Twitch Blocks US Army From Sending Stream Viewers to Recruitment Page for Alleged Fake Giveaway

Twitch has blocked the U.S. Army from running controller giveaways after they were allegedly found to redirect viewers to a military recruitment page.

A report from The Nation dug into how the US Military is using online gaming to recruit teens. The Nation found that viewers watching the Army's channel were being presented with chat prompts to "win an Xbox Elite Series 2 controller." But when clicking the link to enter the giveaway, users were supposedly met with "a recruiting form with no additional mention of a contest, odds, total number of winners, or when a drawing will occur." When reached for comment by The Nation, the US Army declined to answer.A Twitch spokesperson issued a statement to Kotaku , announcing that the promotion had been removed. "Per our Terms of Service, promotions on Twitch must comply with all applicable laws. This promotion did not comply with our Terms, and we have required them to remove it,” the statement reads.Last week, the same account came under fire after it was found to be banning users who asked about war crimes in the stream chat. The US Army issued a statement in response justifying its approach, noting that "the user's question was an attempt to shift the conversation to imply that Soldiers commit war crimes based on an optional weapon in a game, and we felt that violated Twitch's harassment policy."Twitch has hit the news regularly recently, with banned streamer Dr. Disrespect saying he still doesn't know why he was kicked from the platform , and Donald Trump's channel serving a two-week suspension for broadcasting hateful content.

Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.