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Bloomberg: How Amazon's Twitch enables widespread child predation – 280,000 broadcasting children targeted

Biosnake

Biosnake

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,557

View: https://twitter.com/cecianasta/status/1572550288699191296

Some kids can receive hundreds of live viewers within a few minutes of going live — far more than what's expected for an account that isn't a featured streamer.

In mid-August, 650 live viewers watched a girl who said she was 11 and alone in her bedroom. She displayed a sign with her Twitch username and the number 12 — the age she would turn in a few weeks. Viewers in the chat asked her to do a "fashion show" and show her legs. An archived clip of the performance was viewed 3,700 times.
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Reddit summary of article:

"Every day — On Amazon's Twitch measurably hundreds of new preteens live-broadcast themselves. Every hour — networks of child predators meticulously identify, index, and follow them.

Through the website's live-chat feature, they push them towards broadcasted gestures, off-platform communication and disclosing/filming their home.
They manipulate, they threaten, they coerce, they blackmail broadcasting children as young as 8 years old.
Varying degrees of the above scenarios measurably take place each and every hour.

Unlike its competitors — YouTube-Live, TikTok-Live, Facebook-Gaming who've industry standard policy/systems to prevent this — Amazon's Twitch, in pursuit of maximizing platform growth, has opted to forgo these vital safety measure :

Employing a minimum follower/subscriber account to live-stream from (this is crucial) mobile devices, a policy specifically conceived to filter malicious entities and preteens going live on their phone.

Unlike YouTube, on Twitch anyone can create a brand new account (often completely skipping e-mail/phone verification) and start streaming immediately. Children do so hourly.

Further, Amazon's Twitch has a severely underdeveloped Trust & Safety department which has not scaled in proportion with the website's pandemic growth.— Through its triage system, (despite official proclamations) it demonstrably prioritizes mass reports, not individual ones; Not even scanning for urgent key-terms such as "preteen/child/grooming". Consequently, it is the overwhelming case for on-site reports indicating broadcasting preteens to insufficiently get addressed.

Thus, the grooming/predation does take place over days/weeks with no on-platform way of drawing attention to it."
 
Cerulean_skylark

Cerulean_skylark

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account.
Banned
Oct 31, 2017
6,408
fucking good. Twitch is a cesspool. Not just streamers themselves, but the absolute 100% double standard of moderation has ALWAYS been insulting AF.

Twitch is a fucking wreck and they only got so far by being the only game in town for so long. Large cash-cow streamers are treated like fucking royalty and suffer zero consequences for any wrongdoing without MASSIVE public exposure. I'm not surprised at all that kids can just make channels and start streaming with zero controls. Why would they when they've always prioritized big numbers over sound policy
 
CenaToon

CenaToon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,909
Gambling, Brives, Sexual Accusations, and now Pedophilia.

This probably Twitch's worst month ever.
 
Falcon511

Falcon511

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,270
At this point it would not surprise me if someone from Amazon is going to come in and just butcher the whole damn thing.
 
Razgriz417

Razgriz417

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,209
Even in the many instances when Twitch has eliminated inappropriate content or suspended clearly underage users, it's easy enough to create a new account. When one viewer "dared" a child to pull down her pants during a livestream in late May, the child responded that she wouldn't do so because she had already had one of her three accounts suspended. The viewer, who followed primarily young girls on Twitch, replied in the chat: "u can always make a new account easy." Later in the broadcast, she pulled her shirt up.
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Yeah good luck spinning this twitch
 
I_love_potatoes

I_love_potatoes

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Jul 6, 2020
1,640
I don't see why a 13 year should be allowed to stream in the first place. They're 13...

Streaming needs to be 16/17+.
 
Watchtower

Watchtower

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,405
"Amazon's Twitch" is just that extra twist of the knife that really highlights how fucked a ton of this is. Twitch hasn't been a scrappy upstart for a while, lot of this shit's been happening through and since it becoming part of Amazon. This shit's happening on Bezos' lawn.
 
Kemono

Kemono

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,025
Underage streaming needs to be banned.

Not just on twitch but on all social media platforms.
 

Dekim

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,527
I mean, this has been a long time coming. I'm surprised Twitch has gotten away with how they ran things for this long given the large adolescent audience it has.
 
Delusibeta

Delusibeta

Prophet of Truth
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
5,648
If this doesn't start the (long overdue) adpocalypse on Twitch, then I'm not sure what will.

But seriously, I genuinely can't see many companies looking at this report and wanting to keep associating themselves with Twitch.
 
i hate cheaters

i hate cheaters

Member
Feb 16, 2018
2,745
twitch offices right now:
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Kinsei

Kinsei

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
21,080
What the actual fuck. Something needs to be done ASAP.

Streaming on all sites needs to be 18+ only.
 

Deleted member 12867

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,623
You love to see it. Hope everyone hits the king while they are down. Be great to get some more policy changes such ass if you are accused of sexual assault you are unpartnered and demonetized until it's investigated.

caffe misto said:
I had no idea 11-year-olds were even allowed to stream on Twitch.
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You aren't but you literally have to state you are underage to get actioned. 13 and up but I'd argue they need to add options to help parents control what their children consume.
 
Watchtower

Watchtower

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,405
WildflowerWildfire said:
How does twitch justify having such lax enforcement of an already too low age policy for streaming?
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I imagine it's because they're primarily a service for live-streaming video games and a loooooot of professional gamers are underage. And pro gaming circuits has been notoriously shit about giving those kids protection as actual kids so what's pushing Twitch right?
 
Socivol

Socivol

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,978
I'm like several others here and had no clue kids under 13 could even stream. Will have to read the full article later when I am not working but just the blurb in the OP is extremely disturbing to me.
 
samcastor

samcastor

Member
Apr 21, 2021
2,136
Yeah, there definitely should be verification to stream. idk about 18+ but it definitely should be at least 15/16+. I think some HS students streaming online is probably fine but currently twitch has no barriers.
 
It’s Time To Go

It’s Time To Go

Member
Dec 2, 2017
21,090
Watchtower said:
I imagine it's because they're primarily a service for live-streaming video games and a loooooot of professional gamers are underage. And pro gaming circuits has been notoriously shit about giving those kids protection as actual kids so what's pushing Twitch right?
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That's just disgusting. I shouldn't be surprised that twitch would choose viewers over child safety but its still shocking.
 
Garrison

Garrison

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,123
I'm hating that whole platform more and more by the week, glad to say I hardly ever use it but it's time publishers stop streaming their shows and content through it. They need to stop supporting this shit, man it sucks Mixer fell through.
 
thisismadness

thisismadness

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,623
Delusibeta said:
If this doesn't start the (long overdue) adpocalypse on Twitch, then I'm not sure what will.

But seriously, I genuinely can't see many companies looking at this report and wanting to keep associating themselves with Twitch.
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It won't. Some companies will threaten to pull ads. Twitch will make a big deal about half assed moderation changes. And then the story will go away in a few months. Same as what happened with Youtube when the same stories surfaced about them..

napkins said:
Streaming should absolutely be 18+
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Yeah, its mindblowing that this already isn't the case. wtf
 
FriendlyNPC

FriendlyNPC

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,724
It was about time for all the shit to finally catch up to twitch.tv. Could have seen all of this coming from a mile away.
 

Deleted member 12867

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,623
Phellps said:
Maybe not the best subject to meme about
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Why not both. The shit is so grim you gotta give yourself a break from it sometimes. I think memes are a valid and powerful form of criticism in these times. Look how effective the right has utilized Pepe the frog memes to radicalize. It works so as long as it's being used for awareness and criticism for good I'm all for it tbh
 
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