As far as I can tell this is a non-story about semantics. The Navy doesn't recruit on Twitch, it advertises on Twitch.
> “While we do not actively recruit on Twitch or through such streaming platforms, the esports team members are there to answer questions about their experiences in the Navy. If a user specifically asks an esports team member about joining the Navy, that team member will move that conversation to a private message to first find out if the interested user is over 17, and if that user is over 17 then the recruiter will thank them for their interest and refer them to Navy.com where they can talk to a recruiter.”
Vice prepends this quote with "In an email to Motherboard, the Navy insisted it wasn’t using Twitch to recruit." which seems like a bizarre mischaracterisation to me
A better story would have read "How the U.S. Navy leverages Twitch and esports as a marketing channel". Instead, it takes a quote from one of the players, Crosswhite, then labels Crosswhite as representing the whole Navy with the headline: "The Navy Says It's Not Recruiting on Twitch".
What's worse is it tries to sell this controversy, as if the Navy is denying its involvement and Vice unearthed some secret documents, which is just not true.
Here's the quote from the article:
Machinist's mate First Class Andrew “Saltysn1pe” Crosswhite answered a question from the audience about why the Navy was streaming video games. “We’re here to show that we play video games, literally,” Crosswhite said. “We’re not here to recruit. That is not the point of this.” According to Navy documents viewed by Motherboard, that’s not true.
Crosswhite obviously meant that they are not actually recruiting on the channel, but the purpose is undoubtedly marketing for the Navy. I don't think any of the players on the team are that naive — they're supported by the Navy because of the marketing opportunity.
For your average person, that may seem like meaningless splitting of hairs, but that’s how it’s discussed in the marketing world.
Amazing a whole article was written about this.
It's clearly for recruiting purposes.
Like I said, it's splitting hairs with words, but it's not some grand conspiracy as per the Vox article.
The vox article clearly shows that they were trying to recruit, even though they say they aren't. It's not a grand conspiracy but it's the same as the military using Hollywood for recruiting.
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10 U.S. Code § 503 - Enlistments: recruiting campaigns; compilation of directory information
(b) Compilation of Directory Information.— (1) The Secretary of Defense may collect and compile directory information pertaining to each student who is 17 years of age or older or in the eleventh grade (or its equivalent) or higher and who is enrolled in a secondary school in the United States or its territories, possessions, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
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By default, Twitch allows individuals as young as 13 to use their site. Twitch also allows streamers who stream more mature content (language, games meant for individuals 18+) to warn viewers of this content (see https://imgur.com/a/Gv1Yfun for a screenshot of the warning). In fact, Twitch account managers will often reach out to streamers and ask them to enable this feature if their channel has been reported.
As of July 23, 2020 2:03 PM EDT, the US Navy Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/americasnavy does not have this enabled.