Twitch streamer Kaitlyn "Amouranth" Siragusa is railing against practices by Twitter that she believes are basically censorship by hiding content it deems inappropriate. The incredibly popular Twitch content producer believes that even if the website isn't actually blocking this content, making it harder for users to see it and share it is essentially the same as banning it entirely.
In making her argument, Siragusa shared a tweet that had been hidden by Twitter from an adult content website. The irony of the post being hidden was that it, in turn, was demanding that Facebook parent company, Meta, answers for “unfairly” singling out certain creators with bans, what's known as shadow-bans, and various suspensions. It was when one of Amouranth's followers then claimed what she was pointing to was not actually censorship that she further explained her position.
Amouranth knows a thing or two about business and social media and she wasn't afraid to let the user who had replied how silly she found their response. She started her own rebuttal by claiming the poster had "mansplained" what censorship was before she made it clear that she'd used social media to build her brand.
"Requiring someone to change default settings IS censoring,” the Twitch streamer tweeted. “Favoring content in such a way makes a HUGE difference. I have default settings on this account TO be able to see what is and isn’t censored.” She added that if she engaged or retweeted posts that had been hidden by the social media site would have a direct impact on how much exposure could get. She argued that Twitter would actually punish her for sharing those posts by "throttling" her content.
Siragusa attempt to stop any arguments with her about the issue in its tracks by making it clear that she'd studied the issue deeply. Considering that she certainly knows what it takes to get tons of views on Twitch, it seems like she's a voice of authority on this type of issue. In addition to studying censorship, she said that she's also done quite a bit of research on the impact of default settings and choices.
In order to make her point once and for all that what Twitter is doing when it comes to certain kinds of tweets is indeed censorship, she pointed out that traffic has been impacted greatly by default settings for decades. She claimed that Internet Explorer maintained its "monster" market share for years because of default settings. She also hinted that Google is paying Apple tens of billions of dollars a year for the same kind of reasons. That the Twitch streamer's words will affect any kind of change on Twitter's part seems unlikely, but she is at least shedding light on the subject.