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Paul Denino, a popular Twitch streamer who broadcasts under the name Ice_Poseidon, has achieved an unlikely milestone: he’s the first person to be “swatted” on an airplane.
He then quickly achieved a second: he’s the first person to be banned by Twitch for being swatted on a plane.
“Swatting” is the colloquial term for the process by which viewers will call the police to report serious crimes occuring at the home of a livestreamer. Livestreamers will then often have their homes raided by armed police. It’s a serious crime, but surprisingly still a reasonably common problem for Twitch streamers.
Denino was flying from California to Arizona, and mentioned his flight information in a livestream from the airport before landing. It’s this that caused Twitch to ban him for terms of service violations.
When he landed, he was pulled off the plane by police after a viewer had called in a bomb threat under the guise of Denino.
Later, he took to livestream again to discuss the situation.
“You swat my house, whatever, fuck you. You swat a plane?” said Denino. “That’s a whole other level. You don’t expect that to happen.”
Denino has now mentioned plans to work with YouTube going forwards, and has claimed no responsibility for identifying his location on stream. It does ask questions about where the blame should land in cases like this, and it could make many Livestreamers nervous, considering how many make their living through Twitch and how prevalent swatting is.
