Twitch streamers rally against the hate raid dilemma

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Image: Twitch

In the past few days, you may have seen the #TwitchDoBetter hashtag taking hold on social networks like Twitter. You may have wondered further why it is breaking out now and what it is. Twitch is a company, after all, and companies can always, always do better. But this recent campaign specifically aims to shed light on how the platform continually disappoints its marginalized creators.

Much of the campaign has gathered around a tweet from Twitch in February 2018, publicly calling for accountability. Please watch us closely and hold us accountable, the company wrote. This first update clarifies our guidelines, but we know we are judged on how we apply them.

It is so heartbreaking to see all the stories of marginalized people on the platform being attacked for something beyond their control like skin color, gender identity, sexual preference or whatever, said streamer Rek It, Raven! , which originated the hashtag Kotaku via email. We shouldn’t be afraid to hit go live.

Read More: Twitch provides tags to trans, black, and disabled streamers, but no protection

In the years since, Twitch streamers, especially queer streamers and streamers of color, have continued to regularly experience widely orchestrated harassment, follow-botting and hate raid campaigns. In some cases, blocking a violator simply means creating a bunch of other accounts and continuing the harassment, due to how easy it is to sign up for Twitch. And there are few protections in place to prevent troll-approved tactics like persistent logging of streams over IP.

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Oh, and Twitch gets a lot of revenue too.

Twitch, which was bought by Amazon in 2014 for a hair under $ 1 billion, shares subscription revenue equally with creators: half goes to the streamer, half goes to the platform (which is owned by one of the richest companies in the world. planet). But streamers say these scales should slope, particularly if Twitch neglects to implement tools or policies designed to protect the most marginalized members of its community. (When contacted for comment by Kotaku, a Twitch representative did not immediately get answers on whether or not he intended to change his policies.)

Currently, the security tools on the platform are extremely disappointing, Jess Go, a Twitch streamer, told Kotaku via email, noting that Twitch’s current collection of moderation tools actually ends up reporting and cutting a lot of more my community celebrating itself and its sexuality than doing any real insult or problematic language.

As a result, many marginal creators find it better to turn off the Twitch tools currently available and let their community moderate their spaces, Go said. If we’re doing all this additional work, why is Twitch taking such a large part of the profit we generate?

Ceddy Lopez, a Twitch partner streamer, told Kotaku via email that Twitch would ideally offer creators a 70/30 split, with Twitch taking 30 percent of the secondary revenue. This figure is echoed in the #TwitchDoBetter hashtag, although some say it should be as high as 80/20.

Basically, Twitch could make it harder for users to create new accounts by requiring new users to sign up with a phone number. That way, repeat offenders couldn’t just create a ton of new accounts to get around bans and blocks. Many steamers suggest that Twitch could also implement a system that automatically blocks any form of hate speech, which should already be blocked at the platform level in the first place.

Raven suggested that adding two-factor authentication could be of great help, as well as an option that allows creators to limit the age of accounts that are allowed to respond in chat. Additionally, Twitch may notify streamers of upcoming raids via notification. Moderators could then accept or deny the raid, potentially eliminating bad faith campaigns before they even begin.

With a real commitment to promoting a diverse platform, Lopez said, Twitch could ban streamers who use their platform to harass other streamers. Twitch won’t quit if a couple of problematic streamers get cut as an example.

The answers are there and it looks like they can be done without breaking the bank, Raven said. There has to be a conversation with Twitch people to really engage those affected so that solid conclusions can be drawn for change.

Read More: Twitch will finally tell streamers why they have been banned

I’ve experienced tons of harassment as a flashy, blunt Asian man, but I’ll continue to broadcast there because it feels like home to many of us, Lopez said. We sincerely want a platform to be proud of.

Update, 15:22, 8/10/2021: Added comment from Rek It, Raven!

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