Twitch announces 'indefinitely' maintaining its suspension of Trump's account

Live-streaming platform Twitch announced Wednesday that it will "indefinitely" maintain its suspension of former President Donald Trump's channel "due to the ongoing risk of further incitement of violence," even though he is no longer in office.

The suspension was originally placed on the account following the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, but the new announcement came after the Presidential Inauguration of Joe Biden.

Twitch, which is an Amazon subsidiary, released a full statement:

"We have indefinitely suspended President Trump’s Twitch channel due to the ongoing risk of further incitement of violence. The President’s statements continue to be interpreted as calls to action, and we are taking this action to remove the potential for harm to our community and the general public. Twitch has clear rules that prohibit hateful conduct, harassment, or incitement of violence on our service, and we consider off-service events when making enforcement decisions. However, the events of the past weeks have highlighted a gap with respect to rhetoric that encourages violence, regardless of whether or not it was directly streamed on Twitch. We will be updating our policies as a result of our consideration of this situation."

According to Twitch's suspension policy, Trump will not have the ability to appeal the decision or create another account until the suspension is lifted. Twitch had originally said it would reassess the decision after Trump left office.

Twitch's parent company Amazon, kicked social networking platform Parler off its servers, after Trump opened an account following the deactivation of his Facebook and Twitter accounts. A mass migration of conservatives from Twitter and Facebook to Parler  happened in the wake of the ban, before the app was booted out of the Google and Apple app stores and shut down by Amazon.