SAN FRANCISCO – Twitch is suing two users at a United States federal court, accusing them of orchestrating “hate raids” spewing abuse at video-game streamers who are not white or straight.
The Amazon-owned platform is seeking unspecified damages from the pair, identified in the suit as a Netherlands resident behind the account CruzzControl and a Vienna resident with the CreatineOverdose account.
About last month, CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose “began coordinating attacks on Twitch streamers by raiding their channels and spamming those communities with hate”, said the platform in the suit filed here on Thursday.
The hate-raid targets were often streamers from marginalised groups, such as racial minorities or members of the LGBTQ+ community, said the filing.
“The defendants attacked these streamers by flooding their chats with bot-powered Twitch accounts that spewed racist, sexist and homophobic language and content,” said the suit.
Bots are software programmes that can quickly and automatically fire off messages or other content.
“The defendants’ bots permitted them to spew hateful content at a robotic pace, often sending dozens of messages per minute that often outpaced the targeted streamer’s ability to moderate chat,” said Twitch in the suit.
It suspended and eventually banned the offending accounts, only to have the pair create alternates to avoid detection and resume raids.
Twitch is asking the court to make the offenders pay unspecified damages. In the filing, the company said it will amend the complaint with the culprits’ real names once it figures them out.
CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose worked in concert in what is referred to as a “hate-raiding community”, communicating on platforms such as Discord and Steam, according to the suit.
Users of Twitch, the world’s biggest video-game streaming site, staged a virtual walkout last week to voice outrage over barrages of racist, sexist and homophobic abuse on the platform.
In recent months, the phenomenon of hate raids – torrents of abuse – has made life increasingly unpleasant for Twitch’s minority users.
The platform maintains that it is working to improve tools to protect accounts from abuses.
The Twitter hashtag #TwitchDoBetter 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 from running amok – all while taking 50% of streamers’ earnings. – AFP, September 11, 2021
