Twitch, the world's most popular video game streaming service, is developing a porn problem
- Twitch, the Amazon-owned video game streaming service, has suffered a pair of controversies involving pornography in the last three months.
- On August 10, a Twitch channel streaming pornography shot to the top of the list of recommended channels with more than 20,000 live viewers.
- The channel's feed included pornographic animations with characters from games like "Fortnite," and streamed for several hours before being suspended by Twitch.
- In May, Twitch blocked new users from streaming for several days because the feed for the game "Artifact" was filled with dozens of fake users streaming pornography and white supremacist videos, including footage of the Christchurch shooting.
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In the past three months, Twitch.tv has suffered a pair of major controversies involving channels streaming pornography, a clear violation of the platform's terms of service.
On August 10, a channel streaming pornography under the "Fortnite" category shot to the top of Twitch's recommended channels with more than 20,000 viewers watching the live feed. "Fortnite" is one of the most popular games on Twitch and the channel's video feed included "Fortnite"-themed pornography with animated characters from the game.
Esports consultant Rod "Slasher" Breslau noted that the channel was live for at least two hours before being suspended by Twitch administrators. Breslau shared a screenshot of Twitch's most popular "Fortnite" streams on Twitter, which included a thumbnail of the pornographic content streamed by Twitch user godeugenes.
Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, who owns the most-followed channel on Twitch, criticized the company for allowing pornographic content to automatically stream from his channel's landing page while he was offline. Ninja recently signed an exclusive streaming deal with Microsoft's streaming platform Mixer, and Twitch had been using his abandoned channel to redirect users to other popular "Fortnite" streamers.
Ninja's channel has more than 14 million followers, and anyone who visited his channel directly on the morning of August 10 could have been exposed to pornographic content. Twitch CEO Emmett Shear apologized for having Ninja's channel automatically host inappropriate content and said Twitch would be suspending the recommended channel function until they could determine how the pornographic stream rose to the top of the list.
In May, Twitch blocked new users from streaming for several days as a wave of fake accounts completely took over a category belonging to the game "Artifact." Visiting the "Artifact" page would expose users to a bizarre mix of pornography, white supremacist content, and pirated movies. The graphic footage included video from the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, where a white supremacist killed 51 people.
To combat the overwhelming number of fake accounts, Twitch changed its policy to require new users to activate two-factor authentication prior to streaming. A month later, the company filed a lawsuit against the streamers who violated their policies, but was unable to identify them by name. Instead, the lawsuit named them as "John and Janes Does 1-100."
Twitch did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the recent scandals.
Twitch is the most popular platform for video game streaming by far. According to data from Streamlabs, gamers watched Twitch for a combined 2.7 billion hours during the last three months - that's nearly four times as much watch time as the second-most-popular live-streaming service, YouTube Gaming, which had 702 million hours watched over the same span.
Like other video platforms, Twitch thrives by making its streaming service easy to use and accessible to millions of users. However, as the platform continues to grow and expand to new content areas beyond gaming, it has struggled to manage the countless number of live streamers using the platform at any given time. While moderating inappropriate content is a full-time task for any social media or video platform, Twitch's recent promotion of a pornographic channel reflects a concerning lack of discretion.
