Remove hate groups
Remove the hate group that spreads misinformation and hate mongering while promoting abuse towards autistics and replace it with Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network.
For more information on the harms of Autism Speaks:
https://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AutismSpeaksFlyer2020.pdf
https://autisticmama.com/do-not-support-autism-speaks/
And an actual video from Autism Speaks where they glorify killing us (TW: I'm not kidding. They glorify a parent wanting to kill their kid for being autistic)
Our goal is to provide streamers with a wide variety of charitable organizations and enable them to decide who to support. The scale of this program may mean that people within our community may not agree with or support all of the included organizations, even if they are currently compliant with our policies.
Twitch partners with the PayPal Giving Fund, and they monitor charities on a daily basis for verification of their 501(c)(3) status in country-specific registries, compliance with PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, and more. We don’t allow charities that violate our hateful conduct policies on Twitch, or whose organization or leadership engage in or promote behaviors that violate our Off-Service policy. At this time, this organization does not violate our Off-Service policy.
Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns with us. We’ve added a number of charities that support Autism-related causes, including the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network, based on feedback from the community. We encourage you to continue sharing charities you would like to see included or that you believe may violate our policies so we can evaluate. You can learn more about charity on Twitch in our help article.
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MeryemSimone commented
Reminder that "For particularly egregious offenses that present a physical safety risk to the community, these suspensions will not be eligible for appeal, no matter how much time has elapsed." should apply to advocating for ABA until this day, advocating for a cure until 2016 and actively promoting "combating" and "finding solutions for" autism until 2019, unless you do not consider autistic people to be a part of your community. And they have never been through any "rehabilitation" that is trusted by the community they harm. If you rule they never created physical harm when they advocated for eugenics, and for physical torture as punishment for displaying autistic traits, you are showing the world that you do not care about us.
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OnyxDragonLady commented
BOYCOTT TWITCH
In this feedback form you can see that twitch doesn't care at all that autism $peaks spreads lies and fear mongers for money. The harm A$ has done to the autistic community is horrific and ongoing. For Twitch to accept them as a "charity" is a slap in the face of every autistic person.
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EDL666 commented
I want Twitch to actually investigate and not just claim there's no problem here. There is a gigantic problem, this problem justifies shutting down the entire charity program if it can't be resolved, there's other ways to raise charity that don't promote inhumane ideals
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BadLuckBalfour commented
YES. THIS. ABSOLUTELY. If they don't do this, they will be making it very clear that they do not care about their creators, don't consider the neurodivergent to be people, and even if they do: They care more about their pocketbook than what they *claim* they care about their creators.
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MeryemSimone commented
Autism speaks serves as one of the most notorious Autism advocacy groups thanks to their history of persistent misinformation, hateful conduct, and recommendations of ABA therapy.
ABA is not specific to autism, ABA is a theoretically broadly applicable therapy, but ABA was originally designed to create a person "from scratch" as the inventor, Ivar Lovaas, did not see autistic children as people, and his techniques have been used in queer conversion therapy. ABA may often use less harsh punishments and reinforcements, but it is based on withholding affection and food from and inflicting pain and discomfort on your child, and the idea that austistic children are less than a person. (Source: https://nsadvocate.org/2018/07/11/treating-autism-as-a-problem-the-connection-between-gay-conversion-therapy-and-aba/)
ABA treatment is recommended for children as young as 12 months old, and is recommended more for intellectually disabled and non verbal autistic children who cannot understand what they want for themselves and those who have gone through ABA and been able to share their experience almost never speak positively of their experience in ABA.
ABA is dangerous, ableist, seeks to assimilate autistic children rather than support them, and resembles the kinds of conversion therapy that have been outlawed against queer children because of proof of long lasting negative impact. Autism speaks advocates for ABA and ESDM and spreads misinformation about who determines the child's goals and about how safe ABA is.
Since Autism Speaks' founding in 2005 until 2019, Autism Speaks openly stated that it was their mission to cure autism, and create genetic screening for pregnant persons in order to allow them to abort an autistic child. This charity openly promoted eugenics and continues to support the torture of children to "cure" them of who they are.
This goes against the Twitch Off Service Conduct policy under the clause banning "Harmful misinformation actors, or persistent misinformation superspreaders"(https://safety.twitch.tv/s/article/Off-Service-Conduct?language=en_US) and is incredibly hateful and that history of persistent hateful behaviour and misinformation should be acknowledged rather than denied.
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CiD_TTV commented
Twitch clearly has no care for the autistic community on their platform if they are still willing to support Autism Speaks.
Shocking move from Twitch all round. Can't say I'm surprised though -
BadLuckBalfour commented
They just responded. With a closing of the topic and a statement that the group "does not violate [their] hateful conduct policy" despite promoting child abuse, neglect, and what has been classified as the UN as torture.
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MeryemSimone commented
It's been three months now
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MeryemSimone commented
Reference Eddiemates comment, not only have you merged the Ideas, proving one of you has seen the issue and many of you have commented on other ideas as recently as October, so we know more than one of you will have likely also seen the top idea.
It's appalling that Twitch can respond so quickly to streamer strikes, and someone requesting a charity, but not to literally over a thousand of your users accusing you of promoting and funding torturing autistic people.
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Eddiemates commented
Commenting on this to say that you need to respond now, Twitch.
Someone on your team has made it clear that you are reading these suggestions by merging our two posts into one, and the lack of any other response tells us that you do not care about us as people by continuing to support Autism Speaks in this charity system.
Autism Speaks does not speak for us, and we want you to listen to that.
Edit 29/11/2022: Twitch has finally responded, by telling us that Autism Speaks doesn't violate the off-service conduct (which they do, as they have actively knowingly harmed people with Autism). Literally given three references, and thousands of us telling them this is the case, and they still side with them. It makes me wonder if there's some possible back-door deals right now.
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abstractbybraden commented
People with all different shapes, sizes, disabilities, and mental health issues should addressed with the right kind of non-profits. If you are truly wanting to make change listen to people!
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CandyRages556 commented
The fight wont go away just because you choose to ignore us.
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MeryemSimone commented
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MeryemSimone commented
I tried to make this a separate issue but it was misguidedly combined with the referenced issue. Hopefully this one is more distinct and twitch will understand the point.
Over a thousand autistic twitch users and allistic allies have asked you to stop promoting autism speaks as they have and continue to advocate for our torture.
You have ignored them.
Stop ignoring them.
Respond with some statement about whether you are going to consider cutting ties with Autism Speaks or if you are going to ignore the autistic community which overwhelmingly despises Autism Speaks for advocating for torturing our children.
Simply put, it has been two months for you to draft a statement, you have proved you're aware of the issue by combining the suggestions, and a thousand of your users have asked you to share something in acknowledgement.
This suggestion isn't to remove autism speaks but for you as a team to respect your community and treat us as human beings who deserve a response on the serious issue of your promotion of the idea intellectually disabled autistic people are less than human.
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BadLuckBalfour commented
The fact that less than 24 hours later they merged the General Feedback post into this one means they are aware of it... They just simply do not care.
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PersonifyCosplay commented
Yes, oh my lord, please remove Autism Speaks! They fact that this was immediately brought up and has yet to receive any response is awful.
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EDL666 commented
I'm gonna go ahead and Tweet Twitch and Twitch Support, and reply to their posts if they have any, asking them to take action on this every day until they take action. I encourage everyone to do the same.
The fact that they are ignoring this and pretending like they're not directly insulting several of their creators by actively promoting harm towards their demographic to people that seek to help their demographic is absolutely disgusting and unacceptable.
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MeryemSimone commented
Made this post in "General Feedback" just in case twitch is using some bureaucratic loophole to avoid answering this since it's under "Request a Charity"
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MeryemSimone commented
It has been exactly 2 months since autistic twich users noticed Austism Speak was a listed charity and asked you to remove it. It is currently the most upvoted topic in the Charity section of Twitch UserVoice and many autistic twitch users have made thoughtful and valuable comments that have gone completely unacknowledged while other posts have been replied to in weeks. Here is that post. https://twitch.uservoice.com/forums/945934-charity/suggestions/45600340-remove-hate-groups
Autism Speaks is considered to be a hate group by many autistic people as they have created fearmongering campaigns such as the famous "I am Autism" ad and even a documentary where a parent of an autistic child talks about how they want to harm their child because of their autism traits, have invested research in curing autism and prenatal screening (which many autistics feel is overt support of eugenics) and continues to promote practices and treatment plans in which as many as as 1 in 4 practitioners use or approve of shock therapy for children and 1 in 3 use strong sensory stimulation intended to produce discomfort in children already sensitive to overstimulation. (Source: https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/controversy-autisms-common-therapy/)
ABA is not specific to autism, ABA is a theoretically broadly applicable therapy, but ABA was originally designed to create a person "from scratch" as the inventor, Ivar Lovaas, did not see autistic children as people, and his techniques have been used in queer conversion therapy. ABA may often use less harsh punishments and reinforcements, but it is based on withholding affection and food from and inflicting pain and discomfort on your child, and the idea that austistic children are less than a person. (Source: https://nsadvocate.org/2018/07/11/treating-autism-as-a-problem-the-connection-between-gay-conversion-therapy-and-aba/)
ABA treatment is recommended for children as young as 12 months old, and is recommended more for intellectually disabled and non verbal autistic children who cannot understand what they want for themselves and those who have gone through ABA and been able to share their experience almost never speak positively of their experience in ABA.
ABA is dangerous, ableist, seeks to assimilate autistic children rather than support them, and resembles the kinds of conversion therapy that have been outlawed against queer children because of proof of long lasting negative impact. Autism speaks advocates for ABA and ESDM and spreads misinformation about who determines the child's goals and about how safe ABA is.
Please listen to our voices and finally manage this gross mistake.
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AtlasPlanet commented
it's kinda sad to see that twitch doesn't care about autistic creators. 2 months and no answer? yeah that's insulting, even, knowing that some other requests got a lot less votes (so a lot less visible) get responses in less than a week