A proposal to ban military recruitment on Twitch failed to pass a vote in the United States House of Representatives yesterday. The proposal, introduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, would have been an amendment to the House Committee on Appropriations bill, which is part of the process in setting the annual budget for the Pentagon.
Ocasio-Cortez argued that the U.S. Military should not be marketing to children as young as twelve years old with banner ads on the platform.
“Right now, currently, children on platforms such as Twitch are bombarded with banner ads linked to recruitment signup forms that can be submitted by children as young as 12 years old. These are not education outreach programs for the military,” she said.
The Army’s recruiting efforts through esports have proven surprisingly effective, generating over 3,500 recruitment leads in 2019. However, they have also been controversial. Last week, the Army paused its recruitment efforts after its Twitch streams were bombarded with questions about war crimes. Moderators banned users who brought up alleged war crimes and war criminals in the Twitch chat.
just having a good time with the US Army esports twitch stream @JordanUhl pic.twitter.com/qnjyxg1KP0
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) July 8, 2020
In an article written for The Nation, political activist Jordan Uhl reported that the Army’s Twitch channel was frequently posting prompts for viewers to win an Xbox Elite Series 2 controller, which would direct to a recruitment form with no mention of the giveaway. The Army was told by Twitch to stop the practice.
Following the failed vote, Ocasio-Cortez bemoaned the fact that many of her colleagues seemed to have no idea what Twitch even is, which is certainly conceivable considering how U.S. congresspeople have shown their lack of knowledge about social media in other arenas.
Imagine trying to explain to your colleagues who are members of Congress what Twitch is 😭
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 30, 2020
Source: https://news.knowyourmeme.com/news/house-votes-down-amendment-that-would-ban-military-recruitment-on-twitch