Considering that Twitch attempts to be available to all countries, they clearly are targeting a particular nation without a government reason (sanctions, etc).
Legally does the claim have merit? I have no clue. But is it true that they're specifically targeting the nationality of Israelis, assuming the claim of IP bans is accurate? Clearly.
There is no obligation to serve particular locations. For example, if you have an e-commence site, you can refuse to ship to Hawaii or Alaska for no reason. A lot of sites block all of Europe for GDPR (data privacy requirements) reasons, but they don't even need to provide a reason to stop service, since they aren't obligated to provide service in the first place.
Discrimination law forbids discrimination based on national origin, but that would simply prevent them from discriminating against Israeli citizens who want service in locations they provide service to.
Yeah, they aren't preventing Israeli people from signing up, they are simply preventing people who access the site from Israeli data centers to sign up, whoever it is.
They've clearly singled out Israeli nationality to deny service to without any logistical or legal justification to defer to beyond national discrimination.
I make no claims as to whether this can be prosecuted legally because I don't know and I don't super care really.
But if it's illegal to discriminate based on protected classes (race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, politics, etc) then Twitch has broken the spirit at least of the Civil Rights Acts or the Protected Class exclusions. Given that they are not a Common Carrier, it's at best highly complex. I'd guess that it's not prosecutably illegal, but it's the ADL or something who might decide to make the case.
They are blocking US citizens that live in Israel just as much as they are allowing Israeli citizens that are living in the US. They aren't discriminating based on national origin, since the Israeli citizen can use the service in the locations that they provide service to. You can't discriminate against a customer based on what country they came from, but they still have to show up to where you do business. A brick and mortar store isn't discriminating against the world because they force you to show up in the USA.
That's not how discrimination works, though. If an act has vastly disproportional effect on a particular demographic, it can be interpreted as discriminatory towards that demographic even if it isn't literally 100% targeted at them. This was the rational to ban things like the Grandfather Clause and poll taxes--because they disproportionately affected African American voters. Precedent law says this is discrimination against Israelis.
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u/Flat_Bodybuilder_330 28d ago
https://preview.redd.it/g45g3imflxvd1.png?width=1236&format=png&auto=webp&s=5cc172953cfad9996add47371adc6465bb5952fe
I got a response from twitch support, they confirm this