Last week, Twitch announced a new Safety Advisory Council intended to provide input on some of Twitch’s most pernicious issues, including work-life balance, safety and moderation, and protection of marginalized groups. The council is made up of social media experts as well as a small handful of streamers. One of those streamers, Steph “FerociouslySteph” Loehr,…
Today Twitch announced the formation of a “safety advisory council” meant to more formally tackle some of the platform’s most complicated issues, including moderation, work-life balance, and safeguarding the interests of marginalized communities. In a press release, Twitch said the council will advise on “a number of topics” which include “drafting new policies and policy…
“Simp” is, to put it lightly, a divisive term. On Twitch, TikTok, and Twitter, people mostly use it to express hyper-exaggerated thirst, often to get laughs out of friends or communities. But the word also has more negative connotations, and even though it’s undeniably become part of the broader Twitch lexicon, Twitch itself doesn’t seem…
During a stream today, Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm, whose 4 million followers make him one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, shared two pieces of widely debunked coronavirus-related media with his viewers. Many viewers reacted with shock and disappointment. Others cheered him on. He never dropped his facade—never removed his trademark wig or sunglasses—but…
For the past couple weeks, a growing number of Twitch’s top streams have not been live, despite claiming to be. In order to maximize viewership gain from Valorant’s beta key drop system, some streamers have been tossing up non-live footage to keep streams going 24/7. Now, that’s no longer allowed. Twitch announced the change to…
If you take a look at many of Twitch’s top Valorant streams right now, you’ll note that they claim to be running “24/7.” This might strike you as odd, given that human beings generally need to eat, sleep, and all that fancy, life-sustaining jazz. Most of these streams, however, are not actually live. At least,…
Twitch’s gardening section contains multitudes. Some people broadcast apple orchards. Others build birdhouses. Others play Stardew Valley. But at most times of the day, those streams are crowded out by one of the most instantly recognizable plants on earth: the seven-armed starfish, Beelzebub’s kale salad, other names I didn’t just make up. I speak, of…
Yesterday evening, professional NASCAR racer Kyle Larson used the n-word during an event hosted by prominent simulation esports league iRacing and broadcast on Twitch and eNASCAR.com. He’s since been suspended by NASCAR, as well as his racing team. With covid-19 forcing people across the world to pump the brakes on everything, professional racing organizations have…
Several decades ago, at the beginning of March 2020, when Bernie Sanders was still in the race for president, a streamer who goes by the handle Neekolul posted a short video of herself lip syncing and dancing along to a song by YouTuber Senzawa made up entirely of variations on the phrase “OK, boomer” to…
Valorant, a game that’s not out yet and that most people can’t play, currently has 1.6 million concurrent viewers on Twitch, putting it within spitting distance of the all-time record. The new game from League of Legends (and only League of Legends, until now) developer Riot Games mashes up Counter-Strike-style tactical shooting with hero powers…
Popular musician Marc Rebillet’s March 17 Twitch stream—the first in his “Quarantine Livestream Tour”—began just like his other shows: Wearing a silken robe, he improvised a series of songs based on topic suggestions from his audience. People asked for songs about the apocalypse and toilet paper. About an hour and a half in, he announced…
A good Twitch chat is like a serene sea: always welcome, but all too rare a respite from the choppier waters of the internet. Over the years, Twitch has given chat moderators tools to lock out ugliness-spewing ne’er-do-wells, but a number of loopholes have allowed dedicated trolls to slip back under the gates with relative…
While Twitch has not explicitly stated that dark jokes about covid-19 are grounds for an indefinite stay in the site’s purple-barred slammer, it’s now spoken with its actions. Popular satirical streamer Kaceytron has been suspended after making such a joke last week. Kaceytron (real name Kacey Caviness) was on an episode of reality show streamer…
NYU Game Center professor and independent developer Robert Yang never thought teaching a class on Twitch would be a good idea, but only once he was in the thick of things did the enormity of the task dawn on him. “Oh hello, Amber,” he said to a student who’d identified herself in chat. “And hello,…
Back in December, I reported on an issue that’s been plaguing Twitch for quite some time: scammers who pretend to be popular streamers and lure people in with the promise of fake giveaways. As of now, Twitch has yet to comprehensively solve the problem. Instead, it’s played whack-a-mole with thousands of fake accounts. The playbook…
Over the past 72 hours, I’ve spent an ungodly amount of time watching TikToks created by Twitch streamers. It all began with a simple question: Can people whose whole line of work is built around creating the lengthiest, least-filtered form of pop culture possible excel in a medium where minimalism thrives? TikTok is a video…
A professional Call of Duty streamer who brandished a gun on stream and accidentally fired a round into his desk has been suspended from Twitch and dropped from his esports organization. Last night, during a livestream from inside his home, Call of Duty trickshot specialist and former FaZe Clan member Carl Riemer pulled out a…
Yesterday evening, Twitch suspended a slew of high-profile streamers who, whether occasionally or full-time, cover politics. Those caught up in the snare included speedrunner Mychal “Trihex” Jefferson, lefty podcasters Chapo Trap House, and political pundit David Pakman. This happened after an organization claiming to represent CBS issued copyright claims on streams involving last night’s Democratic…
Twitch’s policies around content it deems “sexual” are inconsistently applied, but body painting—creating art using one’s face and torso as the canvas—doesn’t run afoul of them. Body painting even has its own official tag on the streaming platform. That, however, has not stopped Twitch from indefinitely suspending a streamer who says she was doing everything…
Early last year, then-Twitch streamer Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang received an email from a fan who’d donated $200 to him in 2018. “Hey, I donated money to you a year ago,” read the email according to Wang, who spoke to Kotaku over the phone. “I’m having hard times right now. Do you think you could…
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