‘A Day Off Twitch’ blackout to streamer boycott platform

Next week, streamers plan to step away from Twitch for a day in an effort to tackle how the platform continually lets down marginalized creators.

Earlier this month, the streamers joined the hashtag #TwitchDoBetter on social media, where reports of horrific user experiences on the platform have proliferated. Many posts revolved around how Twitch offered lukewarm protections against sustained harassment. Specifically, heinous raids– in which bad faith viewers use the platform’s “raid” feature to flood a mass channel of insults and vile language – are not only possible, but become a daily nightmare for people using the service live broadcast. And since it’s almost easy to create an account on Twitch, trolls can sign up for a bunch of accounts. It is absurdly easy to circumvent bans, at least until measures like verifying accounts through phone numbers are implemented.

As The Washington Post reported, Twitch streamers say the problem has only worsened in the last few months, possibly because of the platform expand your list of tags to include 350 tags categorized by “gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ability, mental health, etc. On the one hand, it makes it easier for creators to find a community. On the other hand, it’s much easier for racist trolls to find and harass creators.

In addition, Twitch takes a solid percentage subscription revenue, with half going to streamers and the other half to the platform (which was bought for almost $ 1 billion by Amazon in 2014). Banners Recount Kotaku the division should lean more towards content creators, somewhere closer to a 70/30 split. If streamers continually have to put up with bullshit, you’d think they’d get at least a good chunk of the pie, right?

Read more: Streamers rally behind “Twitch Do Better”

“It’s so heartbreaking to see all the stories of marginalized people on the platform being attacked for something beyond their control like their skin color, gender identity, sexual preferences or whatever,” streamer Rek It , Raven !, at the origin of the hashtag, Told Kotaku by email during the #TwitchDoBetter campaign. “We shouldn’t be afraid to hit ‘go live’. “

The #ADayOffTwitch The campaign, hosted by Raven alongside streamers LuciaEverblack and ShineyPen, is slated for September 1. Essentially, it will be a 24 hour blackout: no streaming, no streaming, no chat connection. Viewers are also encouraged to participate.

Following the #TwitchDoBetter campaign, Twitch quickly rolled out improved chat filters, through The edge. And last week the company announcement it would implement channel-level ban evasion detection, but did not offer a timeline for the deployment of this functionality. The hope is that a day with reduced large-scale engagement will force the company to take notice and, ideally, take further action.