Twitch has unbanned that Salem stop sign stream where nobody stops

The famous Salem stop sign, which most definitely didn’t live up to its name, became a viral hit on Twitch in March. The platform banned the channel, at first without notice, but it’s since lifted the suspension for the infamous sign. 

Updated Aug 3

The ‘Stopsigncam’ channel has been reinstated on Twitch after serving a single-day suspension on the platform

The channel was reportedly banned for unchecked comments and donation messages that went against ToS.

Luckily, the channel was able to recover from its first ban from Twitch, and is expected to go live sometime soon.

Original story follows below…

It was the stop sign where nobody stopped. Well, at least 98.73% of cars.

The town of Salem, Massachusetts became an overnight sensation when the ‘Stopsigncam’ Twitch stream went viral back in March.

It boomed, going from 1-2 average viewers from when it launched in November 2020 to upwards of 2,000 in just a few days.

While the numbers have petered off ⁠— dropping to around 100 average viewers ⁠— it’s still a lot of people watching a stop sign, and the cars that refuse to stop at it. They even had different names: Rollers for those who slowed down but didn’t stop, Zoomers for those who blazed through, and more.

The hosts even had to turn it off for a few days during its peak after neighbours complained about being harassed by those watching.

Twitch took down the Stopsigncam stream on August 1 with no notice.

There is, however, a few hypotheses surrounding it. The harassment and doxxing of neighbours could have forced Twitch to take it offline, as the platform does police chats left unmoderated.

The platform has also been enforcing a crackdown on streamers exhibiting dangerous behavior on the road, such as using their mobile phone. Not stopping at a stop sign definitely breaks a few traffic rules.

However, it could have been a myriad of other things.

Someone could have walked past the camera nude, breaking the platform’s sexual content policy, but there’s no solid information.

Twitch: stopsigncam

Stopsigncam didn’t just catch drivers, people in the neighbourhood used to “stream snipe” with signs and various stunts too.

For now, the Stopsigncam stream has, well, stopped. There’s no indication on it returning, but it could relaunch after the suspension has been served (if it’s not a permanent one).

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That one interaction in Salem, Massachusetts will still be rolled through by the majority of motorists. There just won’t be hundreds of people watching.