Month: January 2021

Enlarge (credit: Facebook / Aurich Lawson)

In the wake of yesterday's incidents at the US Capitol, Facebook is officially suspending President Donald Trump's account through at least January 21, if not longer, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today.

"The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden," Zuckerberg said in (naturally) a Facebook post.

"His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect—and likely their intent—would be to provoke further violence."

Enlarge / Guttierez (left) showing the face that would become a massively popular Twitch emote, until Wednesday... (credit: Gootecks / YouTube)

One of the oldest and most popular global emotes on Twitch has been removed from the service after Twitch said "the face of the emote encourag[ed] further violence after what took place in the Capitol [Wednesday]."

That face belongs to Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez, a longtime Street Fighter pro and commentator. Since 2012 and until yesterday, Gutierrez had been immortalized on Twitch in the form of the "PogChamp" chat emote (short for "player of games champ"), which portrayed an exaggerated excited face he first made in a 2010 video.

Twitch's decision to remove the emote (one of its custom chatroom emojis) seems focused on a series of tweets Gutierrez made Wednesday afternoon, expressing sympathy for the "#MAGAMartyr" shot during the violent Pro-Trump mob invasion of the US Capitol Wednesday. Gutierrez went on to ask if her death would lead to "civil unrest" or if she would "die in vain." In the hours before Twitch's decision, a number of people in and around the Twitch community had begun to call attention to Gutierrez's tweets and/or suggest the emote be removed or replaced.