Twitch launches anti-bot crackdown and viewership numbers plummet across the platform overnight
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Twitch's anti-bot enforcement led to sharp drops in displayed viewership across many channels. The shift raises implications for rankings, ads, and sponsors.
  • Twitch’s new anti-bot system caused viewer counts to nosedive across hundreds of channels, with some losing over half their displayed audience.
  • Channels running 24/7 reruns saw the biggest drops, with Mira falling from 2,000+ to under 200 viewers overnight.
  • The cleanup affects sponsorship deals and ad rates since brands have been paying premium prices for audiences that were partially fake.
    • Laser@feddit.orgEnglish
      101·
      3 days ago

      I wouldn’t say destroyed, but it definitely watered down the brand. Twitch was funded as a game streaming website as opposed to the site it branched off of, which was Justin.tv - a site that was for live-streaming yourself, so theoretically perfect for just chatting, hot tubs and beaches etc. Sure, that site doesn’t exist anymore, but I think it would have been better to create a new site for this kind of content, possibly even share the accounts etc with twitch if the user wants (or even use different profiles per site that ultimately link to the same user). Sure, Twitch doesn’t really care because there’s no real competition, the business is super hard and probably still deficit even for a giant like Amazon.

      Like, it feels at times you went on twitch and the first thing you saw were barely clothed women and gambling. I don’t have a moral problem with either, but it raises questions about a site’s identity and their target audience.