Twitch announced Friday that it is “actively reviewing reports,” “suspending,” and “investigating” taking legal action against those who participated in last week’s hate raids, in the latest chapter in the platform’s battle to protect marginalized streamers from hate raids.
Hate raids have long been a major issue on the platform, as evidenced by the #ADayOffTwitch broadcast boycott, which was spearheaded by smaller creators in an effort to spark change and inspire solidarity last September.
The latest wave of “bad actors” bombarding women’s and LGBTQ+ Twitch streamers’ social channels with hateful, homophobic messages appears to be the result of plans orchestrated on a different website entirely — Cozy.tv, a streaming platform recently co-founded by American far-right and white nationalist political commentator Nick Fuentes.
Twitch streamer EarthToBre and xProvexx were among the first to report that the hate raids were being carried out by Cozy.tv, with Fuentes claiming responsibility for the attacks in a video.
Fuentes has been banned from most popular social media platforms, including Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and DLive, a site known for hosting alt-right and conspiracy theorists, for quite some time.
Twitch went on to say in their statement that streamers can enable some “big impact” settings to help prevent hate raids, such as turning up AutoMod to L3 and enabling Followers-Only and Slow Mode, as well as enabling email and phone verification and only allowing Raids from friends.
A long-term solution from Twitch that doesn’t hinder engagement and analytics remains highly desired, as seen in the past with content creators taking it upon themselves to help others encountering the issue on the platform.
