President Trump Launches Channel on Amazon's Twitch Streaming Platform
October 10 2019 - 8:39PM
Dow Jones News
By Sarah E. Needleman
President Trump has created a channel on Amazon.com Inc.'s
Twitch, a sign he plans to use the live-streaming platform to
promote his 2020 re-election campaign.
A spokeswoman for Twitch, a platform popular among videogame
players, confirmed Thursday the channel belonged to Mr. Trump,
though it couldn't be immediately determined when the page was
launched.
The president is hosting a campaign rally in Minneapolis
Thursday night. The streaming of the Minneapolis event will
apparently be the campaign's first public use of the channel.
The move comes after Democratic presidential candidate Bernie
Sanders also created a Twitch channel in June. Mr. Sanders has
streamed videos of campaign rallies and other content on his
channel, which has about 88,700 followers.
Politicians are increasingly turning to social-media platforms
as a way to more closely tailor messages to prospective voters and
younger audiences.
A representative from Mr. Trump's re-election campaign didn't
immediately respond to a request for comment.
Politicians aren't allowed to buy or sell advertising on Twitch,
a company spokeswoman said. They can, however, direct viewers to
make donations elsewhere, such as through PayPal.
An average of 1.3 million people are on Twitch at any given
moment and the platform sees more than 15 million daily visitors,
the company said. Most people come to Twitch to watch other people
play videogames and participate in esports competitions.
Though Mr. Trump launched a channel on the gaming-centric site,
he has previously criticized violent videogames as helping fuel
some of the mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. in recent
years. Last year, he held a meeting at the White House after the
massacre of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla., to
discuss the matter with members of the videogame industry and
groups opposed to violent games.
The channel debut also comes as Twitch is facing scrutiny after
earlier this week a shooting suspect live streamed the killing of
two people outside a synagogue in Germany, adding Amazon to the
list of tech giants that have had to tackle violent acts being
broadcast online in real time.
Amazon's peers -- Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.,
which owns Google's YouTube -- most recently dealt with stopping
the spread of footage from a deadly attack on a pair of New Zealand
mosques earlier this year.
Amazon bought Twitch for around $970 million in 2014 and it
doesn't break out revenue for Twitch in financial reports. Twitch
is free for users and generates revenue mainly from selling
advertising.
Amazon's chief executive is Jeff Bezos, whom Mr. Trump has
repeatedly criticized over taxes, the company's use of the U.S.
Postal Service and its effect on other retailers. Mr. Trump also
called the Washington Post, which Mr. Bezos owns personally, a
lobbying arm.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 10, 2019 20:24 ET (00:24 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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