Rebekah D. August 6, 2019
Popular streamer Ben "DrLupo" Lupo was recently mistakenly banned on Microsoft’s streaming platform, Mixer.
The ban was issued on August 4 and was given for the act of DrLupo impersonating an online personality: himself.
The streamer attempted to log into Mixer on Sunday night with little success. Upon investigation, he found an email from the platform explaining why the account had been suspended.
According to the email, he had violated the platform’s official Rules of Conduct. The Mixer team had found that, after their own investigation, DrLupo’s account was guilty of impersonation. It wasn’t made clear how this decision was made, as the account name clearly matched that of the person they were originally trying to protect.
The full code of conduct even states that simply sharing a name does not count as impersonation, and suggests that users should avoid picking similar names to those of known personalities to prevent any confusion.
The relevant section relating to impersonation reads, “Do not impersonate staff or other streamers. Having similar names is not automatically impersonation but should be avoided especially if one of the users is a partner, staff or other "known" personality.”
Finding the irony of Mixer’s mistake hilarious, DrLupo tweeted about his ban with a screenshot and reached out to the Mixer team’s Twitter account for assistance. Luckily for him, the ban was quickly removed within just 10 minutes.
Although DrLupo has an account with Mixer, he does not use it for streaming. His contract with Twitch prevents him from using the platform in this way, but he is allowed to use his account to chat and socialize on the platform.
Though it wasn’t immediately clarified by the Mixer team, this could be why the mistake was initially made. Or perhaps the team at Mixer was just feeling a little overzealous that day.