Twitch under fire for banning Loserfruit emote for “bullying”

Twitch streamer Loserfruit is the latest to have one of her emotes banned as the Amazon-owned platform continues to crack down on potential emote abuse.

Numerous Twitch streamers have had their own specialized emotes banned by the site in recent months with a common trend beginning to emerge.

In March, ‘Chica’ had her seemingly innocent chicken emote removed from the site, because it featured the cartoon critter making an “L” sign above its head.

Now, a similar fate has befallen Loserfruit, who had an emote of a cartoon version of herself holding up the same “L” – and the streamer seems worried that her username could be on the chopping block next.

Loserfruit emote banned on Twitch for “inciting abuse”

In a post on Twitter, Loserfruit revealed that her emote had been removed and included a screenshot from Twitch explaining their reasoning.

According to Twitch, the “fruitLoser” emote was disallowed because it could result in “targeted insults, bullying and threatening or inciting abuse.”

hmm wonder when they gonna come for my username pic.twitter.com/a9LgSU4JaD

— PWR Loserfruit (@Loserfruit) April 14, 2023

“Wonder when they gonna come for my username,” the Australian Twitch star pondered.

In the comments, many defended the emote and noted that anyone can just go into someone else’s chat and spam “L.”

“Bruh that’s literally just an emote of you,” someone else commented.

“It’s the woke world everyone asked for, isn’t it? If a single person doesn’t like something, it instantly gets banned,” said another.

Late last month, a former Twitch employee explained the reasoning behind emote removals, stating that the platform will judge emotes based on how viewers could potentially misuse them.

Regardless, users have raised interesting points about the letter L, in general, having the same effect as an emote if misused, but Twitch hasn’t banned the letter from chats.

In the meantime, users not happy with Twitch’s strict moderation have plenty of other options to choose from with sites like Kick offering streamers more freedom to post what they want.