It's often said that we are our own worst enemy. In the case of popular Minecraft streamer George "GeorgeNotFound'' Davidson, that turned out to quite literally be the case when he was banned from Twitch over the weekend for... harassing himself.
As reported by Kotaku, Davidson appears to have been banned multiple times because of "harassment via username," according to Twitch. But the only person he could have harassed, apparently, was himself. Yeah, I'm confused too, but Kotaku seems to have worked out a rough timeline for this bizarre series of events.
What you need to know upfront is that Davidson has a second Twitch account, "ThisIsNotGeorgeNotFound". On March 13, this account was indefinitely suspended. His primary account remained active, but Twitch obviously has rules against banned users streaming on alt accounts, meaning the platform would have considered any streaming on his part a ban evasion. Davidson shared an email from Twitch on Twitter that explained this first ban was because of an "inappropriate username".
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"Based on a review of your activity or content, we have issued a Community Guidelines strike on your account," reads Twitch's email. "Due to the severe nature of this violation, or the fact that you've incurred multiple violations, your access to Twitch services is indefinitely restricted."
"My name is too inappropriate," Davidson joked. "Sorry guys I messed up."
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On March 14 Davidson provided an update for his followers. He'd been banned a second time, as a result of "harassment via username". Twitch informed him that the ban was indefinite, and although it didn't explain exactly what the problem was, it went on to list "having a username that explicitly insults another user," "having a username that threatens negative action towards another user," and "having a username that promotes self-harm in conjunction with malicious chat activity, such as telling another user to kill themselves" as a few of the potential party fouls.
It's not entirely clear what the hack happened here, but Kotaku posits that a Twitch moderator might have found Davidson's second account and assumed it was harassment via an attempt at impersonation. In other words, Davidson was found guilty of impersonating himself, maybe. We have no idea if that's what happened, but it makes as much sense as anything else in this story.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, Davidson's alternate account has since been unbanned. Let's just put this down to Twitch being weird, shall we?
