Twitch has denounced recent hate raids that took place on the platform and said it has taken legal action in response.
The official Twitch Support Twitter account issued a statement on the anti-LGBTQ+ hate raids last week (March 11), calling out the “bad actors” that had been coordinating offsite to target people. “Hate has no place on Twitch, and we’ve identified and suspended the Twitch accounts of the individuals participating.”
Twitch’s legal team is also involved, with the streaming platform saying it has “taken legal action against those who’ve harassed our community in the past and continue[s] to take these activities seriously.”
A hate raid is when users and bots flood a streamer’s Twitch chat and spam hateful and offensive language during their streams.
As reported by Dot Esports, multiple Twitch creators took to Twitter to post about the hate raids, with EarthToBre mentioning that a creator was targeted by a platform called Cozy.tv.
TWITCH STREAMERS: @thejustryan was hate raided by someone on a different platform called https://t.co/5NcW1hLOe6
They spammed hateful homophobic messages, tried to spam in the discord, and streamed Ryan’s stream to his viewers while making fun of him. This is disgusting.
— EarthToBre (@EarthToBreLive) March 10, 2022
Cozy.tv is a conservative streaming website co-founded by far-right white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who encouraged and took credit for the LGBTQ+ hate raids in a clip from one of his recent streams on the Cozy.tv platform.
Fuentes has previously been banned from Twitch, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube and services like PayPal, Venmo and Patreon. During the clip, Fuentes openly mocked Twitter users who contacted the Cozy Moderator Twitter account reporting the hate raids, claiming “it’s not even a real account.”
As of publication, the Cozy Moderator account appears to have been banned or deleted from Twitter.
On top of the legal action, Twitch Support outlined a few ways creators and users can mitigate the impact of such hate raids. “Dial up AutoMod to L3, turn on Followers-Only and Slow Mode, enable email and phone verification, and only allow Raids from friends.
“Please continue to channel ban, report and block any cases of harassment you see, and know that we are working diligently to take action as quickly as possible,” added Twitch.
These LGBTQ+ hate raids on Twitch follow similar problems from last year that led Twitch streamers to the #ADayOffTwitch movement, where they went on strike in protest of Twitch’s response.
More information about combatting targeted attacks on Twitch can be found here.
In other news, Konami is hosting an indie games event to help put a spotlight on smaller game developers.
For all the latest Games News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.