1. "Donations" are only deductible if they are made to a registered exempt organization. Otherwise you are making personal gifts.
2. "Networking expenses." You can generally deduct business expenses that are ordinary and necessary to the business. Gifts that are intended to promote your business can sometimes be deductible business expenses. However, you must first be in business—that is, you are engaged in an "ongoing trade or business", reported on schedule C, for which you pay income tax and self-employment tax. Not a hobby, an ongoing trade or business, that you do for the purpose of earning a profit. Then, you can give gifts of up to $25 per person per year, and deduct them as schedule C business expenses. Gifts are generally given to customers, potential customers, etc. for the purpose of building your business.
If you are reporting your streaming income on schedule C and paying income tax and SE tax, then potentially you can deduct gift expenses that serve to promote your channel as the source of your income. I'm not a lawyer, but that would be the logic of deducting your bits as business expenses.
See chapter 3 here https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p463.pdf
If you don't report a taxable profit from streaming on schedule C, you have nothing to deduct an expense from. Life expenses aren't deductible simply because they happen, you can generally only deduct expenses that occur as part of generating taxable income.
