On September 1, some of the most popular anchors on Twitch launched a one-day strike. According to figures released on Thursday morning, the network’s content that day was significantly reduced.
The strike organized under the hashtag #ADayOffTwitch requires participants to stay away from Twitch completely for a full 24 hours, in order to incentivize Amazon-owned network management to take more active actions against abusers on the platform.
As of Thursday morning, the protests appeared to have had an impact.Seattle startups Game vision Analyzed the traffic on Twitch during September 1, and compared with the previous few days, the traffic on Twitch showed a significant peak of decline.
At noon on September 1, Twitch viewers watched about 500,000 hours less than the previous day, and active channels decreased by 50,000. Although Twitch easily exceeded 3 million viewing hours that day, its total traffic was statistically significantly affected.
There are other factors that may also contribute to the economic slowdown. For example, many school systems have resumed recovery this year, but the decline between Tuesday and Wednesday is large enough that it seems safe to attribute most of it to protests.According to independent Twitch tracker SullyGnome, September 1st is The third-lowest viewing rate on Twitch this year.
Twitch itself has not commented on this topic, although it did promote its official start. “Subtember” annual sales Until September 2.Encourage affected users of their website to view their information page Combat targeted attacks, But has not publicly taken any improvement measures suggested by the protest participants.it Twitter August 20 It is “working hard to make Twitch a safe space for creators.”
The main problem at hand is an activity known as a “hate attack.” Twitch launched a New label set in late May, Such as black, disabled and transgender people, aims to help anchors and viewers find communities on the platform.
It also has the side effect of making it easier for online trolls to find the kind of target they like.
Twitch has a command, /Attack, The host can use it to immediately send all viewers to another channel. It is intended as a tool through which streaming media can establish connections with other broadcasters or provide viewers with other content to watch at the end of the program.
In a hate raid, the same command is used to suddenly flood the target’s live chat with abusive messages, usually aimed at People of color and/or LGBTQA+.
Many problematic attackers even registered dozens or even hundreds of automated “bot” accounts on Twitch to provide targeted anchors As many headaches as possibleIt is easy for someone to ban one person from a Twitch channel, but not hundreds of people at the same time, many of whom use image embedding or deliberate spelling errors to bypass automatic review and content filters.
This is especially difficult for Twitch’s full-time partners and affiliates, who produce live content for the platform as their daily work. Hobbyists or casual users only need to close the browser window and perform other operations, but the hate attack has effectively closed the live broadcast schedule of the affected partners.
One of these partners focuses on the streamer of horror Lakeraven, And finally organized a hashtag #TwitchDoBetter to discuss this issue. As the situation continued to deteriorate, and Twitch itself did not take obvious major actions, the same hashtag eventually triggered the #ADayOffTwitch protest.
Well-known participants of #ADayOffTwitch include the young Turk’s Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker, Walk into the motherland Real-time role-playing game Radio and Internet celebrities Meg Turney and Penny Arcade Acquisition of a company, New episodes are usually aired on Wednesdays.