Twitch Promises More Transparency Over Bans After FallenShadow Outcry, Assures “There Is No Mod Who Hates Vtubers”
In light of the controversy surrounding the dubious ban of vtuber FallenShadow, Twitch has sworn to be more transparent in communicating their reasons for temporarily removing any given streamer from the platform.
Editor’s Note: This article cites multiple fan accounts for FallenShadow, to discuss specific moments from past streams. For clarity, the following are links to FallenShadow’s YouTube Twitch VOD channel, ASMR YouTube channel, YouTube clip channel, and Twitch account.
The kerfuffle surrounding FallenShadow began on September 13th when the vtuber, known as Shondo to her fans, held a ‘drunk stream’, wherein she was seen drinking while hanging out with her followers.
The VOD is not present on Twitch or her YouTube VOD channel and only a scant few clips of her being drunk can be found, so the exact events of the night are slightly obfuscated. The only confirmed fact is that, per her own admission, Shondo got “too white girl wasted“.
But shortly after the stream’s airing, some fans became to claim that while live, the vtuber had begun discussing both her feelings of loneliness and wanting “to not be around anymore.”
And while this would turn out out to be far from the case, the truth would not come out until well after this false narrative had directly affected her channel.
It should be noted that Shondo has previously discussed having schizoaffective disorder. She had suffered from visual hallucinations and feelings of paranoia at a young age, but streaming had helped her emotionally and financially (being able to pay rent for her family).
The day after Shondo’s drinking stream, she learned, from an automated X account no less, that she had been banned from Twitch.
“No ‘you are banned’ email from either Twitch or my partner support,” said the streamer in reaction to the news. “Last time I got an email why before the ban went through at least. but… nothing ?”
(Shondo had previously been banned in July, on the day of her birthday stream and returning after a hiatus, due to (in Twitch’s words) “certain sexual behaviors / words combined with your V-Tuber avatar which appears to be depicting a minor.”)
Shondo then proceeded to go straight for Twitch’s jugular, writing on Twitter, “Hey @twitch @TwitchSupport what the heck man? Woke up to being banned, found out through a Twitter bot because I have received NO email about it, nevermind why.”
“Is drinking on stream against TOS now?” she questioned. “Or is it just against the made up second set of rules that my partner manager admitted moderation has for me (That I’m not allowed to see or hear about btw) because I am a petite woman with a high soft voice using a vtuber model that reflects me IRL?”
“So… do I at least get to know WHY I’m banned this time?” Shondo continued. “For how long? Because nobody has told me anything and this is starting to feel very much like bullying. I don’t think it’s fair that one rogue admin who hates vtubers gets to play with my career like this. I’m legally disabled and I support 6 vulnerable family members through streaming. And someone who just ‘doesn’t like vtubers’ gets to keep hurting me (and others) with no explanation, logic or reason? While we all know this is a site full of naked women on the front page? Okay.”
Just 30 minutes after this post, Shondo finally received a reply from Twitch regarding her ban.
But much to her dismay – “There is no f—–g way,” she stated – the streaming platform revealed that not only was the ban remaining in place, but also that it had been issued because site administrators believed she was potentially considering self-harm.
“We’ve reviewed your content (video) and we’re concerned about you,” Twitch opened. “If you’re currently struggling or feeling unsafe, please reach out for help, talk to someone you trust, contact your doctor or go to the hospital.”
“Suicidal or self-harm behavior (seriously threatening to harm yourself or endanger your life) is not allowed on Twitch,” they added. “As this is a breach of our Community Guidelines, we’ve suspended your account temporarily (30 days). Know that you are valued as part of the Twitch community. Please take care.”
For the purposes of this report, we contacted FallenShadow for both more information and a comment, to which she responded by sharing her further suspicions regarding the ban.
“It’s also worth noting in my opinion that the email I finally received lacks a lot of the information that typical twitch ban emails contain, as if it was rushed together and sent out quickly,” wrote the vtuber. “If you look up how they usually look (which is how mine looked the first time I was banned on my birthday, too) the one I received on September 14th is incredibly barren.”
“There’s even ‘(video)’ written where they’re supposed to link the offending content, and there’s no violated policy listed on that email either!” she further exclaimed. “I was so bewildered when I received it that I thought it was a fake email at first (since I’d tweeted about my ban, and it’d been many hours since it’d gone through) but no, it was real!”
Insisting she was fine and not even hungover, Shondo continued speaking out against the problem on X.
Notably, at one point another user claimed that “thousands of people [were] trying to talk you down from doing something stupid,” to which she denied expressing not anything suicidal, but rather deep gratitude for her fans’ support in helping her get through her emotional lows.
“I don’t know why you interpreted it that way but I said the exact opposite of this. streaming is the reason I am alive today,” said Shondo. “My community’s love and support is the reason I wake up and I feel like I have a reason to keep going. Streaming literally saved me. Last night wasn’t a cry for help it was my gratitude. I get I was drunk and a bit of a mess but I thought that was pretty clear at the time and it still is now.”
“I’m afraid for the future because i always have the niggling thought that all of my friends will leave me or everyone will leave me or things will get worse because eventually my meds will stop working,” she then admitted. “That doesn’t mean I want to hurt myself in any way or plan on it. But ending myself is absolutely something I have 0 plan of ever doing and after watching the VOD I don’t know where you or a few others got that idea from. It’s just untrue. I was drunk but I wasn’t so intoxicated I had no control of my actions and I know what I did and didn’t say (there’s video evidence of it….).”
While she took “No Shondo September” in her stride and continued to make light of her ban, many of her fans were furious at what they saw as anti-vtuber sentiment from Twitch.
Fellow Vtuber Gruff Donaar explained that “A 30day ban is actually insane, because if any resubs don’t occur due to the channel being banned, they automatically get disabled. Someone in twitch staff has it out for Shondo, and is trying to kill her channel.”
Others highlighted Twitch’s alleged ongoing hypocrisy against vtubers, specifically in how they treat them with harsher gloves than the site’s top female streamers, as the latter are still allowed to get away with such ‘vtuber bannable’ behavior as streaming in skimpy clothes, projecting gameplay onto green-screen panties, or wearing a bikini top and thong while on a vibrating machine with the 1/2 the screen showing their buttocks (and less than a quarter showing gameplay).
Meanwhile, vtuber Zentreya had received a warning from Twitch over her model showing a swimsuit in September, despite it being less lurid than what other flesh-and-blood streamers were actively doing. Fellow vtuber Fefe was also indefinitely banned in late August (her seventh ban) and claims Twitch has refused to give her or her lawyers a reason for it.
Notably, in response to these controversies, Shondo offered her sympathies to Zentreya and Fefe, and began theorizing that something strange had been happening behind the scenes regarding Twitch’s treatment of vtubers.
Despite Shondo’s ban being for 30 days, it was lifted one day and sixteen hours later. Once again, Shondo learned of this via an automated third party, with Twitch sending an email later. This time the email was more bizarre, prompting Shondo to exclaim “Hahahah what though. so they’re admitting it’s only because of backlash? Ok…”
Per Twitch’s email, “A member of our team has reviewed your appeal and can confirm that the correct enforcement was issued. However, given the details of your case, we have determined that your appeal can be accepted.”
Shondo continued to be confused, with another X user speculating that while Twitch was confident they acted correctly with the info they had at the time, additional context has shown an appeal was acceptable.
“It really is just a phrasing issue that makes them seem as passive aggressive and evil as possible,” Shondo explained. “If they’d worded it this way [the way the other user had] id be like Okay thank you :D”
“I’ve been assured by my Partner Manager, and I’ve been assured by Mr. CEO John Dan Clancy, that apparently there is no Twitch mod who hates vtubers. It’s not a thing… Apparently?”
On September 18th, Shondo’s returning stream, she explained how she very rarely drinks, and discussed the ban in a little more detail. While she had a lot of anxiety over the ban, this did result in interesting information from Twitch.
“Yeah, all that I’ll say is everything is allegedly, allegedly– there seems to be a lot of crackdown on vtubers in the last week or two- allegedly, and they don’t want to end-game me.” Shondo assured. “I’m gonna start this out with a quick preface, I did technically break the TOS. I wanna say that, there was one sentence I said that broke the TOS. I take full responsibility for that. I forgot to say the magic two words unfortunately, I forgot to say ‘in Minecraft.’ My bad.”
(For those unaware, adding ‘in Minecraft‘ to the end of sentences involving death or something terms-of-service breaking, has been a running gag-slash-necessity for players to avoid punishment.)
“I was rambling, I was drunk, I still had control of my actions,” Shondo insisted. “I was not so drunk that I did not have control of my actions, and I stand by that. I got very sad, very emotional, very loving, and then, because I was embarrassed I said ‘I’m going to [censor bleep sound effect] myself after the stream. With context it was very clearly a joke. Which is why I think there’s so much backlash as well, because I spent like 20 minutes crying how grateful I was for streaming, and how it saved me, which I’m gonna stand by, I don’t regret anything. I did not say anything I regret.”
“BUT, do I think that means I should have all my income confiscated for 30 days?” she posited. “No. I think in my opinion, as someone who is a streamer, and I like to see myself as a pretty reasonable person, I think that either a warning or a three-day ban would have been warranted. If I had gotten either of those things, it would have been completely fine.”
Shondo once again admitted she had “technically” done wrong, but that a thirty day ban was far too harsh, along with the aforementioned point of subscriptions not renewing and cancelling.
“On Twitch’s side they were like ‘No you were self-harming.’ They keep telling me that. […] And I was like ‘No, I was in a good mindset, I just forgot to say in Minecraft,’ and they’re like ‘No. You clearly were.’ They were explaining my mental state to me.”
She was also convinced the only reason she was unbanned was due to her audience, other streamers, and even people who seemingly didn’t know her rose the alarm. Shondo also highlighted how it is within the TOS to discuss mental health, yet it felt like Twitch was tried to “silence any talks” about it.
While the drama could have been a lot worse, Shondo’s community ensured she bounced back, having gained almost 6,000 followers since her ban.
Interestingly, this entire situation played out just before Twitch announced various changes to how they handle bans at TwitchCon 2024.
“We strive to make our Community Guidelines easy to follow and we don’t want you to be living in fear of getting indefinitely suspended for something small, so we’re making a few updates,” Twitch explained on their blog. “First, we’ll be giving you more clarity on violations. Starting with Chat, we’ll share the excerpt of Chat where the violation occurred in the email you receive and in the appeals portal. Down the line, we’ll also be providing a clip so that you can review the violation that happened during a livestream or VOD.”
“We want to give you this information so that you can see what you did, what policies were violated, and if you feel our decision was incorrect, you can appeal,” they continued. “We’re also taking a new approach to strikes. In the current system, strikes last forever and there is confusion about how Partners and non-Partners are treated. We’ve seen that permanent strikes can be a big problem for streamers who have been streaming for a long time as they could be banned for a small infraction. Given this, early next year we’ll begin expiring strikes over time depending on the severity of the violation.”
“These changes seek to improve clarity about our enforcements and reduce the risk that streamers lose their livelihood for low severity infractions,” they concluded. “To be clear, we will continue to issue suspensions, including indefinite suspensions for high severity infractions.”
Responding to this change, Shondo was delighted . “I’m really really happy!!!! This is all I wanted.”
“I expressed to Dan Twitch that this was what was the biggest problem I had with the site and I know it was worrying many streamers to not know exactly what we did, and thus we couldn’t possibly know how to not do it again when the rules are so uncertain and nobody will explain the details,” Shondo relayed. “If I could contribute even 1% to this update this is very very uplifting…!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
It seems what started as getting “white girl wasted,” and Twitch reacting poorly has seemingly resulted in a net positive for all streamers on the platform.
There are very few streamers like FallenShadow, and we are all poorer for it.
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