Twitch have responded to concerns about bots after an “easy” way to create new, fake accounts after a massive spike revealed millions of new profiles.
Some Twitch streamers spend years grinding away trying to build a community of followers that will tune into their streams on a regular basis. Though, not every follower is a real person.
Over the last few years, the Amazon-owned streaming platform has run into regular issues with bot accounts – fake profiles designed to boost somebodies follower numbers – with some trolls using them to try and get a streamer banned.
These fake profiles have been sent to a wide range of streamers, both big and small, prompting a massive shake-up in the most-followed channel rankings at times. And things could get even worse thanks to a new method that trolls now have at their disposal.
Twitch streamers concerned amid surge in bot accounts
On September 25, Twitch partner CommanderRoot noted that over 4 million new accounts had been created in 24 hours, as someone had seemingly uncovered an “easy” way to amass bot profiles.
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This, naturally, concerned plenty of streamers who called upon Twitch to do something about it. While action hasn’t yet happened, one Twitch dev – RayApollo – confirmed that the problem is on their radar.
“Hey! Heads up, Teams are aware and working on this!” he replied, shortly after the initial post picked up some traction between streamers.
As we’ve seen previously, battling against these bot accounts can be tricky for Twitch. While they are easy to identify – as the names usually have a string of numbers in there – some streamers haven’t been able to shake them off.
Streamers are hoping for a quick resolution to the matter, but it’ll be a case of wait and see as to what Twitch can do about them.