Trainwreck says Twitch’s viewbotting problem is actually much worse than the one Kick is facing.
Kick co-founder Trainwreck isn’t one to shy away from criticizing Twitch, but when asked about how the viewbotting situation on Kick fairs compared to its purple competitor, he felt the need to set the record straight.
Viewbotting has been a major issue on streaming sites, with some creators artificially inflating their viewer counts to appear more popular than they actually are.
This process could involve using embeds on other sites to inflate viewership, but sometimes, users will command waves of bot accounts that will follow channels so they appear to have larger fan bases.
During a May 30 broadcast, Trainwreck addressed Kick’s problem with viewbotters, as some of its biggest creators have been accused of botting in the past.
“I’ll be honest with you, the botting on Twitch is worse. You just don’t notice it, because there are so many more streamers live,” he said.
According to Train, it’s “less obvious” on Twitch, because the people who are botting already have a large amount of viewers to begin with so it “blends in.”
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“You just see the Kick botting because there are less streamers,” he continued.
These comments echo his previous comments, where he hinted that Twitch actually has the “number one” viewbotted streamer.
“It’s multiple people who are botting massively and making a lot of money from it,” he revealed back in April. “Minimum between 10,000 and 20,000 bots.”
To this day, it’s still unclear what streamers Train was accusing of botting and if he has proof, but broadcasters have shown how easy it is to boost their viewership.
Earlier in 2024, a Twitch streamer bragged about having over 100,000 viewers despite only having 39 unique chatters, and was quickly banned when he admitted to embedding his broadcasts on other websites.