Why Alinity, most likely, won’t get banned on Twitch.

A logical review of the Alinity animal abuse matter.

Note: Before I get started, I have to make a few things clear first:
-This is not a hit piece on Alinity.
-This is not an article in favor of Alinity’s actions.
-This IS my rational view of the situation. You can take it or leave it.

I’ve made the choice to talk about Alinity on my Twitter and in general, which was a mistake on my part. The reason why is because of the knee-jerk reaction comes at you like lightning and the whole point gets lost in the definition. And no, increasing the number of characters will not help — Which is why you’re reading this.

So, let’s get to the point I’m trying to make in its entirety.

There are two reasons why she won’t get banned for abuse.

The first reason is the TOS and Community Guidelines. While the vast majority of the TOS and guidelines state what you can and can’t do on twitch, they are in most places vague and open-ended: it’s hard to find where the line is if you don’t define its location (A line in the sand, as it were). Another thing of note is that a TOS is in a way of sorts a contract: if the terms aren’t clearly defined or aren’t even stated accordingly, it COULD be perceived as an abuse of the agreement: Moving the line to suit as needed is just as worse as no line at all. The TOS DOES cover Harassment toward others, self-harm, nudity, porn, law-breaking, etc., all good points — but when it comes to animal abuse, it’s vacant on that part. It should also be noted that on the issue of criminal acts, it has to be proven beyond a doubt that a law/crime was committed on stream. A good example is of BlondieWondie. not long ago as of this article (7/27/2019) she was banned for either Unsafe Driving, Exhibition of speed, or just speeding, something that was proven 100% because it was on stream for everyone to see: She bragged about going over the speed limit then proceed to drive over the limit. These were things we could see on stream as clear as day and thus Twitch was in the right for implementing a ban. Twitch TOS does state that committing a criminal act on the stream of any kind will result in a ban…but it has to be on stream to a degree to be considered as such in the first place.

Another example is of a streamer who years ago was premabanned for assaulting his wife while the stream was going on. Now in that case, while we may not have seen it, it could be heard without exception that someone was being attacked: a female was crying out in pain, blows could be heard landing on a person, abusive and threating language could be heard as well. This was a crime committed on stream, and it was rightfully just in that streamer being permabanned and arrested for Domestic Assault and Abuse. It’s because we are able to clearly see or hear or both a crime or a violation in progress or any other activity that is inappropriate and in violation of TOS that the proper actions can be taken. Which brings me to the second reason why a ban is not forthcoming to Alinity.

We lack definitive proof.

Many people are calling what she did Animal Abuse, but they are partly right and partly wrong in doing so. There is NO QUESTION IN MY MIND that throwing the cat over her head as she did was 100% Wrong. It was a dick move of the highest caliber — but we can’t exactly call it abuse because we don’t see what happened directly after the cat was thrown. In the video which we have all seen, the cat was thrown, BUT because we don’t immediately see if the cat was injured or not, it’s all speculation. A cat CAN be thrown and land completely unharmed. a common fact that many can and are ignoring.

A cat can jump off of something very high, and STILL land on there feet without any injury, as many cat owners are aware of, and yes, I know that is NOT what happened in this case — don’t get me wrong or twist my words.

The reason it can’t be called animal abuse is that we can’t see what happened AFTER it was thrown over its owner’s head: We can’t say it didn’t get injured from it because it landed out of view of the camera, nor can we say it did for the same reason. At this point its purely hearsay. Now Twitch COULD ban her out of caution, but let's consider this: Say she DOES get that ban, but it's later proven that no abuse has taken place after the ongoing investigation concludes. From a legal perspective, one could argue that Twitch abused its powers in banning someone who didn’t violate it in the first place. It could also be grounds to sue for damages.

I’m not saying that is what could happen, but it IS a possibility it could go like this. The honest truth about all of this: There just isn’t enough evidence to prove beyond a doubt that animal abuse had actually taken place. And yes that also goes for her feeding vodka to the cat: She could say that it was Vodka, but it could also just have been water in a vodka bottle. There is no absolute way to be sure, and therein lies the problem.

In the current state of things, the main appearance of what is going on is getting drowned out by social outcry: “She did shit like this in the past, ban her, Twitch!”, “She abuses animals! Kick her off Twitch! Do your Job!”, “Alinity sucks! Ban that THOT!!” — these are statements that I’ve seen on the issue quite a bit online. Instead of waiting and seeing what happens, we just have a knee-jerk reaction to it…we see something or someone we don’t like do or say one thing, reach an immediate negative conclusion and start yelling.

People do stupid, bad shit online and off. I get that. But that only works in the short term. Say Alinity DOES get a ban. It won’t last long. We know this. It won’t ultimately fix things in the long run. It will look like Twitch banned her due to public outcry online and that’s not a good thing at all, or helpful for that matter.

The way we can fix this is for Twitch to update and clarify the TOS and Community Guidelines. An actual line needs to be drawn in the actual sand.

Until then, were just spinning in circles, yelling.

I thank you for reading this article. You don’t have to agree with me on any or most of this (I’m sure most of you won’t to a point), but I needed to get this off my chest so I can move on from it. This is the last thing I’ll say about the matter. You may return to your weekend.