Culture

Twitch urged to ‘do better’ after spate of racist, homophobic and transphobic ‘hate raids’

Twitch hate raids increasing

Twitch

As hate raids against marginalised streamers continue on Twitch, a petition has been launched for #TwitchDoBetter.

Hate raids consist of hundreds of follower bots raiding a stream with abusive, racist, homophobic and transphobic messages. It’s primarily been done to attack streamers of colour, but LGBT+ streamers have also been targeted.

Streamers have been sharing their stories on Twitter, with the hashtag #TwitchDoBetter started by streamer RekItRaven to push Twitch to improve.

In a further stand against hate on the platform, a Change.org petition has now been launched by Lu Morrow demanding Twitch find a solution to prevent hate raids from happening. At the time of writing, it’s had over 4,000 signatures.

As explained on the petition page, Morrow was part of two hate raids during a charity stream by Kandidly Kayla.

Kayla is a Twitch partner who was streaming on the front page for charity, and yet was still hate raided twice by approximately 400 follow bots.

“Speaking as a moderator and a woman of color, I was completely devastated that this happened,” writes Morrow. “Twitch please take action in making the communities of your streamers safer.”

Morrow also suggests a number of improvements Twitch can make, including additional authentication processes for new users, logging IP addresses of offenders, and ensuring banned users are unable to follow again.

Stories of hate raids continue to be shared

Hate raid stories continue to be shared across social media.

Streamer Ky shared her live reaction to being hate raided on Twitter.

“I understand people saying it’s not about race, but it is,” she says.

“I wasn’t talking about anything political, I wasn’t saying anything about being Black, being proud of being Black. I was just playing a game and it just happened to me.”

The result of all this is that many streamers are now afraid to go live for fear of being hate raided. Streamers want to protect their communities – as well as their own mental health – from abuse, but the response from Twitch has so far not been enough.

Streamers are also sharing their tips online to protect themselves. For instance, lanieloveee points out that you can limit who can raid your stream, while Just Jess created a video to describe how to remove follow bots.

To sign the petition, visit Change.org.

When asked for comment, Twitch pointed to a Twitter thread it shared on 11 August.

“We’ve seen a lot of conversation about botting, hate raids, and other forms of harassment targeting marginalised creators. You’re asking us to do better, and we know we need to do more to address these issues. That includes an open and ongoing dialogue about creator safety”,” Twitch tweeted.

Twitch said it has rolled out an update to close a vulnerability in its proactive filters and to better detect hate speech, and will launch more tools including channel-level ban evasion and account verification improvements later this year.

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