Twitch Streamers Are Taking September 1st Off In Protest of Bot Attacks (theverge.com) 31
New submitter Chaldean42 shares a report from The Verge: On Wednesday, September 1st, a number of channels on Twitch will go dark as streamers participate in #ADayOffTwitch, a walkout designed to bring attention to the ongoing hate and harassment that's plagued the platform for the last several weeks. [...] A Day Off Twitch was born out of the #TwitchDoBetter movement, a hashtag created by streamers affected by the hate raids that have exploded across Twitch in recent weeks. Though the action of bombing a streamer's chat with racist, sexist, transphobic, and generally abusive messages is not new, the phenomenon has seen a dramatic increase, thanks to users employing bots to overwhelm chats with hundreds of automatically generated messages. In response to what they thought was Twitch's slow response to the abuse, streamer RekitRaven created the #TwitchDoBetter hashtag to urge the Amazon-owned streaming platform to deploy better tools to stem the tide of harassment.
Twitch has promised that fixes are forthcoming, but in the meantime, streamers are left to contend against the hate raids with community-developed tools and resources. [...] The responses to A Day Off Twitch have been varied, even among its supporters. Because of Twitch's endemic hold on the streaming community, it's just not feasible for some smaller streamers, arguably the population most affected by hate raids, to take a day off. For some creators, Twitch is their only means of income. Users trying to make or maintain affiliate or partner status -- designations that grant creators access to many different methods of monetization -- could jeopardize their finances or the health of their channel by taking even one day off. There are also contractual obligations like advertising deals or partnerships that prevent streamers from skipping a day. Other streamers oppose A Day Off Twitch for more philosophical reasons. To them, the people behind these hate raids are working to bully marginalized streamers off the platform, and taking a day off is giving them exactly what they want. Continuing to stream and speaking out against the abuse is therefore the best way to counter trolls who might not otherwise face repercussions for their actions. A spokesperson for Twitch told The Verge, "We support our streamers' rights to express themselves and bring attention to important issues across our service. No one should have to experience malicious and hateful attacks based on who they are or what they stand for, and we are working hard on improved channel-level ban evasion detection and additional account improvements to help make Twitch a safer place for creators."
Twitch has promised that fixes are forthcoming, but in the meantime, streamers are left to contend against the hate raids with community-developed tools and resources. [...] The responses to A Day Off Twitch have been varied, even among its supporters. Because of Twitch's endemic hold on the streaming community, it's just not feasible for some smaller streamers, arguably the population most affected by hate raids, to take a day off. For some creators, Twitch is their only means of income. Users trying to make or maintain affiliate or partner status -- designations that grant creators access to many different methods of monetization -- could jeopardize their finances or the health of their channel by taking even one day off. There are also contractual obligations like advertising deals or partnerships that prevent streamers from skipping a day. Other streamers oppose A Day Off Twitch for more philosophical reasons. To them, the people behind these hate raids are working to bully marginalized streamers off the platform, and taking a day off is giving them exactly what they want. Continuing to stream and speaking out against the abuse is therefore the best way to counter trolls who might not otherwise face repercussions for their actions. A spokesperson for Twitch told The Verge, "We support our streamers' rights to express themselves and bring attention to important issues across our service. No one should have to experience malicious and hateful attacks based on who they are or what they stand for, and we are working hard on improved channel-level ban evasion detection and additional account improvements to help make Twitch a safer place for creators."
Nice (Score:2)
This was actually posted before Sept 1 was over. Well 3-6 hours before.
Never seen a Twitch Stream, or an OnlyFans stream.
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This was actually posted before Sept 1 was over. Well 3-6 hours before.
Only in below-average timezones. In most countries, it is Thursday. Would you like to know the lottery numbers?
Re:Nice (Score:5, Funny)
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UTC was placed where the inhabitants don't need more than one hand worth of fingers to convert for their timezone.
I count in binary on my fingers.
UTC is for log files, not to tell me what time to feed my cats.
For those who didn't notice (Score:2)
It was posted here so late so that those who didn't notice it will know "something happened".
Can we get this for slashdot? (Score:1, Troll)
I have this great idea for a new TV show. The premise is simple. Just toss a liberal celebrity into the ring with a couple of Marines, and spend about an hour filming him getting the living shit beat out of him. Wouldn't it be great, every night you can turn on your TV and watch some loathsome parasite like Gavin Newsom or Chuck Schumer getting a Front Street Face Lift? If that's not a hit, I don't know what is!
Can we get an automated removal of hatred thing going on slashdot?
The partisan trolls are about unbearable here, we *used* to allow dissenting opinions that had information content, and I strongly suspect that many of the abusive posts are paid trolls from one or two totalitarian nation.
I don't believe all of the abuse we see here is genuine offense taken by legitimate readers. Much of it might be paid actors.
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"Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be more easily explained by ignorance, intolerance, hate or laziness."
-Me
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There might be a few paid influencers on the site every now and then, but I think the cut/paste spam projects really are just trolls.
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???
That may make sense, but if so I don't understand how. This isn't a protest against malicious actions by "the boss".
I've got to admit that I've no knowledge of Twitch, but this sounds like a very difficult problem to solve. It's much easier for a bunch of people to be disruptive than for a singe control center to make them stop unless you strongly limit who can post, which is probably against the central business model of Twitch. It sounds like some of the more obnoxious trolls on Slashdot. Quite dif
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Its a protest against inaction.
Just like you would if your boss did nothing to address safety issues at work.
Its not malicious action, its malicious inaction.
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Bots need unions too!
I am currently doing one better. (Score:2, Funny)
-brought to you by #TwitterFreeForLife -and- -Facebook blocking for better internet
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Twitch has some interesting content. Personally I mostly watch edited down versions on YouTube but I understand the appeal of having it on "in the background", and in participating in the live chat.
Monetization (Score:2)
Because of Twitch's endemic hold on the streaming community, it's just not feasible for some smaller streamers, arguably the population most affected by hate raids, to take a day off. For some creators, Twitch is their only means of income. Users trying to make or maintain affiliate or partner status -- designations that grant creators access to many different methods of monetization -- could jeopardize their finances or the health of their channel by taking even one day off. There are also contractual obligations like advertising deals or partnerships that prevent streamers from skipping a day.
Wasn't aware Twitch was another platform people used for monetization.
Maybe the streamers who are seeing a lot of hate and harassment in their chat streams are being targeted by other Twitch streamers. Flood their chat with hate and harassment to turn off viewers which could lead to affiliate and advertising partners to seek out new Twitch streamers to partner up with.
The horror (Score:2)
And nothing of value was lost.
Oh, the irony... (Score:1)
Re: Oh, the irony... (Score:1)
Nothing lost (Score:2)
And nothing of value was lost.
Well shit (Score:2)
I like watching some SC2 casts sometime, this is going to cause a lot of cringy value signalling for casters to prove they are on the right side of history. Sigh, oh well, price of entry I guess.
Since when are phobias hate? Or punished? (Score:1)
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Gender is not a social construction. It is biological and inescapable.
Actually that's not true. Most social mammals and birds have homosexual and/or transgender-acting individuals. It seems to be a useful hereditary trait when it's at low frequency and they have located some of the genes involved in several species. Gender seems to be less a fixed point than a sliding scale, and sometimes genetics slides that marker far to one side or the other. Culturally it might make you uncomfortable, having been brought up under the repressive Abrahamic religions, but other cultures
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Of course gender roles are culturally defined, look at any remote peoples for very clear examples. In two adjoining valleys in New Guinea the tribe to the (IIRC) north the men butcher the meat and women are the potters, in the southern valley the opposite is true, and both sides consider the other heretics. These norms change too, sometimes very rapidly, in the Arabian Peninsula prior to the imposition of Islam family units were polyandrous with one woman ruling a household with as many as seven husbands,
OMG (Score:2)
OMG, I'm devastated. How can I live without a day of twitch?