Twitch famously does not ban people for botting unless they have evidence that t... (2024)

smegm*2 on Feb 11, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: I almost got banned from Hacker News

Twitch famously does not ban people for botting unless they have evidence that the streamer themselves ordered the bots.

https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/how-to-handle-view-follow-b...

Twitch famously does not ban people for botting unless they have evidence that t... (2)

sundarurfriend on Feb 11, 2022 | next [–]

And Twitch are well known for applying their rules fairly and consistently, to streamers big and small. /s

At this point the divergence between the rules-as-written and rules-as-applied(-in-each-case) has become so apparent that I'd treat Twitch's help pages like comments on a decades old poorly maintained code base - any match between them and reality is almost accidental and cannot be relied upon.

Twitch famously does not ban people for botting unless they have evidence that t... (3)

zamadatix on Feb 11, 2022 | parent | next [–]

From what I have seen this is indeed Twitches prescribed approach, even for small streamers. I had a friend that was getting viewbotted when his channel was just starting to grow and remember being surprised he was worried it'd actually make him look bad to viewers (like he himself was trying to inflate his channel since his chat was dead vs the view count) but never worried Twitch was going to do anything to his account for it.

Have you seen different for this topic or is that a generic reaction for any time Twitch help pages are linked?

Twitch famously does not ban people for botting unless they have evidence that t... (4)

smegm*2 on Feb 11, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]

Agreed in general but for bots it anecdotally seems to be the case. For example Massan was blatantly viewbotting for a long time but he wasn't banned for several months at least (I don't remember the time).

Twitch famously does not ban people for botting unless they have evidence that t... (5)

nitwit005 on Feb 11, 2022 | prev [–]

I'm a bit doubtful, as even gaining real followers rapidly has apparently been a problem. That happened around 2 months ago with new members of the Hololive streaming group, as all their fans followed the new accounts.