Twitch sues hate attackers | PC gamers
Twitch has filed a lawsuit against two “hate attackers”, claiming that they have been targeting marginalized streamers with “racist, sexist and homophobic language and content” despite efforts to stop them. The exact identity of the hate attackers is not yet known-they are known as aliases for CruzzControl and Creatine Overdose-but both are believed to live in Europe.
A “hate raid” is an organized attack on Twitch channels in which bots flood chats with slander, threats and abuse. This has been a problem for several months, but it didn’t cause widespread concern until August, when the streamers planned a one-day boycott of the platform, using the hashtag #ADayOffTwitch to protest their belief that Twitch lacked meaningful action to solve the problem. It worked.了: Although few big-name anchors participated, Twitch’s ratings dropped significantly on the day of the protest.
Twitch has promised to implement new security measures to help anchors cope with hate attacks, but as anchor ArtForTheApocalypse demonstrated in August, it is extremely difficult to deal with determined hate attackers. Twitch effectively acknowledged its current vulnerability in its lawsuit, stating that the defendants were able to “evade the ban by creating new alternative Twitch accounts and constantly changing their self-described “hate raid code” to avoid detection and suspension by Twitch.”
“Despite Twitch’s best efforts, the hate attacks continue,” the lawsuit states. “Based on information and beliefs, the defendant created software code to conduct hate raids through automated means. They continued to develop their software code to avoid Twitch’s efforts to prevent the defendant’s bots from accessing Twitch services.”
Twitch responded to this in a statement to PC Gamer, stating that “strongly motivated” hate attackers are “creating a new wave of fake bot accounts designed to harass creators, even as we keep updating our site range Protective measures within to prevent their rapid development of behavior.”
A Twitch spokesperson said: “Although we have discovered and banned thousands of accounts in the past few weeks, these actors continue to work hard to find creative ways to circumvent our improvements and have no intention of stopping.” “We hope this This complaint can reveal the personal identities behind these attacks and the tools they use, discourage them from using similar behaviors for other services, and help end these malicious attacks against members of our community.”
The lawsuit seeks a legally binding injunction prohibiting the defendant from using Twitch, as well as various damages and legal fees. But before it gets there, it has some big obstacles that need to be cleared, including determining the true identity of the defendants, who are currently only referred to as CruzzControl and creatine overdose. This may not be a major issue in itself — litigation is usually against anonymous “Does” (for example, Bungie and Ubisoft’s joint lawsuit against cheaters, for example, 50 of them) — but there may also be jurisdictional issues, as CruzzControl is based on Letter is a Dutch resident, and Creatine Overdose is from Austria.
Nonetheless, this is a Twitch initiative, and regardless of the result, it can serve as a meaningful deterrent to other hate attackers. RekitRaven is the anchor who obtained the hate raid awareness ball through the hashtag #TwitchDoBetter in August. He stated on Twitter that this lawsuit is not a solution to the hate raid problem, but it is “a start and a good start.”
“Like #ADayOffTwitch is a message, so is this,” Tweet RekItRaven. “You shouldn’t be fearless behind the keyboard. There are consequences.”
Twitch stated that it is continuing to work on “the new proactive, channel-level security tool we have been developing for months,” and hinted that it may take further legal action after this. “This complaint is by no means the only action we have taken in response to targeted attacks,” the representative said. “It will not be the last.”
Twitch’s lawsuit can be viewed in full on Scribd.