The US Armay has returned to Twitch after their near month-long exodus from the streaming platform. If you’ll recall the channel got into some hot water for banning users who were asking about war crimes committed by the US Army over the years.
Both the Navy and Army faced backlash over the bans shortly after launching their outreach plan for recruitment. The issue of the bans would be be nothing outside of a few laughs online, but because it was official government accounts banning people it potentially became a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.
Things got so bad that The U.S. House of Representatives took up a proposal brought by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that would have seen the Army and other military branches from being banned from recruiting kids on gaming platforms like Twitch. The vote itself failed as the Armed Forces needs kids to function and Call of Duty is a great teaching tool.
But this weekend the US Army eSports team came back to Twitch to very predictable results. A lone streamer sat quietly as the chat was flooded with comments about white phosphorus, defunding of the USPS, war crimes, and more as Chris “Goryn” Jones just sat on camera not knowing what to do before loading up a game.