Barstool Sports’ channel has been yanked off Twitch on Tuesday, after an employee running its account threatened to harass another user by calling the police on them.
Here’s what happened: Twitch user “LikeButta” was illegally broadcasting a Barstool boxing match on Sunday when the official Barstool account jumped on the stream. The Barstool account, run by employee Devlin D’Zmura, threatened to “swat” LikeButta for streaming the event for free.
Swatting is where you call the police on someone and claim to be in a hostage or other high-risk situation — with the ultimate goal of getting the swat team to show up at your digital enemy’s home. It’s a “cool lil trick us internet folks do,” as D’Zmura put it on Twitch.
“Enjoy the last moments of this channel,” added D’Zmura, apparently assuming LikeButta’s account would be banned.
Instead, Barstool’s Twitch account was pulled down after the swat threat. Twitch did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment on how long the account will be suspended, or even removed. Twitch told Deadspin the “privacy of our users” prevented the service from saying how long the suspension will be.
Barstool did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment as well, but D’Zmura posted an apology on Twitter Monday night. “I was obviously over the line and there was no reason to take it that far whether I knew the severity or not,” tweeted D’Zumra at LikeButta.
https://twitter.com/devlinbarstool/status/1026628557584429058
