Playing Games or Real Intentions? | Dr. Disrespect, Illegality, and Immorality (VL785)

Richard Hoeg dives into Midnight Society's statement about Guy Beam (Doctor Disrespect), explores the controversy surrounding his Twitch ban, analyzes California law on harmful communication with minors, and discusses a Bloomberg article and legal considerations related to the case.

Episode Transcript

(00:39):
Well, a lot has certainly happened sinceSaturday, hasn't it?
Welcome to another episode of virtual legality.
I'm your host, Richard Hoag, managing member ofthe Hoaglaw Business Law Firm of Northville,
Michigan, and we've got a lot to talk about.
Now before we do, I do wanna give a disclaimerhere.
This channel is family friendly.
No inappropriate messages in the chat orotherwise, but of the subject matter we're

(01:00):
gonna talk about today is charitably gonna beconsidered gross.
So with that said, understand that some of thissubject matter is not too fun to talk about,
and I apologize for that in advance.
But We do have to talk about it because thedoctor disrespect story had a lot of updates in

(01:20):
the last 5 days and at least some answers thatI think are important for discussed.
Now if you do have questions or comments aboutthis, I will try to highlight them when I see
them, but the best time to ask those questionsis gonna be at the end of this video when we do
a questions or comments section.
Now if you're watching this in replay crew, Iapologize.
That's not gonna be available to you becauseyou don't have a time machine.

(01:41):
But I'm sure the rest of the chat that is herelive will have asked a lot of good questions in
the future.
So thank you for joining us in that replay.
Now let's talk.
So on Saturday or this past weekend, we had atweet from Cody Connors a former Twitch,

(02:02):
individual that put out he got banned becausehe got caught sexting a minor in the then
existing Twitch whispers product.
He was trying to meet up with her at Twitchcon.
The powers that be could read in plain text,case closed gang.
And we discussed this particular tweet and thereactions that many had to it in our last video
in virtual reality.

(02:22):
You can see that in the prior video of thisplaylist, But since then, things have gotten
significantly worse for one doctor disrespect.
Most importantly, at least until he startsspeaking for himself, the company that he co
founded the midnight society in which he andsome other industry veterans were making a

(02:43):
first person shooter game that was designed toappeal specifically to him and to his audience
parted ways.
In a statement they said on Friday evening, webecame aware of an allegation against one of
our co founders, Guy Beam, aka, doctordisrespect.
We assumed his innocence and began speakingwith parties involved, and in order to maintain
our principles and standards as a studio andindividuals, we needed to act.

(03:08):
For this reason, we are terminating ourrelationship with Guy Beam immediately.
While these facts are difficult to hear andeven more difficult to accept, It is our duty
to act with dignity on behalf of allindividuals involved, especially the 55
developers and families we have employed, alongwith our community of players.
Which is a long way of saying almost nothingfor confirmation one way or the other on these

(03:30):
things except a lot of people on social mediaran with this particular message, and I
understand why.
This is his company, and they're essentiallysaying we're firing him.
And for these facts are while these facts aredifficult to hear and even more difficult to
accept, While these facts, I've highlightedbecause they don't actually state any specific
facts, they said they looked into it.
And in order to maintain our principles, weneeded to terminate him.

(03:52):
Which most people read as being something verybad was found out.
But like I said in my video this past weekend,One of the things that I noted was that there
can be disagreements as to the nature of aninteraction even while the interaction is real.
Right?
So one of the things that I had said onSaturday, which a number of people in Collins
actually got mad at me about, was that theproposed ex explanation for what happened in

(04:18):
2020 had the ring of truth to it to me thatthere was some kind of dispute about this kind
of thing made sense why everybody wouldimmediately go quiet about it and why there
could be a fight among the parties, right,because if Twitch thinks this happened, which
thinks, hey.
We gotta get rid of this guy because he's gonnalook bad for us, and we'll see later on in this
video that everybody that has reacted to thisstory has basically cut ties with doctor

(04:42):
disrespect because it looks terrible for him.
And so Twitch says we gotta get rid of him.
And then doctor disrespect says, wait.
This particular interaction, which we don'thave evidence of, guys.
We're not in this video going to see the logs.
We're not gonna see the actual chat windows.
And I think that's one thing that people arewaiting for, but chances are that's not gonna
get disclosed to us, but that's at least apossibility now.

(05:05):
And I'll talk about why later on in this video.
But Without that context, we have essentiallywhat amounts to a he said, she said, between
Twitch and doctor disrespect as to what thenature of this interaction was because It's not
illegal to talk to minors.
Of course, that would be silly.
It is illegal to do various things that resultin the abusive minors, but there can be a gray

(05:29):
area of essentially disagreement as to whetheror not that line has been crossed.
And when you're talking about a multimilliondollar contract, there's a lot of incentive for
basically both sides to fight about it And whenit's a contract that is based on a breach this
sensitive, there's a lot of reasons for bothsides to settle it.
So with that as our understanding, we're gonnacontinue on from this midnight society

(05:50):
separation where one of the things I said onsocial media was that I caution people to
assume that this meant that very, very badthings happen because realistically, the
existence of the interaction itself would beenough reasons to cut ties, which is something
that I don't know that doctor disrespector isteam understood, but we'll talk about that when
we get to his statement in just a minute.

(06:12):
Now streamer doctor disrespect is put down byhis company.
I can never get the headlines on thisparticular one to work is cut ties with this
company.
Decision by midnight society, which being cofounded, comes 4 years after he was abruptly
kicked off streaming platform Twitch, where hehad a huge following.
The reason for his removal then was never madeclear with the Amazon owned platform only

(06:34):
saying it acted whenever users broke the rules.
Beam denied any wrongdoing and had previouslyposted I didn't do anything wrong.
All this has been probed and settled.
Nothing illegal.
No wrongdoing was found.
In 2020, Twitch told the BBC we takeappropriate action when we have evidence that
has acted in violation of our communityguidelines or terms of service.
And therein lies the rub.

(06:55):
Let's talk about that for just a minute here.
So we've got the Twitch terms of service.
This is actually as modified of March of 2024.
This is not the exact terms of service thatwould have been applicable whenever these
conversations would have taken place.
But since we don't know the exact dates of whenthe conversations would have taken place, and I
mean between Twitch and doctor disrespect, hisinteraction with a minor that we're gonna talk

(07:17):
about in just a minute.
We can't pick the right terms of service.
So I will just note that these are broadlystill the same terms of service.
But some of the language might be a little bitdifferent for whatever version would actually
apply, like, if we were in a court of law.
So first, we look at what we looked at onSaturday, the Twitch services are not available
to persons under the age of thirteen.
So a reasonable person has the understandingthat whoever they would be whispering to or

(07:40):
direct messaging is not under the age ofthirteen, but if they are, Twitch has trouble
there with COPPA and other laws and regulationsaround the world, if you are between the ages
of thirteen and the age of legal majority inyour jurisdiction of residence, you may only
use the Twitch services under the supervisionof parent or legal guardian who agrees to be
bound by these terms of service.
Now noteworthy here is that the YouTube termsactually restrict YouTube usage to anybody

(08:06):
under the age of eighteen.
So rather than having the the Kappa standard of13, YouTube actually requires you to be in the
age of majority.
In the United States, 18.
But reasonable minds can certainly question howgood any of these platforms are actually
enforcing any of those rules outside of a quickbox.
That so that's not really where the end ofthis, story happens.

(08:28):
Twitch allows you to distribute streaming liveand pre recorded audio visual works to use
services such as chat, bulletin boards, formpostings, wiki contributions, and voice
interactive services, and when the whisperservice was working direct messages.
And to participate in other activities in whichyou may create, post, transmit, perform, or
store content messages, text, sound, images,applications code, or other data or materials

(08:49):
on the Twitch services, which we're gonna calluser content.
Unless otherwise agreed to in a writtenagreement between you and Twitch and remember
When we're talking about this story, one of thethings that is odd is that doctor disrespect
was signed to an exclusive agreement withTwitch.
He was not just bound to these terms of serviceor community guidelines or anything else.
Would have had a separate contract that wouldhave probably incorporated these kinds of

(09:11):
things by reference, but he had more.
There were more limitations.
There were more rights he was getting.
He was getting 1,000,000 of dollars.
But unless otherwise agreed to you in a writtenagreement, which we haven't seen, if you
submit, transmit, display, perform, post, orstore user content using the Twitch services,
you grant Twitch the right to use, reproduce,modify, etcetera, so that we can monetize our

(09:32):
services.
But what's notable here is when we're talkingabout whispers, one of the things that popped
up is that the original tweet said that thepowers that b could read it in plain text,
which is maybe not the expectation of theaverage user on the Twitch service, and which
becomes a part of this story, especially as weget later on in this video, when people at

(09:53):
Twitch suggest that maybe doctor disrespect wasthe tip of the eye because one thing, if
especially if they can read it in plain text,that the doctor disrespect legal team could
argue is selective enforcement.
Right?
If they can say, oh, you wanna get us on ourwhispers?
Let's talk about everybody else's whispers,bring them into discovery and say that you're
selectively enforcing against us because youdon't like our contract because mixer just shut

(10:14):
down.
Or whatever story you wanna tell yourself, thenthat's a problem for Twitch.
And this video is not being made to makeexcuses for doctor disrespect.
When we get to his statement, I will talk aboutthe fact that this is not at all okay with me,
but I want folks to understand the legalsituation that Twitch and the doctor disrespect

(10:35):
team found themselves in in 2020 that they canbetter understand what they find themselves in
now in 2024 and everything in between.
So we're gonna talk about a lot of things thatare gonna sound a little bit like defenses
because we know this thing got settled inarbitration.
They settled and said no wrongdoing was done byanybody.
And this only popped up again over this weekendbecause of this Cody Connor tweet, and why was

(10:59):
there so much silence?
What happened between now and then?
I think that's the important part of this storyfrom a legal perspective.
And in understanding how these things actuallyhappen.
So that's what we're talking about.
Some of it's going to sound like defenses.
I do not intend to defend really anybody inthis story.
I don't intend to defend Twitch being silentabout it for so long.
I don't intend to defend doctor disrespect forwhat he did and his current stance right now.

(11:24):
But I think it's important to understand thatlegal issues are often more nuanced and more
detail oriented than the internet and Twitterwants you to believe.
Right?
So when this particular tweet from Cody says hegot caught sexting a minor, that's a definitive
statement.
Right?
We can we can judge it based only on thatdescription, but that's coming from him.

(11:44):
And we don't know whether that's from a directsite line to the logs or not.
Probably not.
I would say and we certainly don't know it whenwe start to get about into reporting about
this, which leaves Twitch in a difficultposition, right, because their terms of service
So we get these rights and you represent awarrant that your user content does not violate
any third party, right, which is really moreabout intellectual property.

(12:06):
And then you agree not to violate any law.
So broadly speaking, Twitch sees these textsand assuming that they aren't just straight up
setting times to meet and getting on a dateline special, then they've got a problem
because they don't wanna be associated withthis guy anymore.
But that might not be completely a violation ofthe law.

(12:27):
Right?
We're gonna use California law again, notbecause we know which law would be applicable
here.
But because we do know that the Twitchcontract, the terms of service for Twitch, are
to be adjudicated under California laws, usethat as our baseline even though another law's
jurisdictional control might actually beapplicable to this case based on where the

(12:47):
people communicating were located, etcetera,etcetera.
But in California, the law that we're primarilytalking about here is that every person who
knows should have known or believes thatanother person is the minor.
And interestingly, believes is what allows youto have those kind of catch a predator,
specials, right, because they have an FBI agentor a cop say they're a fifteen year old girl,

(13:07):
and then they bring the people in, and thenthat person is violating the law because they
believed they were doing something with aminor.
Every person who knows should have known orbelieves that another person is a minor and who
knowingly distribute sends causes to be sentexhibits or offers to distribute or exhibit by
any means, including by physical delivery,telephone, electronic communication, or in

(13:27):
person, any harmful matter, which our purposeshere, we're not gonna go into the definitions
because it isn't that important, is, pictures,depictions I think they include, like,
microfilm and laser disc.
It's it's law law is always old and slow.
Any harmful matter that depicts a minor orminors engaging in bad things to the other

(13:50):
person with the intent of arousing appealing toor gratifying the lust or passions or sexual
desires of that person or of the minor.
So we've got trouble now just talking aboutsexting.
And with the intent or for the purposes ofengaging in very bad things.
With the other person or with the intent thateither person touch an intimate body part of

(14:10):
the other is guilty of a misdemeanor etcetera,etcetera.
If the matter used by a person is harmfulmatter but does not include a depiction or
depictions of a minor or minors engaged in badthings, The offense is punishable by
imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding 1year, so those are misdemeanor type crimes.
They can get up in speed, especially if thereis an abuse, we talked about meeting.

(14:31):
We talked about soliciting, on Saturday, butthis is basically where you're at.
And from a legal point of view, Twitch says,okay.
This is bad.
That's a that's a minor.
He shouldn't be doing this as a bad guy.
I'm not in a disagreement with them on that.
But Did he violate the law so that we cantrigger a terms of service violation or
community guidelines violation and then get outof this multimillion dollar contract?

(14:54):
The lawyers in the room are likely to have adisagreement as to whether or not that has
happened.
And, certainly, the guy that thinks he'sentitled to 1,000,000 of dollars is gonna have
agreement and he's gonna fight it pretty hard.
So when we look at his statement eventually,it's important to note what the requirements
are from a legal and what are the most likelyto be argued.
Whether he knew that another person was aminor, number 1, whether there were any

(15:19):
pictures or other harmful matter directly sent,and whether he had the intent of doing these
various things, with a minor.
Right?
So keeping those in mind when we get to hisstatement, you can decide for yourself whether
or not you think it was vetted by counsel andexactly what kind of filter he's applied to
what he's saying.
But those are the broad requirements forgetting in trouble or not getting in trouble

(15:41):
depending on which side of this year on, andthat's an important part of this story as we
will see in just a moment.
So let's take a look at those communityguidelines, right, because Twitch said we
defend ourselves against anybody, bigstreamers, or small streamers, or anything in
between, that violates our terms of service orour community guidelines.
So we look at these community guidelines and wesay, alright.

(16:02):
What are you looking for?
What are you gonna get them on?
Twitch prohibits any content or or activitythat endangers youth.
This includes content that features or promotesCSAM, which we would expect, and the sexual
exploitation, misconduct, or grooming of youth,which is defined by this policy as minors under
18.
So they say these are bad things and we don'tknow exactly what this would have said at the

(16:27):
time that these events happened, but chancesare they were pretty similar if not the exact
same obligation.
We report all illegal content or activity tothe national center for missing and exploited
children illegal content.
Again, we have that issue where we're notpositive that what happened was illegal.
Now we definitely aren't positive because wecan't even see the language that was made

(16:47):
between these two people, but Twitch would seemhaving not acted immediately to not be
convinced one way or the other themselves.
And that's how this story kind of arrives.
What is bad?
Consent that constitutes or facilitatesinappropriate interactions with youth,
including brewing, purposely exploit exposingyouth to explicit language or material and

(17:09):
engaging in sexual conversations in messageswith youth.
So overall, Twitch as of now says these are badthings.
You shouldn't do them in their violation of thecommunity guidelines, but you can see how there
could be a reasoned fight over things if it wasbad talk, but maybe not obviously stuff that

(17:30):
violates some of these things here.
Now that first one, knowing should have knownor believes in another person as a minor is
important because we're not gonna see itcompletely addressed by doctor disrespect, and
that's one of the things that people haveharped on.
But one thing that people haven't harped on, itis probably the most important thing that
happened in the last 5 days in this story isthis Bloomberg article by Cecilia De Anastasia.

(17:52):
And I apologize in advance Cecilia formispronouncing your name.
But she was reporting on this story forBloomberg and says in a tweet just before
doctor disrespect talks and one of the reasonsthat this kinda got swamped, that doctor
disrespect was banned from Twitch afterexchanging inappropriate messages with a minor
according to 3 sources with knowledge.

(18:13):
Our port was made through Twitch Systems, Myreport confirms a 4th person's allegations
posted to x on Friday, x being Twitter, ofcourse, and that 4th person is the original
Cody Connor's tweet here.
But if we go and we look at what the reportingwas, it's a little bit different than what we
were told.
You two were doctor disrespect was allegedlykicked off Twitch for messaging minor.

(18:34):
Gamer, whose real name is Guy Beam, says he didnothing wrong.
Guy being known on online as doctor disrespectis one of the top video game celebrities on
social media with 4,700,000 YouTubesubscribers.
He's worked with the San Francisco 40 ninerspro football team and been a spokesperson for
Mountain Dew Soda.
He was also banned 4 years ago by Amazon comamazon.com inc's Twitch for violating its

(18:58):
community guidelines.
The reasons for his management from Twitch werenever given, but three people with knowledge of
the matter said Beam was removed because heexchanged sexually explicit messages with a
minor through the services direct chat feature.
Now I have another show on this channel calledHangouts And Headlines where we talk about
critically reading articles.
One of the things that always jumps out at uswhen we look at these things is when something

(19:20):
is only anonymously sourced.
Right?
Three people with knowledge of the matter don'tintrinsically have to have more knowledge than
Cody Connor.
And one of the things that is not obvious fromwhat Cody Conner said is whether he had
personal knowledge of the matter.
Right?
If you imagine that you're at a big company,and you're close to the inner circle, you can
hear things around the water cooler orotherwise, but it doesn't mean that you

(19:42):
specifically knew what was happening.
Certainly Twitch seems to have acted on thebasis of doctor disrespect sexually, messaging
a minor but three people with knowledge of thematter probably isn't enough to say one way or
the other.
He also asked a minor about her plans at theTwitchcon convention according to 2 of the
people who ask not to be identified discussingsuch a sensitive manner.

(20:05):
Now interestingly, 3 dropping to 2 is odd.
Right?
Like, why doesn't the 3rd person know thisparticular part.
Maybe these two people had directunderstanding, but note also the distinction
between he asked the minor about her plans atthe Twitchcon convention and He was trying to
meet up with her at Twitchcon, right, verysimilar, meant to be read in the same way, but

(20:28):
he was trying to meet her at Twitch Con isdifferent than he asked about her plans.
And certainly a lawyer, on the doctordisrespect side, would jump on that distinction
when we're having this conversation.
Right?
So that's important as well.
A complaint was later filed with Twitch throughits reporting system, the 2 said, and this,
again, is important because one of the thingswe talked about on Saturday was, okay.

(20:48):
The whispers are being read in plain text, andwe just looked at part of the terms of service
that says everything you put through the Twitchsystem is licensed to us.
So maybe customers should have an understandingof that, but I don't know that a reasonable
customer of a video game streaming platformwould assume that their direct messages are
being read by the powers that be at Twitch,without otherwise saying so.

(21:09):
A complaint was later filed with Twitch isessentially defensive cover for that.
Right?
Because if a complaint is filed, then customerswould expect the Twitch powers it be to read
through messages related to complaints.
Note how passive this sentence is, however,this particular bit of reporting, doesn't
suggest who filed the complaint when it wasfiled in connection with the conversation or,

(21:32):
his termination from Twitch or anything else.
Right?
A a complaint was later filed with Twitchthrough its reporting system is a long time.
Later, is a long time.
It's forever, really, from when theconversation would have happened.
And so when the conversation actually happenedis an important part of this story.
Now I say this is a really important bit of thenarrative over this weekend because three

(21:54):
people knowledge of the matter is now going toimplicitly include Twitch employees.
Right?
One of the things that people ask me a lotabout is whether or not Cody Conners talking
about this released doctor disrespect fromwhatever obligations he would have entered into
as part of his settlement with Twitch.
Right?
So the way this works from a legal perspectiveis Twitch cuts him off, terminates his contract

(22:17):
for wrongful breach of his the communityguidelines because he was messaging with a
minor.
The tweet the doctor disrespect team fights it.
They get into arbitration, which is requiredunder their contract or their terms of service
or somewhere in Wayne, and then they settle it.
When they settle it, they agree to a statementthat we've seen in other videos in this series
where essentially both sides say no wrongdoingis admitted to by either side, and Twitch

(22:41):
agrees to pay off the rest of his contract.
So Twitch pays him off, says we're never gonnatalk about this again.
Cody Conners then brings it up over this pastweekend and people say, well, Doctor District
says he can't talk.
Why is that?
It's because his lawyers are telling him thatCody Conners is not Twitch.
And in his capacity as former Twitch employee,he probably isn't breaching Twitch's

(23:03):
obligations to doctors.
This He isn't a signatory to that agreement.
It's Twitch's obligations, not Cody Conners.
Now that being said, the lawyers for doctordisrespect were probably also telling him that
you might be able to make the claim that Twitchhas breached its agreement with this because it
didn't keep these people's NDAs and it's notenforcing them.
As it should have in order to meet itsobligations to doctor disrespect.

(23:27):
But that all goes out the window when a coupleof people talk to Bloomberg reporter
anonymously or otherwise, right, the peoplethat are still at Twitch talking about that,
that is Twitch reaching whatever mutuallyagreed to NDA existed between them, which is
why immediately after this report goes out,doctor disrespect issues a statement.
Now we're gonna talk about this.

(23:48):
We're gonna skip some of the superfluouslanguage, but there's a lot here to talk about.
So Let's get into it.
The Twitch ban.
Hello.
I'd like to make a quick statement.
Let's cut the f n b s.
As you know, there's no filter with me.
Now keep on to that language because as I said,we're gonna wanna look at what legal ease he

(24:09):
talks about here.
I've always been upfront and real with you guyson anything that I can be upfront about, and
I'm always willing to accept responsibility,which is why I'm here now.
Resible binds can differ on that.
First and foremost, I do wanna apologize toeveryone in my community as well as those close
to me, my team and everyone at Midnight societyGame Studio.
A lot of people have been left in the darkabout what happened yesterday with midnight

(24:31):
society and I, and we made the painful decisioncollectively to have me step down.
Now this is obviously cover in a certainrespect.
And so far as midnight society went out andsaid we terminated him.
However, I think both sides are probablyoverplaying what actually happened probably
some kind of mutual agreement because a founderof a company is unlikely to give the rest of

(24:52):
the people involved in the starting of acompany so much power is to simply wipe them
out.
Anybody represented by counsel is going toavoid that outcome, and we know from the last
few years that doctor disrespect is representedby good, effective counsel.
Our team is full of incredibly talented andgood people that have high career ambitions and
families, and I'd never wanna jeopardize theculture we have carefully crafted.

(25:12):
Now that said, Midnight society could say,look, we can't work with you anymore.
You're gonna have to step down and we're gonnaliquidate the whole thing.
At which point he would come to the quote,unquote decision to step down, but I think both
sides are probably a part of that conversationat in at least some extent.
Everyone has been wanting to know why I wasbanned from Twitch, but for reasons outside of

(25:33):
my control, I was not allowed to say anythingfor the last several years.
Now I wanna talk about this a little becausethis is basically the stance he's taken for a
number of years, and it's not wrong exactlybecause he would have entered into this
settlement agreement to essentially never talkabout this again as Twitch did.
But I was not allowed is perhaps a littlestronger than I would give him full credit for.

(25:53):
The reality of this situation is that if henobody wants to do that.
That's 1,000,000 of dollars.
That's your livelihood.
Right?
And so it's fair for somebody to say, I reallycan't do that.
That's outside of my control.
But he signed that contract, and it's importantto know when we talk about these things that he

(26:18):
could have mentioned these things if he waswilling to give that money back.
Now Again, I'm not saying anybody should haveto do that, but this is a little bit of a
strong language.
A lot of people think that it means he would bein prison or it was illegal to talk about it.
This was a civil contract between 2 privateparties.
So the realistic penalty for breaching it wouldhave been money.

(26:38):
Now that 2 former Twitch employees havepublicly disclosed the accusations, as I said,
this is the important part.
This is where it's actually 3 former, what,it's 3 current Twitch employees So this is
again getting a little bit confused here, butone of the things I want to say is that doctor
disrespect seems to have been made made thisstatement based on a green light from his
council or his PR firm or both that once thatBloomberg article is made public, Twitch has

(27:03):
violated its obligations to him, and so hewon't owe the money back for now talking about
this issue.
I can now tell you my side of the storyregarding the ban.
Were there Twitch Whisper messages with anindividual back in 2017.
Now this is interesting.
I don't know that this is actually the currentstate of this particular message, so let me
just check it real quick.
There's a new version of this post.
So let's make sure that we get it.

(27:24):
This is one of the things that was kind ofweird about this message going up and down and
up yesterday, which is to say that anindividual minor back in 2017.
This word minor, was in the original draft wastaken out and then was added back in in a half
hour.
This either seems to be a very, tricky thing atthe doctor disrespect level or more likely a

(27:48):
bit of a fight between him and his internalteam as to what should be included because as
we said when we were looking at that law, oneof the important things is Did you know?
Did you know at the time?
Should you have known.
Right?
And this doesn't indicate one way or the other,but it implies that you did know.
Right?
I had Twitch messages with an individual minorback in 2017 suggests that you intended to have

(28:12):
messages with a minor that you knew a minorwhen you did it.
Even if that isn't strictly speaking, thelogical requirement of a sentence like this.
That might be why you took it out.
I can't really speak to it.
That's all speculative on my part.
The answer is yes.
And this is where basically everybody cutsties.
Right?
Did I individually did I did I whisper messageto a minor in 2017?

(28:32):
Yes.
I did.
Were there real intentions behind thesemessages?
The answer is absolutely not.
Right?
And I put real intentions in the title becausethat was one that jumped out at me and so real
intentions.
Remember, when we talk about that law, that'sthat's one of the big ones at the end.
You have to have had the intent or the purposeof engaging in very bad things or with the

(28:53):
intent of them to touch you in order to beguilty of this particular piece of the
California penal code, because for the mostpart, We want crimes to only be punished for
what we call a guilty mind.
What you might hear is re men's Rhea, in othercontext, the the state of mind that you have.
So we require a certain amount of knowledge andintentionality.

(29:13):
Right?
If you're just talking someone and you don'tknow or have any reason to believe that they're
a minor, and you don't actually have any intentof meeting up with them or otherwise doing bad
things to them.
The law doesn't care as much about grooming orother icky things that you might think it
should.
Right?

(29:34):
And I don't blame you for that.
I don't like these things either, but this law,other laws, are always going to be contoured
around things like freedom of speech, and wedon't want to overly penalize things and throw
people in jails that don't belong there.
And so a lot of the times the laws are writtento really require a certain amount of knowledge
and intentionality.

(29:55):
So when doctor disrespect goes out and says, Ihad no real intentions.
These were just messages.
These were casual mutual conversations thatsometimes leaned too much in the direction of
being inappropriate, which very much soundslike legal language to me.
Right?
This is I'm not even gonna say that they wereinappropriate they leaned too much in the
direction of being inappropriate.

(30:15):
This is somebody that is trying to be carefuland walk on eggshells with this statement.
This is one of the reasons why I suggested thatI thought that this was a vetted statement,
certainly because he hadn't talked for years,and the Bloomberg article was followed up with
this almost immediately.
But also because of language like this, nothingillegal happened.
No pictures were shared.
Remember, we were talking about harmfulmaterial.

(30:36):
No crimes were committed.
I never even met the individual.
I went through a lengthy arbitration regardinga civil dispute with Twitch, and that case was
resolved by a settlement.
Let me be clear.
It was not a criminal case against me and nocriminal charges have ever been brought against
me.
Now from a moral standpoint, I'll absolutelytake responsibility, which is good.
Right?
This is bad.
This is the married person in his thirties in2017 talking to what was a minor.

(31:01):
Now one of the interesting things I think aboutthis story that people have talked about online
is that they say it was a minor girl.
I don't see that in this language.
Right?
And I'm not trying to add more speculationagainst or for doctor disrespect, but he
doesn't say one way or the other whether or notthis person was a boy, a girl, or otherwise.
And that is something that we should make surethat we are aware of when we look at

(31:24):
speculation because people that talk about him,messaging an underage girl are already adding a
little bit of speculation of their own.
Right?
And that's just something to be aware of whenwe look at stories like this.
I should have never entertained theseconversations to begin with.
And here's where, again, where I say, agreed.
This is abhorrent to me.
Right?
I'm a father of, a teenage girl myself, whogoes online, who loves video games, and we try

(31:47):
to watch as best we can, but the the notion ofa man in his thirties, actually doing this to
my daughter is, upsetting.
Right?
And I don't want to be defending this kind ofactivity, but we do have to talk about
contracts in the law and why it looks the wayit does to us on the outside.

(32:08):
That's on me as an adult, a husband, and afather.
It should have never happened.
I get it.
I'm not perfect, and I'll effin own my shit.
This was stupid.
Now with all this said, don't get it mistaken.
I've seen all the remarks and labels beingthrown around so loosely.
Social media is a destruction zone.
Agreed.
I'm no predator or pedophile.
Are you kidding me?
Anyone that truly knows me knows where I standon those things with those types of people.

(32:32):
F that.
That's a different level of disgust that Ioften hate even hearing about.
Don't be labeling me as the worst of the worstwith your exaggerations.
Get the f out of here.
But I think I've said what I needed to sayregarding the ban itself.
That's it.
That's why Twitch made the decision in 2020.
Now speaking of 2020, let's talk about yearsagain a little bit.
Right?
One of the things that has been socontroversial for people is why didn't Twitch

(32:56):
do more to publicize that this was an issue.
We talked about whispers being in plain text.
We talked about the fact that this could bemore endemic or systemic as an issue at Twitch
and doctor disrespect could have threatened totalk about selective enforcement in respect of
his multimillion dollar contract But one of theother things that we need to talk about is this
date 2017.
Right?
Now people have pointed out online that thiswas actually the same time frame in which

(33:19):
doctor Disrespect admitted to cheating on hiswife.
So it was a rough year for him and hismarriage.
No question.
But in addition to that particular issue, Wehave the issue of the fact that he signed a
contract with Twitch in March of 2020.
Right?
So imagine if you will, Twitch can read thesethings in plain text.

(33:40):
They have some kind of monitoring solutionwhere they're watching these things.
Come in and they're trying to battle with mixerand sign exclusive people to their service and
they sign this guy in 2020 for, a multimilliondollar contract.
And yet 3 years before, he was essentiallyentering into these communications with a minor

(34:00):
of some type the specifics of which we don'tknow at this point in time.
Certainly part of this story that doctordisrespect's team would have made public is
that Twitch should have known themselves ifthey had a problem and that they instead
decided to sign them up and that anything thatwas a breach of contract for him that existed

(34:23):
before they signed this new contract can't bewhat they base their termination on.
And so that might not seem fair to you.
That might not seem fair to the people thatwanna protect young people of all kinds, and I
don't blame you for that.
But when we're talking about multimilliondollar contracts and law, can you terminate
your contract for something that happened 3years earlier that you say you had plain text

(34:45):
access to this whole time?
Is going to be a fight that's worth 1,000,000of dollars to both sides.
And so that's kind of part of the story that wehave to discuss as well.
The other part is that it's important tounderstand that these kinds of allegations hurt
everybody.
Right?
These are these are gonna hurt doctordisrespect.
I've got brought up an article from a metro coUK that says he's lost 40,000 followers

(35:09):
already.
We've seen certain comments from people onsocial media like, Nick Merx and Tim, the
Tatman.
And I apologize.
This is not a space that I follow regularly.
So If they prefer a different pronunciation ofeither of those, you can let me know in the
comments later on.
But they've said this is very disappointing tothem.
I don't blame them.
This is not a good look for anybody involved,and it's certainly understandable why people

(35:34):
would want to cut ties.
Now as part of this, there's also another kindof thread going on through social media that I
have been made aware of from certain folks weshould take with a grain of soldiers like
anything else, but I think it's important todiscuss.
Here's someone named Relyn on Twitter, thedoctor disrespect situation, I don't think most
people have any idea of how bad things werebehind the scenes at Twitch.

(35:55):
I literally worked in the department that hadaccess to the most data and information.
I saw private whispers, etcetera.
It was literally my job to investigate daily,presumably based on those reports.
I saw things every single day that I wish Inever had to see.
I always advocated for being a good human,always expressed with heavy emotion on my
streams how Twitch let pedophiles run freeevery day.
I signed an NDA and afraid to get in troublebut I have to say something.

(36:18):
It's been bothering me for so long.
These sick people don't deserve to be free.
And this is a part of what I was talking aboutearlier, which is to say if they can read these
whispers and they've got a team set up to readthem, then one of the things that can come out
against Twitch, much like it came out againstdoctor disrespect this past weekend is that
they are allowing this activity to happen.

(36:40):
And if you think doctor disrespect losing40,000 followers is anything big, imagine what
kind of effect it could have on Twitch, whichis owned by Amazon, which is very concerned
with its bottom line and its stock, stock priceand everything else.
And so that's one of those reasons why, yes,you would try to keep this quiet if you were on
the Twitch side of things, which might not besatisfactory to any of you.

(37:01):
Right?
There's a young person involved here And Hogueis talking about companies and saving the
bottom line for their stockholders.
That is all a reasonable critique of thisposition, but the lawyers in this case have the
responsibility to try to defend their clientsto the best of their ability, and that's what
I'm trying to articulate here.
Now that all being said, let's take a look atthe future a little bit because a lot of people

(37:23):
have asked me about whether or not Google mightdo anything.
And that's an interesting question in and ofitself.
So I brought up the YouTube child safetypolicy, right, because doctor disrespect
currently streams on YouTube or at least he hasbeen.
He's now currently taking an extended vacation,at least as he has told us, in his most recent
stream, YouTube is concerned as everybody in onthe internet is with child safety.

(37:46):
So the safety of our creators, viewers, andpartners is our highest priority.
That's probably not right.
Their highest priority is gonna be makingstockholder value for their company, but that's
just the way it works.
YouTube doesn't allow content that endangersthe emotional and physical well-being of
minors.
A minor or someone under eighteen years old.
What this policy means for you.
Don't post content on YouTube if it fits any ofthe descriptions below.

(38:08):
Now this is gonna be one of the problems thateven a doctor disrespect could potentially
fight against if this were to become more of afight in the near future, and that is to say
this is directed at what you post on YouTube.
That's really where YouTube has the mostcontrol.
And when we talk about that, what are yougetting trouble?
Content that contains sexualization of minors.
The this policy applies to videos, videodescriptions, comment stories, community posts,

(38:30):
live streams, playlists, and any other YouTubeproduct or feature.
So this isn't a YouTube conversation.
This is Twitch whispers.
That's been pretty fairly established at thispoint.
And so what does that mean for doctordisrespect?
Probably nothing directly in the child safetypolicy.
But that's not where this ends.
Let's take a look at the YouTube terms ofservice as we have so often done on this video
series.

(38:51):
If we look at YouTube, when you agree to makevideos and use the YouTube platform, you agree
to a whole bunch of stuff, some of which isperhaps broader than it needs to be.
One of which is If any of your content maycause harm to YouTube, our users, or third
parties, we reserve the right to remove or takedown, some are all of such content in our
discretion.
What does cause harm mean?
Well, usually it would mean direct harm.

(39:12):
It would mean specifically CSAM that harmfulmaterial that we discussed in the California
law, but because it's written so broadly,excuse me, it's really not limited to that.
So if YouTube can make the claim, that contentyou've created may cause reputational harm to
us, then we reserve the right to take it down.
So let's say that they just really hate beingconnected with doctor disrespect at all as so

(39:36):
many have, as we just saw in that metroarticle, and they can say if you make a video
on our platform, it causes harm to us becausewe're associated with you and you are persona
non grata right now.
So that's a problem in and of itself, but itgets a little bit worse for doctor disrespect.
You do reserve the right to suspend orterminate your Google account or your access to
all or part of the service if, among otherthings, We reasonably believe that there has

(40:01):
been conduct.
Notice that passive voice that creates or couldcreate liability or harm to any user other
third party, YouTube, or our affiliates.
So this isn't strictly limited to what you doon YouTube.
We can get rid of you from your account if wereasonably believe that there has been conduct
anywhere in the world on the internet thatcreates or could create could create is pretty

(40:25):
broad.
Liability or harm to anyone, including us.
So we reserve the right to kick you off.
Not only your YouTube account, potentially yourGoogle account, which, of course, has Gmail and
Google docs and everything else associated withit.
So this is a part of a story where doctordisrespect could be facing some significant
issues in the future if YouTube just wanted tocut ties.

(40:46):
Notice for termination of suspension, we willnotify you with the reason of termination
unless we believe that that notification wouldcause harm to any user other third party
youtuber or affiliates.
So here, you talk about broad language.
YouTube also reserves the right to not tell youwhy terminating you if they think to do so
could harm it, including in the court of law orarbitration or otherwise.
So One of the things that could happen is thatYouTube just decides to cut ties using this

(41:12):
broad language in their terms of service anddoesn't even say why.
So we'll have to follow that into the future.
But as we've already seen so far, a lot ofpeople are ending their relationships with
doctor disrespect.
Turtle Beach is ending its partnership doctor,Nick Merx and Timna Tatman, we discussed,
Midnight society is terminating itsrelationship, etcetera, etcetera.

(41:33):
And Robert Bolling, who is the head of theMidnight society, released this Twitter at the
same time as these statements were allhappening.
This is a statement for me personally.
It does not reflect any of my companies and hasnot gone through any legal or PR approvals.
If you inappropriately message a minor, Icannot work with you, period.
I promise to only act on facts, and I did.
Now I know this isn't a vetted statementbecause a lawyer in PR would never allow these

(41:57):
2 sentence fragments to be your sole statementon this.
This is a this is a single sentence.
Should probably be a comma.
But this is this is fair.
This is a fair, position to take.
And you can see everybody kind of talkingaround this specific issue, but a lot of people
have questions and a number of folks have said,alright.
Hope you said that knowing whether it's a minoris an important part of the law, it's also an

(42:21):
important part of the story to me.
There's a difference between essentiallycheating on your white wife in cyber texts with
what you think is an adult and what you thinkis a minor, but did he know?
And a number of people if he didn't know,wouldn't he have said it here?
And I think that that's a justifiable gutreaction, but I always caution people to take
those kinds of speculative leaps We don't know.

(42:44):
We don't know whether he knew or not.
It certainly would have been helpful to saythat he didn't.
And so we can assume kind of based on the factthat he wrote this whole thing and it appears
to be vetted by counsel that if such a helpfulpiece of information could have been included,
it would have been but the answer is we westrictly don't know on that particular point.
And that's I think everything I wanted to talkabout about this particular issue as of right

(43:08):
now, but I know a lot of people had commentsand a lot of people had questions.
So with that said, let me just remind folksthat conversations like this are supported by
viewers and listeners like you through playerand Patreon, which are both linked in the
description or through memberships to thechannel super chats or anything else.
So if you've got any of those, please doconsider them otherwise just liking or

(43:32):
subscribing or telling your friends is very,very helpful as well.
So with that said, let me get to the questionsand comments and make sure I capture everyone
that might have super chat or member chattedhere.
So just because it says don't forget to likethe stream on your way in, or on your way out
now that we're at the end of the stream.
So please thank you so much for being here.

(43:54):
I hope this was informative and helpful of whatis a very controversial topic in video games
and the internet and just in general, and Idon't blame anybody for having strong feelings
about this.
I certainly do myself.
Hopefully, that didn't cloud the analysis andjudgment that I've spoken to you about here
today.
Vintage Willow always here.

(44:14):
Thank you so much for gifting 5 Hoaglamemberships.
I really appreciate the support.
As I do the support of Brentwood Sheek, thankyou so much.
So thank you everyone that has been here andhas continued to be here to support these
conversations.
Corey, USMC 101.
I'm just tuning in, but I doubt he knew thischick or whatever was underage.
How did Twitch not get out of paying hiscontract if they were able to hold this to his

(44:36):
head?
Come on now.
I think that's an important part of the story.
Right?
And I've kind of assumed that everybodyunderstands that if Twitch had them dead to
rights, had him in that kind of date linespecial.
The person comes in and says I'm a fifteen yearold girl and and gets him to put together a
time frame that they're going to meet in aplace, and all those various things, then I

(44:58):
think that's a different story than what we cansee from the outside, which means that in all
likelihood, the messaging is at least plausiblyboth directions.
Right?
It's at least plausibly something that's a bigproblem that Twitch wants to get rid of him for
and it's at least plausibly innocent adjacentto enough that his team can go and argue that
point and say you don't want us to have thisfight in court, my friend.

(45:21):
So I think that's fair.
I also think it's a fair kind of gut reactionto say if he did know, if he didn't know, then
he would have put that in his statement.
So, innocent until proven guilty is still athing.
I think when you've got these kinds of thingsthat there is a kind of dog piling and mob
mentality that happens, and I don't love that.

(45:42):
One of the tweets that I made when I saw theBloomberg article was that I don't love this
kind of anonymous dog piling where you've gotsources with knowledge, which really don't have
at least as I could tell, any reason to begranted anonymous sourcing authority.
Right?
They said it's because it's a sensitive matter,but that doesn't rise to the level of
journalistic ethics in my opinion.
Generally speaking, you're supposed to nameyour sources unless there are certain specific

(46:05):
categories of protection that need to be givento somebody.
I didn't see that here, but I'm not ajournalist, so that's just me kind of opining
on that.
Now for any other questions, I wanna make surewe grab them aren't just limited to super chats
and membership chats.
If you do have a question, if you include aqueue or at Hoaglaw, I'm more likely to see it.

(46:25):
But I'm I'm more than happy to to talk aboutany questions that people might have.
So we're not 192.
If a minor creates a tender profile and youtalk about meeting up, but they never disclose
their actual age.
Is that criminal?
Is it right to assume everyone who uses the appis over 18?
I cannot speak to Tinder's terms of servicebecause I don't have a Tinder account.

(46:46):
But if they have a to provision in their termsof service that says you can't use this unless
you're over 18, then a reasonable person canprobably rely on that to a point.
Right?
If you're having a conversation and they saytheir favorite movie is the little Mermaid, or
various other things that give you a reason tobelieve that they're a minor, then maybe you go
down that road, but this is one of thosereasons why it's very difficult for people to

(47:08):
prosecute.
Right?
Even those to catch your predators and othervarious things that you see on TV, don't always
result in the level of prosecutions that youmight expect because they do need to prove that
you had certain intent and knowledge, and maybethey do and maybe they don't.
So I don't think it's right to assume, withperfect clarity, anything just from using a

(47:29):
platform, but you can kind of create yourdefault rule, that you think that they're
they're likely to not be a minor.
And then if they're proven differently, thenyou have to kinda react to that.
Matthew, I just can't bring myself to believenot saying he didn't know as anything other
than an admission that he did.
It seems to be the easiest defense possible.
I think that's a fair kind of gut reaction.

(47:49):
I just can't speak to it one way or the otherbecause even just seeing minor pop in and out
of the statement means that it was kind of influx.
So I don't know what they were willing to sayor not say in this particular context.
Certainly, it did appear to be vetted.
These trying not to lie, in that statement, butThere might be reasons to suggest you don't
wanna have that fight in public.

(48:10):
Right?
One aspect of this, which I'd meant to say thatI didn't say earlier, that is so interesting is
that with doctor disrespect acting as publiclyas he did, if the Twitch people talking to
Bloomberg didn't violate the settlementagreement, then doctor disrespect certainly
did.
So either way you look at it, that settlementagreement should not be binding anyone from

(48:32):
discussing this at a high level from Twitch ordoctor disrespect side.
So if somebody wanted to share the logs, theycould.
And that's something that doctor disrespect'steam has to be wary of if he thinks they are
damaging to him.
Otherwise, they might release them himthemselves.
Depending on how this might go forward in thefuture, but I do believe that that
confidentiality requirement is probably off thetable at this point.

(48:59):
Cherry Mills, thank you for being a member for17 months and for re upping on the membership.
I really appreciate it.
Jack, verification of age online, are youeighteen?
Yes or no?
It's not like anyone requires proof like an ID.
Not like teens aren't cruising porn online allday anyway.
I can't really speak to that.
I I I hope my kids aren't.
But, certainly, when we talk about ageverification, that's one of those issues that

(49:22):
comes up again and again.
With how the internet operates and very manyplatforms do only require a checkbox.
And realistically, Twitch and YouTube andeveryone else that even puts an age in their
terms of service isn't necessarily, looking atthat other than you promising that you are old
enough to use that service.
So again, it's is it reasonable to assume?
It's probably not reasonable to assume becauseof how easy it is to get into these platforms,

(49:47):
but there is a certain amount of essentiallydefensive cover you can have in your head and
that your lawyer could use in most situationsif that platform is deemed is designed to be
only 18 plus, etcetera.
CNH will 1990 says, thanks.
Hope you already answered my question.
Hope I answered it well.
Thank you for being here and for listening tothis conversation.

(50:08):
I think it's important to have theseconversations.
I really hate to see social media kind of goingwild with accusations in both directions
against Twitch, against doctor disrespect foror for either of them.
I want to try to be as nuanced and as, wellthought as possible on these things.
And hopefully, I have helped some of you thinkabout these.

(50:33):
Mister Poopy Butthole, thank you, says, but thelogs are with a minor.
The logs are with a minor.
At the time, there's certainly gonna bequestions of what they could have held and what
they couldn't have held, but that's part of the2017 story.
Right?
Like, they find it in 2020.
The fact that they find it in the week thatmixer goes down is still a part of this story.

(50:53):
Right?
They terminate doctor disrespect, presumablyimmediately after they find, these particular
messages from 2017 in 2020, a couple monthsafter they sign them back up to the contract,
But note that they they're finding it didn'tactually limit him from going to Twitchcon or
anything like that.
That was in fact where he had, the, affair thathe admits to in cheating on his wife.

(51:17):
And so one of the things that pops up from whatwe were talking about, over this weekend is
that this text from Cody Conners is intended toimply that Twitter stopped him from meeting up
with someone at TwitchCon.
He was trying to meet up with her at Twitchconbut they didn't they didn't even discuss this
for 3 years later.
And they only and and it was related to 2017.

(51:37):
Now TwitchCon that we know that he went to sothere's a lot of kind of holes and openings and
ambiguities in both sides of the story herethat I think are gonna continue to be there as
people kinda assess this out.
So yeah.

(51:58):
Jabba the Hutt asks or Jabba the Hutt asks,wouldn't twitch have to take this to the
authorities with the c serious nature of theoffense?
As I talked about with respect to Californialaw, I'm not even positive there's an offense.
Right?
If there really isn't that intention of ofmeeting and doing bad things, with the minor,
then it doesn't appear like California law ormost other state's laws would cover that.

(52:20):
Right?
It might sound Iggy.
In fact, it does to me, But for the most part,grooming and sex chatting a minor isn't
illegal, in in in many jurisdictions in the USat least until you start to do things
physically to a person, the law doesn't doesn'treally apply, obviously.

(52:41):
So wouldn't Twitch have to take this to theauthorities?
You saw that they will report it if it'sillegal.
And I suspect even internally a Twitch, therewas some fighting about there be that being
proof of illegality or not.
Right?
I it appears to be relatively gray area anddoctor disrespect was relying on that gray area
in order to fight his fight back in 2020 allthe way through today.

(53:17):
Against the tide, my main moderator here isdon't forget that YouTube breeds the chat and
certain words are said too much.
It could cause problems for the channel.
Well, let's hope YouTube doesn't characterizeme, as a, specific purveyor of problem material
on its platform.
But as we just talked about, it gets to decidewhen it takes things down or changes things or
or demonetizes or otherwise squashes down onthem basically at its discretion.

(53:39):
So, yeah, please watch that.
And I will note that, originally, the originaldoctor disrespect video I did this last weekend
was demonetized for talking about sensitivesubjects.
So expect that to happen with this one, butthey did overturn that by manual review as soon
as I asked them to.
So, yeah, Is it possible the individual's mailand the inappropriate messages were guy talk?

(54:14):
I said earlier on that one of the things that'sinteresting is that people keep assuming that
it's a girl, and that isn't stated in thestatement, which is like saying that I knew it
was a minor or didn't know it was a minor wouldseem to be a pertinent fact as part of this
story.
So I don't know I don't know whether it wasmale.
The inappropriate messages could have been,quote, unquote, guy talk still, not great to do

(54:36):
with a minor, a stranger of any kind.
And I say that as somebody that has a smallamount of internet presence, certainly not
anywhere near the level of doctor disrespect,and I am still often surprised by the nature
and content of some of the direct messages andemails that I receive.
So There is definitely an issue with, peopleinteracting with streamers or video makers of

(55:03):
all kinds and doctor disrespect seems to havebeen or still is, depending on the nature of
how you interpret these things, someone thatisn't terribly responsible with how he treats
those particular interactions.
Stacy Baskfort says if Twitch were defending apedophile, they should be held accountable
along with their employees.

(55:24):
I I don't think anything that Twitch has donewould suggest that they were defending him.
You could certainly argue that they hit it orthat they should have been more public with
this being an issue.
But one thing to Twitch is side of the equationhere that we should mention is that whispers
doesn't exist anymore as I understand it.
I don't use Twitch often, but they did closewhispers, and this could be a part of the
reason why.

(55:47):
Does doc have any recourse to sue fordefamation if the chat logs are in his favor?
I'm not sure what you think the chat logs couldshow that wind up in docs favor, but, no,
chances are they look bad for him, but theymight not look as bad as some of the kind of
broad language that you see being thrown aroundon the internet.
But Twitch itself hasn't acted to say thosevarious things.

(56:09):
Cody Conners might be liable, but again, whenwe talk about liability, what assets a person
has is an important part of that story.
Right?
If if doctor disrespect loses 40,000 followers,loses all of his branding initiatives, loses
all of his potential future company earnings,then that's a pretty big number, and chances
are any given individual doesn't have somethingthat's worth fighting over in court.
So maybe defamation is hard on its own, andit's and it's kinda silly to do against

(56:34):
somebody that doesn't have deep pockets.
Secret squirrel says it's impossible to tellsomeone's age just from their nickname on
social media.
I I think Hoag Law probably indicates that Ihave I've done some stuff gone through grad
school or so.
But, yes, just in general, absolutely.
This is a cartoon squirrel.

(56:55):
I might assume that you are a minor here.
But, of course, since you can't interact withYouTube, unless you're eighteen, you must not
be.
Right?
Secret score secret squirrel?
Erin Foley talking to Leo Saunders says, yeah,Twitch does have some explaining to do.
Also Cody wasn't a mod.
He was a PR guy that I heard hated doc.
Again, all of this stuff is kinda going aroundin his speculative.

(57:17):
I I don't know Cody Adam.
I don't know what relationship he had withdoctor disrespect.
I don't know whether Twitch had any issues withhim in particular except that I do note that
they terminated his contract almost immediatelyafter mixer went down, which I've often thought
looks like someone some entity trying to getout of a contract that they no longer thought
was lucrative enough.
So I it doesn't surprise me, that that kind ofstory played out that way, but I would caution

(57:43):
everybody from kinda jumping on the I heard,something about something at 31 flavors last
night, etcetera.
So I also will point out that I'm notmentioning in this video or I'm not including
in this video, a email that was circulatedaround that a bunch of people sent me that
suggested that Twitch was out to get doctordisrespect and that set and that he didn't know

(58:05):
it was minor and all these things.
And I would caution against anyone kind oftaking a sacrosanct pieces of information or
knowledge that are anonymously sourced and orkind of deep internet unknown sourced that tell
you exactly what you wanna hear.
Right?
If you're a doctor disrespect fan, what youwanna hear is he didn't know.
What you wanna hear is that he was railroadedby Twitch.
I get that.

(58:26):
But when you see an email that is enormouslysourced, that says exactly what you wanna hear,
really look at it closely.
And I'm not including it here as part of thisvideo.
Because it didn't pass the smell test to me.
Carmen, could they have wanted to settle it outof people trying to hold Twitch responsible for

(58:48):
what happened on whispers?
Yes.
I mean, hold which hold Twitch responsible isprobably a difficult legal burden to bring
because they're just a platform, but one of thethings that pops up in that California law that
I didn't mention is that at the bottom here, itdoes not constitute a violation to pass on this
information.
If you're a telephone corporation, a cabletelevision company, an internet service

(59:09):
provider or commercial online service provider.
What we might consider common carriers in theUnited States that aren't supposed to really
get involved in what content is beingtransmitted across their various mechanisms,
but Twitch as a streaming platform isn'tcovered by these things or at least is not
obviously covered by these things.
They aren't a common carrier.
That could potentially be liable forfacilitating this kind of messaging.

(59:29):
And that would be something that Twitch'slawyers would be concerned about.
Justifiably so.
So that's a part of this story, certainly.
Nick says, what do you think will be the nextlawsuit?
We will see.
I presume that this question is related to whatlawsuit might up occur here with respect to
this story.
Otherwise, I don't know, presumably somethingrelated to Amazon or Facebook or something

(59:50):
else.
But in this story, don't know that you're goingto see a lawsuit.
I I think that you might wind up seeing somepublic, public forum fighting with knowledge
released or leaked by both sides because Theveil has been lifted.
The blockade has been breached by the Bloombergarticle and then by doctor disrespect's

(01:00:10):
statement.
So I don't think either side has anyconfidentiality obligations to each other, so
they might try to hurt each other at thispoint.
And at that point, YouTube might get involved,and then you might some kind of defensive legal
action brought by doctor disrespect againstYouTube.
Maybe.
But it's all really speculative.
We don't know what's gonna play out even in thenext twenty 4 hours.
Let alone the next 2 weeks.

(01:00:38):
Christopher Miles, can YouTube take actionagainst an event that happened years ago and
not on their platform?
I talked about that a little bit as part ofthis video.
So if you catch it in replay, you might wannacheck out that section, broadly, YouTube
retains the right to get rid of accounts andget rid of content that it feels harms it in
some way.
And it doesn't have to be related to what'shappening on its service.

(01:01:00):
If they think affiliation with you harms them,then they can say you're all you're cut off.
Because that affiliation harms us.
And it doesn't matter what you did on theirservice.
If they think that everybody thinks you're abad guy and everybody wants to disassociate
with you, they can disassociate with youthrough that mechanism, right, just like we see
Turtle Bay is associated just like we see,midnight society is associating.

(01:01:21):
YouTube says We aren't obligated to beassociated with you.
And if you're hurting us or you or we thinkyou're hurting us, we can cut you off.
So YouTube has that capability, but, certainly,if doctor disrespect is otherwise making money
on YouTube and feels like that's a step toofar, that's that's one of the places where
legal counsel might say, this is too broad.

(01:01:41):
Let's let's threaten to take them to court orarbitration or whatever else is required into
their under their terms of service.
What is the crime here?
I think that's realistically, that's theshorthand version of what Twitch's major
problem was.
What is the crime here?
As said by doctor disrespect.
Right?
We have to take into account that doctordisrespect is probably framing things in his

(01:02:01):
benefit as well as he can in his own statementbut assuming that that is basically the truth,
there might not be a crime here, which is tosuggest that might not that might not have
resulted in a breach of his contract that wouldget them out of that 1,000,000 of dollars, and
that's why Twitch would settle.
Right?
If you have a contract that you've terminatedwrongfully, you basically owe the rest of the

(01:02:24):
money on that contract in the way mostcontracts are written.
And so Twitch paying that out is a certaintestament to the fact that Twitch's legal
counsel was unwilling to take the risk that anarbitrator would find that they wrongfully
terminated.
So There might not be a crime here or not whena Twitch was satisfied that they could prove,
in the long term.
It's hard to say.

(01:02:49):
Jim says, honestly, I think Twitch was in thewrong.
We know nothing of what happened.
We really don't know a lot more, but we know alot more than we did in 2020.
So it's interesting.
Do we have the logs?
Not that I have seen.
Wouldn't twitch have to take this to theauthorities due to the serious sanctions of the

(01:03:09):
situation.
I feel like I answered this one, but The answeris, no, it's not obvious that Twitch had a duty
to report on any of these things.
I talked about it very briefly on Saturday, butin general, You only have a legal issue or
liability, if you have a duty of some kind.
And so did Twitch as a platform provider have aduty report these various things.

(01:03:31):
Certainly, the individuals involved might havereported them.
We saw that from the Twitter user that said Isaw all these things at Twitch and I reported
them.
But Did Twitch have a legal obligation?
No.
That is distinct from a moral obligation.
Right?
Everybody that comes in here and says, youknow, this corporate lawyer is just talking to
you about defenses and things that areotherwise, not important when we've got a a a

(01:03:55):
child or a minor, an issue here.
I I tend to agree with.
Right?
I say what is right may not always be legal andwhat is legal may not always be right, but the
opposite is entirely true.
What is legal may well be wrong.
Right?
And that's why one of the things in my title isillegality and immorality.
Right?
Doctor disrespect admits to being a moral actorhere with respect to cheating on his wife, and

(01:04:20):
having these kinds of interactions with astranger on Twitch whispers in the first place.
But more than even that, excuse me, more thaneven that, you can absolutely judge and excuse
the pun disrespect him for what he has chosento be.
Right?
So I don't blame anybody for that.

(01:04:41):
When we talk about multimillion dollarcontracts and we talk about multimillion dollar
companies that are part of publicly tradedcompanies, then the lawyers are charged with
looking at the issue as where does theliability fall?
What trouble can we get into if we pursue thisdirection or don't?

(01:05:01):
If anybody else has any other questions orcomments that would like to see highlighted,
please use that queue or that Hoagla Otherwise,we are gonna wrap up for the day pretty quickly
here as we're over an hour already.
Corporistics says Twitch has a fairly largemore adult content section not the most

(01:05:26):
stringent guardrails considering there's accessto minors in other places on the site.
I tend to agree.
Right?
I've covered Twitch at length in a number ofvideos in virtual legality.
And I've I've talked about Amaranth and who I'mreliably informed is pronounced Pokemon.
And I've mentioned various things about the wayTwitch informs its enforces its community
guidelines and policies, and various lawsuitsagainst it.

(01:05:48):
So if you're interested in those things, pleasedo check virtual reality on the whole.
Or search the channel for Twitch.
I've talked about a lot of that.
And I certainly don't think Twitch is the moststurdy of legal actors.
On these things, which is what makes this storymore interesting than it probably needed to be,
right, a more mature, more kind of stablecompany might have operated in a different way

(01:06:10):
on these things.
Wump Wump says, do you think anyone will everleak the actual looks so that we can see the
severity of the messages?
I think it's a possibility now.
With the NDA, with the NDA off, basically,between both sides, whichever side thinks it
more benefits them, to release the logs,probably will.

(01:06:33):
But I can't say that for sure because if theyare really close enough to the sun, then maybe
neither side would want to because it looks badfor both.
So it's a possibility when it wasn't before thelast 5 days.
But it may not be a certainty.

(01:07:03):
Engaging with a child is a no no.
He lost all disrespect to me.
L o l.
Yeah.
I don't blame anybody for having that position.
I I don't blame Robert Bollwing for having hisas soon as that comes out with a yes, even at
the top line, I can't work with you.
You can't be associated with my company.
You're hurting the possibility of success forour product.
And by virtue of that, you're hurting thepossibilities of a livelihood for all the

(01:07:24):
people that work here, and so I'm gonna cutties.
I get that completely.
Armored VIPer, thank you so much for the superchat.
As you said, there appears to be no crime.
However, Twitch has some explaining to do whenthey allow minors to tune into hot tub streams
just saying.
Yes.
Well, the hot tub stream discourse is one thatI think has continued to kind of follow Twitch

(01:07:46):
around and I don't blame anybody for beingupset with them as a company with what they do
and what they promote, but I think that's alittle bit different than the particular issue
that we're talking about here.
Carmen does stuff asks could twitch have beenheld liable in some way if something illegal
happened on whispers some kind of negligencething.
Well, like I said, the obvious way that theycould be held not responsible is if they were a

(01:08:11):
common carrier under that California law.
Since they aren't a common carrier, since theyare an internet platform instead, a lawyer
would have to inform them that there's apossibility that that could be held liable
under California law.
Now that doesn't mean that they would be.
But the job of the lawyer is basically look atthe the laws and regulations and things and
say, you have a risk profile here.

(01:08:31):
There's a possibility of liability.
You have exposure to liabilities, but we wouldsay.
So held liable in some way is probably goodlanguage there.
It's a possibility and certainly one that anenterprise like Twitch would want to avoid.

(01:08:53):
Ato Heiden.
Ho ho.
Hello.
New here.
So I don't know what's been talked or not aboutHere, there are a lot of stuff to be clarified.
Twitch whispers was always 18 plus verified,and this is why probably the settlement.
What does verified mean in this context?
I I don't interact with Twitch.
I certainly have never used whispers.
I don't think I say as someone that did watcheasy allies for a good long time on Twitch, So

(01:09:14):
it's possible I whispered someone, at somepoint, but what does verified mean?
Like, a driver's license?
Like, you had to submit an image of your birthcertificate.
I I don't understand what that means in thiscontext.
So if you do know in the chat, let me know.
Dragon Scale in says whether he did anythingillegal is irrelevant.

(01:09:34):
I think it's irrelevant to your moral judgment.
Right?
But I am still a lawyer.
I this is still a law channel, so it's notirrelevant to why we saw what happened with the
contract, and it's not a relevant what we sawhappen with the settlement and how these
parties behaved.
And so whether or not it was illegal probablyis a major factor into whether or not Twitch
was willing to settle, because if it's illegal,you can go straight to the community guidelines

(01:09:58):
and say you're used to promise not to doanything illegal, which says If you breach the
community guidelines, you're in breach of ourterms of service, which almost certainly was
incorporated by referencing his exclusivityagreement, which means you breached that
agreement, which means we don't owe you1,000,000 of dollars.
So if it's illegal, that's relevant, but itdoesn't have to be relevant to how you feel
about the man or Twitch just because a lotdoesn't work to protect children doesn't mean

(01:10:19):
what he did was okay.
Certainly don't want anybody to come away fromthis video thinking I'm saying even what doctor
disrespect has admitted to is okay.
I have said I find it essentially gross.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that thecontract was breached.
Vox Games has been night society.
He's looked into it and fired him for a reason.

(01:10:40):
We talked about midnight society.
Boeing himself added his personal thoughts, andit's pretty concrete he did wrong.
Well, it's pretty concrete that since headmitted it, he talked to a minor in 2017
through whispers.
Whether or not you think he did wrong iscertainly up to personal judgment I tend to
think he did.
Robert Bolling tends to think he did.
Midnight Society tends to think he did.
That is distinct from what this playlist hasbeen about, what this conversation has been

(01:11:01):
about here, which is what was happening withthe contract and why we saw silence for so long
and whether or not it was okay for people tokinda go and speculate in the press when all
this was happening in 2020.
Supreme Otis says whispers is still a thing,but I was under the impression it isn't.

(01:11:25):
Again, I can't speak with specific knowledgeabout what is happening at Twitch with respect
to how it operates, but I did see peoplereferring to whispers as defunct.
So I thought it was removed from the platform.
What are the chances this was Docs in EA andnot Twitch?
Is it predicted more than Twitch?
It wasn't an NDA.
It was a non disclosure provision, and the waya settlement release works is essentially both

(01:11:50):
sides say Okay.
So you're suing us for wrongful termination.
We think the termination was right because youbreached it in this way.
You disagree with that.
And we're not going to admit to wrongfullyterminating you, and you're not going to admit
to breaching the contract.
We're gonna pay you this money, and none of usare gonna be allowed to talk about it ever
again.
Right?
So that constrains doctor disrespect and but italso constrains Twitch until Twitch has next

(01:12:13):
employee talk about it and then Twitch has whatappear to be current employees leaked the
information to Bloomberg.
Right?
So it was a part of the settlement and releaseassociated with the wrongful termination
conflict.
We would like the girl's point of view too.
Well, again, I wouldn't assume it's a girl inthis because that is not included in the

(01:12:35):
information.
But if you want to assume it's a girl, then,yes, that would obviously be useful
information, but I wouldn't wanna see anybodydoesn't wanna be a part of this story that was
otherwise a minor in 2017 during theseinteractions be dragged in if they don't want
to be.
If they want to be, if they wanna be a part ofthe story and they wanna tell people more about
what they experienced, absolutely.

(01:12:55):
Go and do that, but don't get dragged in byinvestigative reporters or anyone else.
That's fair to the miners involved who areprobably not minors as it stands right now 7
years later, but I don't want anybody whodoesn't wanna be involved in this involved.
Darth Torlin says I'm on Twitch whisper betweenusers on Twitch is still a feature.

(01:13:17):
But I blocked my whispers from users.
I don't know.
Don't blame me for that.
At DMs are a a tire fire on Twitter slash x nowwith people offering to sell me things all the
time.
And I should probably close my DMs, but I liketalking with all you folks in the community too
much, and that's the best way to reliably reachme.
So I'm not gonna close them anytime soon, eventhough X isn't working too terribly well on the

(01:13:40):
DM front.
Doctor disrespect man and the DMs could saysomething like he found out that the person was
under agent ended the conversation.
It could.
Right?
We don't want to ignore that possibility but itit does seem like you're going to vet a
statement and put that out there that you wouldput out that kind of kind of exculpatory
material.
When it was entirely within your control.

(01:14:01):
I'm not saying you did.
People make mistakes on communications all thetime.
That's part of what we talk about on thischannel, but I don't blame anybody for saying
Alright.
If that was the case, wouldn't he have saidthat?
I think that's a fair kind of assumption tomake for people that are looking at this from
the outside.
Sour cookie.

(01:14:21):
I suppose I just can't imagine a scenario whereyou're DM ing something someone you think is a
minor for any reason if you're an adult.
Right?
Like I said, it's a bit gross.
And I don't blame anybody for judging him onthis.
I I certainly don't like the course of thisparticular conversation or or what he has put
out there.
But I do think there are legal issues todiscuss as part of it, which is why I made this

(01:14:43):
video.
Alright.
So I think mostly the chat is talking amongstitself.
So we're gonna call it for the day.
Thank you so much, everyone, for being here.
Again, we do have those support mechanisms inthe links to the description.
And if you like this kind of conversation,check out virtual legality.

(01:15:05):
If you're specifically interested in thisstory, there is a doctor disrespects a legal
view playlist that is on the front page of thechannel now after I remember to put it there
this weekend.
And you could check out what I think is almost20 videos on various aspects of this subject
over the course of the last 4 years.
So thank you everyone for being here, and Iwill catch you on the next episode of virtual

(01:15:25):
legality.
Virtual legality is a YouTube video series withaudio podcast versions presented as common and
for education and entertainment purposes only.
It does not constitute legal advice and doesnot create an attorney client relation Ship.
If you have legal questions about the topicsdiscussed, please consult your own legal

(01:15:46):
counsel.