The Insane Amount Of People Who Are Banned By Pokimane
As one of Twitch's most popular streamers, Pokimane is no stranger to toxic interactions from viewers on her stream, and neither she nor her moderators have ever hesitated to ban users sending inappropriate messages. As a result, Pokimane's Twitch account has racked up a pretty large number of banned users, and while many of those accounts are bots, even Pokimane was surprised to learn how many actual people are blocked from viewing her stream.
The issue came up while Pokimane was chatting with Robinlemonz, a software engineer for Twitch who helps monitor the community and moderation infrastructure tools that keep Twitch chats clear of disrespectful users. The number of users banned was revealed after Pokimane was surprised to learn that her account had banned 250 users that day alone, leading her to ask what the total number of banned accounts was. While Robinlemonz doesn't reveal the actual figure of blocked accounts including bots, he does estimate that there are 350,000 normal Twitch users banned from her account.
For comparison's sake, blocking that many users would be equal to banning everyone in Hawaii's capital city, Honolulu. While having that many viewers blocked is shocking, the numbers line up to a certain degree. Pokimane has 7.6 million followers on Twitch alone, and the streaming service has around 40 million monthly visitors, according to TechCrunch. As a popular and visible star on the service, Pokimane's channel is an easy target for individuals whose only goal is to provoke a reaction from streamers or other viewers. As such, those 350,000 accounts are only a fraction of Twitch users, but the fact that so many actual people chose to act in a way that earned them a permanent ban is disheartening.
Pokimane has called attention to some of her creepy viewers before and recently shared some of the most toxic Twitch messages she's received while sifting through unban requests. Those requests include the messages that users sent that got them banned, revealing rampant sexual harassment, racism, and other forms of generally awful behavior. Pokimane manages to maintain her typical high energy levels and sunny disposition while reading through these messages, but it does reveal one of the shady sides of Twitch – the notoriously terrible behavior of many users in the service's chat.
Thankfully, Pokimane doesn't have to deal with these trolls alone, as moderators monitor her channel, and her popularity means that Twitch employees such as Robinlemonz keep an eye on her stream.