Two former Twitch employees have recently shared their comments on the mysterious ban of Dr Disrespect, a top streamer on the platform.
Many people have been wondering what happened to that Twitch streamer Dr Disrespect; where did that dude with the long black hair, salt-and-pepper mustache and huge sunglasses go? And some people are just wondering who this guy is and what wrongs he may have done. Herschel “Guy” Beahm, aka Dr Disrespect, was permanently banned from the purple streaming platform back in 2020 without any explanation from him or the streaming company. In the past few days, two former Twitch employees shared their comments on the mysterious perma ban four years since the controversy.
The ban back in 2020 left many on the internet confused, and created a lot of buzz speculating the causes of the perma ban. One former Twitch employee, who asked to remain anonymous, citing the potential risk to their career, told The Verge that Dr Disrespect had used Whispers, Twitch’s now-defunct messaging system, to exchange messages with a minor and initiate a conversation about meeting up at TwitchCon. This anonymous employee claimed to have worked on Twitch’s trust and safety team at the time of the 2020 ban.
What was interesting from last Friday (June 21, 2024) was a Twitter/X post from another former Twitch employee who worked on the company’s strategic partnerships team named Cody Conners. Conners wrote: “He got banned because got caught sexting a minor in the then existing Twitch whispers product. He was trying to meet up with her at TwitchCon. The powers that be could read in plain text.” Conners did not specifically call out Dr Disrespect, but was heavily implied he was referring to the streamer. Commenters were quick to point out that Conners did not necessarily provide any physical evidence to back up his claims.
Dr Disrespect’s ban came shortly after Twitch updated its sexual harassment policy to punish offenders with permanent suspensions, leaving many to speculate that he breached that policy. To add some recent fuel to this never-ending fire of controversy, Dr Disrespect responded to Conners by denying the allegation, to which he responded on X, “This has been settled, no wrongdoing was acknowledged, and they paid out the whole contract.”
Two years after the ban in 2022, Dr Disrespect made a post on X stating, “I didn’t do anything wrong, all this has been probed and settled, nothing illegal, no wrongdoing was found, and I was paid.” Commenters noted that he did not specifically deny the other claims about using Whispers to message minors, resulting in people not believing anything the streamers had to say. Or, as the internet does best, the memes began to flood the comment section on the response post.
One of the former employees also detailed the order of events that led to the ban. They said there was a significant amount of time between when the messages between Dr Disrespect and the alleged victim were sent and when the moderation report about those messages was filed. Although, they were not able to recall how much time. Ultimately, the former employee noted that once the report was filed in 2020, they investigated the claims and banned the streamer’s channel.
The once-popular Twitch streamer did try to sue the streaming platform one year after his perma ban in 2021, for monetary damages and disclosed that he finally knew why the platform issued the ban. But still, he never revealed what the reason for the ban was. “Listen, I’m obviously tied to legal obligations from the settlement with Twitch but I just need to say what I can say since this is the fucking internet. I didn’t do anything wrong, all this has been probed and settled, nothing illegal, no wrongdoing was found, and I was paid. Elden Ring Monday,” Dr Disrespect last posted on X on Saturday, June 22nd, 2024.
While nothing is certain, only Twitch and Dr Disrespect know the full truth. Whether the truth will finally come from the original source, only time will tell. The streamer continues to stream on YouTube, currently playing the new Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree.
