A new wave of hate raids is being reported by various LGBTQ and women streamers on Twitch. Twitch responded to the claims on Friday by confirming that over the past 24-hours there has been a huge uptick in this activity, saying, "hate has no place on Twitch, and we’ve identified and suspended the Twitch accounts of the individuals participating." Similar hate raids sparked the #DayOffTwitch boycott last year, where many small and mid-tier streamers took a day off streaming to protest hate raids.
A new wave of hate raids descends on Twitch
The new hate raids began on Thursday, with numerous streamers taking to Twitter to warn others that there is a group of viewers who are making a concerted, organized effort to bully marginalized streamers, in spite of the new measures Twitch instituted last year to combat hate raids. Most of Twitch's new tools were focused on stopping bots, not necessarily stopping active users who are organizing on platforms like Discord to instigate these new attacks.
"TWITCH STREAMERS: @thejustryan was hate raided by someone on a different platform called http://cozy.tv," Twitch streamer EarthToBre stated on Twitter. "They spammed hateful homophobic messages, tried to spam in the discord, and streamed Ryan's stream to his viewers while making fun of him. This is disgusting."
She continued, "The Cozy platform is a conservative streaming site, There's nothing official about them on the internet. We think it's self-made / self-run. @twitch can you help us?" She also posted a screenshot with evidence of the hate raid she referred to. The raids appear to be targeting the LGBTQ tag on Twitch.
Notably, among those targetted with hate raids was Stephanie Sterling, a trans-YouTuber and streamer who has been a high-profile critic of the games industry for a long time.
They said on Twitter, "got massively hate raided on Twitch last night. A pathetic mass tantrum full of the usual boring transphobia. I’m told some little p*n*s was orchestrating raids on their own channel. As ever, @Twitch just let it happen. [...} I’m lucky to have excellent mod tools and a really supportive community, so it was an inconvenience at best. As for the messages they sent, it’s all so… desperate. That’s the only word for their frothing, impotent anger - it’s so f*cking desperate."
In response to the reports, many shared strategies for minimizing the impact of hate raids. One streamer who goes by blobarella also said that she is making a list of Twitch accounts that are participating in the new raids, so people can protect themselves from those specific accounts. Others are discussing the possibility of using Twitch bots to help police the risk of hate raids.
There are tools that can help combat hate raids, such as emote and subscriber-only modes, as well as limiting chat to only verified accounts. However, something as simple as follower-only mode doesn't stop hate raids necessarily, as demonstrated by when Pokimane was raided by JiDion a couple months ago. The ongoing issues with hate raids are a staunch challenge facing the platform.
Twitch responds to new hate raid issues
Twitch confirmed that they are aware of the "bad actors" in a message put out on Friday.
"Over the past 24 hours, bad actors have been coordinating off-Twitch to target women and LGBTQ+ members of our community with spammy and hateful chat messages," Twitch stated on Twitter. "Our Safety team is actively reviewing reports and suspending users in violation of our TOS. Our legal team is also involved and actively investigating. We've taken legal action against those who've harassed our community in the past and continue to take these activities seriously."
They continued: "We've found that enabling the following settings has a big impact in helping prevent these cases: dial up AutoMod to L3, turn on Followers-Only and Slow Mode, enable email and phone verification, and only allow Raids from friends. Please continue to channel ban, report and block any cases of harassment you see, and know that we are working diligently to take action as quickly as possible."
Hate raids have been an ongoing issue with Twitch for a long time now, with hateful groups of people or bots targeting women, LGBTQ people, and black people on the platform. Twitch sued two individuals last year who were allegedly involved in creating hate raid botnets. With hateful people organizing these raids from other platforms, it is a very difficult issue to solve, with few if any silver bullet solutions.
