Twitch Breaks Its Silence On Hate Raids
Following a Twitter campaign calling for Twitch to deal with hate raids on its platform, the streaming giant has made an official response. Shared on the official Twitch Twitter account, the company thanked all of the streamers who shared their experiences and agreed that it needs to do better as a platform.
Twitch said that it has channel-level ban evasion detection tools in development, along with better account verification processes that it aims to launch later this year. In the meantime, Twitch has asked streamers and viewers to leave feedback with the company, explaining that the platform's representatives will be reaching out to community members to hear their experiences and to shape the platform moving forward.
This statement comes after Twitch streamer RekItRaven launched a campaign on Twitter with the hashtag #Twitchdobetter. The campaign was started to bring attention to the hate raids that marginalized streamers were dealing with, during which large groups of bots with similar names would spam racist and bigoted comments into the chat. Streamers were upset about the fact that not only Twitch does lack the necessary tools to stop this from happening, but that the platform had not yet made any public statements about the issues.
Twitch's latest statement does not detail any specific action the platform is taking right now against the problem, and the response from streamers has been mixed.
Streamers respond to Twitch
RekItRaven responded fairly positively to the statement, writing, "I'm happy to see a response. [I'm] even happier that together we created a movement. Sure I started pushing the hashtag but you all carried with me. Thank you for sharing your stories... I am grateful that we were able to spark change!"
RekItRaven later posted another tweet, now encouraging other streamers to have their viewers support them financially outside of Twitch. As they explained, "Instead of bits, encourage tips. Under capitalism, money talks. We Need change Now!"
Other streamers had more negative responses to Twitch's statement. For instance, BrozBeforeFoes found Twitch's response to be "disappointing." She warned her fellow streamers to "be safe" and to only enable chat for followers. Meanwhile, Twitch streamer askesienne seemed discouraged, noting Twitch hasn't seemed to have made much progress since the last time it asked users to hold it accountable — back in 2018.
Although Twitch has promised to do more for the streamers harmed by these hate raids, it's clear that many of the affected streamers want that response to be much more immediate and thorough.