Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker (31) is one of the larger streamers on Twitch. He is primarily active as a political commentator and identifies with the left spectrum. He has now received a ban for a copyright violation, but he believes he knows the real reason.
This is the ban in question: HasanAbi’s stream was suddenly stopped on December 6. Since then, the channel of the political streamer can no longer be accessed. You only receive the message that the channel’s content has been removed at the request of the copyright holder (via Twitch).
HasanAbi confirmed the ban shortly thereafter on Twitter and shared a notification he received from Twitch. The message indicates that the streamer was banned due to a copyright violation and that the relevant content was removed. The ban is said to last 48 hours.
However, HasanAbi suspects a completely different reason behind the ban and believes he was targeted because of his political opinion.
Streamer believes ban was politically motivated
Which stream triggered it? When HasanAbi was hit by the ban hammer, he was streaming an interview with the controversial rapper Kanye West aka “Ye”. The rapper had recently made headlines for making positive remarks about Adolf Hitler.
The interview was conducted by Gavin McInnes, the founder of the far-right organization Proud Boys. McInnes claims to be on a mission to prevent Ye from becoming an anti-Semite (via TheDailyBeast).
The interview was shown on McInnes’ video platform Censored.TV and is behind a paywall.
What reason does HasanAbi suspect? As the streamer stated on Twitter, his channel was the only one banned for broadcasting the interview. But that’s not all: Ray Aguilar, the technical director of Censored.TV, is said to have personally ordered the ban.
HasanAbi believes he has been targeted due to his criticism of right-wing ideas.
lmao the free speech defenders own cto himself issued the takedown (just for my channel btw) 🤔 pic.twitter.com/k6cqBBz1K5
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) December 6, 2022
Freedom of speech, but not for everyone?
How does HasanAbi evaluate the ban? The streamer mocks the ban and those responsible on Twitter. HasanAbi appears to see a certain irony in the fact that a network like Censored.TV, which was previously called FreeSpeech.TV, is taking action against him.
After all, these people outwardly claim to be the “defenders of free speech,” but are now restricting his free speech because he criticized them (via Twitter). HasanAbi calls this behavior “absolutely pathetic”:
These Nazis love to talk about free speech, only to then use the most abused copyright mechanism to take someone who criticizes their ridiculous ideas out of the game. Absolutely pathetic.
HasanAbi via Twitter
Whether HasanAbi will take action against the ban is not yet known. In the past, especially larger streamers were sometimes able to end a ban early. Currently, however, HasanAbi’s channel is still suspended (as of December 7, 2022, 11:30).
HasanAbi was just recently awarded at the “Streamy Awards” in the “News” category. However, in November, he received a far more unusual award. This came from a ban he received in 2021 for using the word “Cracker.”
Twitch bans HasanAbi for using a racist term against whites – but now he gets an award for it
