TheQuartering [8/25/2021]
Nobody likes slacktisits.
A new protest aiming to end hate raids on Twitch is causing a rift between some streamers who are backing the movement and those who aren’t.
#ADayOffTwitch is encouraging creators to not stream and viewers not to watch Twitch on Wednesday September 1st 2021.
The idea is to get Twitch to take note and better clamp down on ‘hate raids’ – what’s described as groups of viewers flooding a streamer’s chat with malicious, hateful or racist abuse, often using dummy or bot accounts. Hate raids have affected several streamers, and it’s been reported that marginalised creators are being targeted in particular.
The campaign follows other similar movements such as the #TwitchDoBetter hashtag on Twitter, and the one-day Twitch blackout last year.
Twitch recently responded to #TwitchDoBetter earlier this month, saying: “We’ve seen a lot of conversation about botting, hate raids, and other forms of harassment targeting marginalised creators. You’re asking us to do better, and we know we need to do more to address these issues. That includes an open and ongoing dialogue about creator safety.
“We were able to identify a vulnerability in our proactive filters, and have rolled out an update to close this gap and better detect hate speech in chat. We’re launching channel-level ban evasion detection and account verification improvements later this year.”