Political commentator Hasan "HasanAbi" Piker has criticized Twitch's content policies after being banned from the platform at the end of January. The development marks his first Twitch ban of 2026.
The latest in an ever-growing list of Hasan Piker's Twitch bans materialized on Thursday, January 29, around 7pm PT. His channel on the platform went offline while he was discussing the January 24 killing of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who was shot multiple times by agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The event has sparked a federal civil-rights probe and intensified the currently ongoing stateside protests against ICE. As a result, it has been the focus of much of Piker's recent streams, which have long focused on left-wing political commentary.
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Hasan Piker Blames His Latest Twitch Ban on ADL
As a matter of policy, Twitch does not publicly comment on individual user bans. However, the platform typically provides brief explanations in private email notifications sent to affected creators, which are sometimes shared publicly. That appears to be the case here, with Piker recently posting on Twitter to suggest he was banned for using the word "Zionist" as a slur, by combining it with "pig." The streamer also blamed the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for the ban, alleging the organization had "made it a bannable offense" on Twitch, despite the fact that pairing the word "pig" with other group identifiers is generally not considered a violation under the platform’s guidelines.
Fact-Checking Hasan Piker's ADL Allegation
Twitch announced on November 15, 2024 that it would treat the term "Zionist" as policy-violating when used to attack or demean individuals or groups on the basis of background or religious belief, while still allowing the term in political discussion. To date, Twitch has not publicly credited any external group for that enforcement change. However, the ADL publicly said the platform "acted on our recommendation" in a Twitter thread responding to the update; in the same thread, the ADL argued that enforcement would matter as much as policy and cited Hasan Piker by name as an example of a high-profile Twitch streamer it said had used "Zionist" in a demeaning way many times "without consequence" during his streams. Taking all that into consideration, Piker’s allegation that the ADL played a role in the policy change leading to his January 2026 Twitch ban is, in an indirect sense, plausible.
The length of Hasan Piker’s latest Twitch ban remains unconfirmed. Under Twitch’s current community guidelines, using the term "Zionist" in conjunction with dehumanizing language can result in a ban of up to seven days when treated as an isolated incident. In cases involving repeated violations, however, the Amazon-owned platform reserves the right to impose longer penalties. The likelihood of that escalation in this instance appears low, based on the long-standing criticism from creators who accuse Twitch of having double standards and showing greater leniency toward high-profile streamers who generate a significant share of its traffic. By virtually every relevant metric, Piker is part of that group of the platform's biggest stars.
Immediately following his Twitch ban, Piker proceeded to stream on YouTube, where he surpassed 100,000 viewers in less than half an hour, with his broadcast emerging as the platform's most-watched live stream. The broadcast ran for 18 hours in total. Piker's viewers initially misattributed his ban to his coverage of the killing of Alex Pretti, which has been the cause of significant stateside societal friction in recent days. Earlier this week, multiple game developers revealed they were skipping GDC 2026 due to safety concerns stemming from the U.S. Immigration crackdown. The comments were offered immediately after Pretti's killing, which was itself followed by the early January killing of another Minneapolis-based ICE protester, Renée Nicole Macklin Good.
Source: Dexerto