- After several months, Twitch is beginning to take action on the harassment that some of its streamers received on the site.
- After several complaints, Twitch seems to want to clean up its image with these actions
For several months, Twitch had been involved in controversies about harassment of its streamers, who recently launched a virtual strike against the actions taken by the platform.
Months ago, although the Amazon platform experienced significant growth in its numbers, Twitch was experiencing one of its most complicated moments derived from the making of some decisions that, irremediably, affected its content creators in different ways.
As is already known, a group of Twitch streamers joined in a virtual strike in which they demanded greater action against the constant hate speech that some of them were receiving on the platform from users.
Later, in a decision that nobody understood, the creators of Twitch announced the reduction to half of the subscription plans, a fact that affected the income of some of its creators, but not that of a few. A measure considered unfair and even discriminatory.
All this, and due to the lack of response from Twitch, led to a series of actions that the streamers themselves carried out to express their dissatisfaction with these actions on the part of the platform. Today, finally, it is responding legally, leaving as a balance two sued users: CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose.
The lawsuit, published by the site WIRED, specifically names two users, both responsible for the constant hateful messages that occurred on the platform in early August.
Among other things, an excerpt from the lawsuit collected by The Verge reads as follows:
“CruzzControl is responsible for nearly 3,000 bot accounts associated with hate speech. The bots developed and implemented by CruzzControl have been linked to various such events, including those targeting dark-skinned creators and members of the LGBTQ + community with racist, homophobic, sexist and harassment content.
CruzzControl has admitted to using bots to flood Twitch channels with harassing content. They have also demonstrated how bots work so that others can use similar methods to conduct hate raids.
Twitch has also linked CreatineOverdose directly to hate raids. For example, on August 15, 2021, CreatineOverdose used their bot software to demonstrate how it could be used to spam Twitch channels with racial slurs, graphic depictions of violence against minorities. “
The arrival of social networks, with the anonymity they offer, has made practices such as hate speech, harassment, bullying and other forms of violence, have more scope and, consequently, a greater impact on what is being attacked.
No social network is spared from it, and yet, so far, no changes have been made about it. At least, not a significant or obvious change.
Let us remember one of the most recent cases, which happened in the framework of the final of the last edition of the Eurocup, where three English players, Marcus Rashford, Bucayo Saka and Jadon Sancho, three of the most promising young footballers of the moment, were the target of a series of racial attacks on social media.
This fact returned to focus on the use of social networks and the little control we have over the content that is published, with Faceook and Twitter being the main ones indicated. The British government even threatened to stop paying for advertising through these networks if they did not do something to control these practices.
On the other hand, and after a series of attacks, Twitch seems to want to clean up its image with these actions. Let’s just hope that it is not a strategy to gain more followers or users, leaving the case adrift.
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