Twitch sues two users for their part in hate raids

Twitch is suing two users for their part in hate raids that recently targeted streamers, specifically People of Color and LGBTQIA + streamers.

This news comes by WIRED, which reports that Twitch filed a lawsuit yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The lawsuit has been brought against two Twitch users, Cruzzcontrol and CreatineOverdose, and the company believes they are from the Netherlands and Vienna, Austria, respectively.

No one should have to endure malicious and hateful attacks based on who they are or what they represent. This isn’t the community we want on Twitch, and we want you to know that we’re working hard to make Twitch a safer place for creators. https://t.co/fDbw62e5LW

– Twitch (@Twitch) August 20, 2021

“We hope this complaint will shed light on the identity of the individuals behind these attacks and the tools they exploit, deter them from adopting similar behaviors at other services, and help put an end to these vile attacks on members of our community, ”a Twitch spokesperson told WIRED.

Twitch is specifically suing these two users for violating the site’s terms of service by creating fake bot accounts and using them to harass streamers.

The lawsuit comes about a month after the heinous raids on the video streaming service Twitch intensified. The company responded to these attacks by creating new chat filters to filter out potential hate raid chat messages, and WIRED writes that Twitch “has also implemented” channel-level ban evasion detection. “”. Twitch says it has banned thousands of accounts they believe are responsible, in part, for the raids as well.

Twitch also banned the two users it is now suing, but it says both users circumvented that ban by “creating new alternative Twitch accounts and continually modifying their self-proclaimed” hate raid code “to avoid detection and suspension by Twitch “. according to the lawsuit. The two are accused of being part of a “hate raiding community” that coordinates attacks on private channels on Discord, Steam and elsewhere.

The complaint explains that the two prosecuted users use multiple Twitch accounts and thousands of bot accounts to create the hate raids. He also states that Cruzzcontrol and CreatineOverdose can “generate thousands of bots in minutes” for these heinous raids, citing that Cruzzcontrol alone is responsible for around 3,000 bots.

The Twitch lawsuit details how CreatineOverdose, Cruzzcontrol, and their bots “could be used to spam Twitch channels with racial slurs, graphic descriptions of violence against minorities, and claims the hate looters are the ‘KKK’.”

The news of this trial comes a little over a week later Twitch streamers boycott these heinous raids and Twitch’s response. This boycott, which officially occurred on September 1 under the hashtag “#ADayOffTwitch”, ended anywhere between a 5% to 15% drop in the number of views on the site.

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guidebook maker for IGN. You can follow it on Twitter @LeBlancWes.