On Twitch, a fraught situation could soon get even messier. As the platform’s streamers engage in intense debates about Middle East geopolitics, it is correcting a restriction that prevented users from using Israeli and Palestinian email addresses to verify new accounts.

In the wake of last year’s October 7 attacks, Twitch limited new sign-ups from Israel and Palestine to cut down on the amount of graphic footage coming in from the region. That decision was consistent with the platform’s policy on violent imagery. Previously, Twitch worked quickly to suspend an account that was broadcasting a first-person viewpoint of a mass shooting in Buffalo.

As Twitch noted in a post on X, it never prevented Israeli or Palestinian users from signing up. The temporary lockdown on local email addresses only applied to that specific verification method. Signups verified via phone were still allowed.

Now, more than a year after...