Twitch Loses 25% Viewership After Streamers Boycott for a Day

Wednesday, thousands of streamers abandoned Twitch for 24 hours in protest of its ongoing facilitation of harassment campaigns known as hate raids. While the Amazon-owned streaming platform has yet to implement proposed changes to the controversial raid system, it’s clear what some previously dismissed as a small movement has had a big impact, potentially costing Twitch roughly 25% of its peak concurrent traffic for the day. Social media platforms have been criticized across the board for facilitating the spread of misinformation, hate speech, and harassment, but Twitch has come under special scrutiny for how it directly profits off of content creators it’s done little to protect. The streaming platform takes a whopping 50% cut of their subscription revenue by default, a fact that rival platforms on Facebook and YouTube have tried to leverage by offering better deals in exchange for streamers jumping ship.

#ADayOffTwitch came about because of growing frustration over Twitch’s unwillingness to crackdown more strictly on harassment and bigotry on the platform. In light of a growing number of hate raids targeting marginalized streamers and streamers of color in which bots spam channels with vitriol and slurs, content creators started putting together practical guides to help victims and calling on Twitch to overhaul the raid feature. #TwitchDoBetter, a hashtag created by streamer Rek It, Raven! built up steam throughout August around a 2018 tweet by Twitch telling people to hold it accountable. In light of the latest wave of criticism, the streaming platform rolled out improved chat filters and announced plans for a better ban evasion detection system sometime in the future. But streamers want swifter, more decisive action, which culminated in plans for a September 1 boycott.

Credits:
https://kotaku.com/twitch-takes-traffic-hit-following-streamer-boycott-ove-1847609025