Twitch video gamers rise up against ‘hate raids’

In recent months the phenomenon of “hate raids” — barrages of racist, sexist and homophobic abuse — has been making life increasingly unpleasant for minority users of Twitch, the world’s biggest video game streaming site.

“It just gets hard,” said the parent-of-two, who declined to reveal their real name over fears for their security.

Twitch is more than a source of fun for Raven: it’s their job. The Virginia-based horror games player holds affiliate status, under which prolific and widely followed streamers get paid.

The hashtag has become a magnet for complaints over the past month, largely from female, non-white and LGBTQ players, that Twitch is failing to stop internet trolls running amok — all while taking 50 percent of streamers’ earnings.

Launched in 2011 and bought by Amazon three years later, Twitch counts more than 30 million visitors per day, most of whom tune in to watch other people play video games with entertaining commentary.

Swedish lecturer Gabriel Erikkson Sahlin logs in under the username BabblingGoat to play “The Sims” and “Dragon Age”.

He is frustrated that his efforts to create something positive are being disrupted, with alarming regularity, by transphobic abuse.

People also program bots to post endless offensive spam, sometimes in the form of “gore raids” — volleys of ultra-violent images.

Under increasing pressure, Twitch this month announced that new measures to prevent hate raids, including “account verification improvements”, would be introduced later this year. 

“The hate raids have not slowed down whatsoever. They only seem to be getting worse,” said Chonki, a Jewish-Chinese New Yorker whose stream was inundated with anti-Semitic messages and images of swastikas.

But hate raid victims say the trolls use “leet” hacker slang — deliberately misspelling words — to carry on using banned terms, or they embed abusive words in images to avoid detection.    

Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Unit at Britain’s Nottingham Trent University, said determined trolls would “always find ways around” the tools designed to stop them.

The “perceived anonymity” offered by pseudonyms on platforms like Twitch — even though users may ultimately be identifiable — makes people feel empowered to do and say things they wouldn’t normally, he added. 

Twitch declined to comment on a list of Raven’s suggestions passed on by AFP.

But with no end to the hate raids in sight, marginalized streamers say Twitch’s appeal is increasingly outweighed by the psychological burden. 

“But it’s very, very taxing,” he said. “This morning I was like, ‘Do I really want to stream tonight? There’s a 99 percent chance I’m going to get hate raided’.”

“Twitch is taking 50 percent of my income — of all streamers’ income — and they can’t even protect us from hate raids,” Chonki said.

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