users and participants," an appeals court ruled, "he may not selectively exclude those whose views he disagrees with."
The Army's blocking of commenters in the Twitch chat may fall under the same guidelines. The ACLU tweeted that "banning users who ask important questions isn't 'flexing,' it's unconstitutional."
"The government cannot constitutionally prohibit speech on the basis of viewpoint. And it looks like that's exactly what it did here," Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney for the ACLU, told Vice. Twitch and Discord chats run by government entities are technically public forums, and thus are protected by the First Amendment. That amendment has carveouts for things like credible threats of violence, but simply saying, "Hey remember this? Probably wouldn't fit.
Calling someone a slur online is an obvious offense, but does telling others in the chat about how the military has operated historically and continues to operate in the present constitute harassment? Probably not. If the military thinks that merely mentioning its past atrocities is a bannable offense, it might be worth interrogating that instinct. Figuratively interrogating, I mean.