JAKARTA - For months, streaming platform Twitch has lost its battle against hate attacks. Now, Twitch has filed a lawsuit against the two alleged leaders of the attack.
These attacks use an army of bots to spam chat streamers with hateful language. In fact, they often attack new users who have few followers.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Federal Court of the United States (US), mentions two defendants, namely CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose. The two are accused of being partly responsible for the hate attacks that have plagued Twitch since early August.
"CruzzControl is responsible for nearly 3,000 bot accounts linked to hate attacks. The bots developed and used by CruzzControl have been linked to numerous hate attack incidents, including those targeting black tape and LGBTQIA+ with racist, homophobic, sexist and other harassing content," Twitch said in its lawsuit as quoted from The Verge, Saturday, September 11.
“CruzzControl has admitted to using bots to flood a Twitch channel with harassing content. They have also demonstrated how bots work so that others can use similar methods to carry out hate attacks,” said a Twitch source.
Twitch has also linked CreatineOverdose directly to hate attacks. For example, on August 15, 2021, defendant CreatineOverdose used their bot software to demonstrate how it could be used to spam Twitch channels. "The spam is full of racial slurs, graphic descriptions of violence against minorities, and claims that the hate robber is KK K," the Twitch source added.
CreatineOverdose was one of the first accounts identified by a streamer as responsible for hate attacks, and there has been at least one incident in which CreatineOverdose claimed to be the perpetrator in a streamer's chat. However, the lawsuit does not identify any of the defendants beyond their Twitch usernames but says that both live in Europe.
Hate attacks have been going on on the Amazon-owned platform for a while, but incidents recently exploded out of control. In response, streamers and members of the Twitch community have created their own path to combat hate attacks, while others have criticized Twitch for not doing more or acting fast enough to protect its users.
On September 1, streamer ShineyPen hosted A Day Off Twitch, asking users not to stream or watch Twitch for a day to pay attention to the issue. Twitch responded to the call with several updates to its security features and a promise that more action would be forthcoming. This lawsuit is part of that action.
"Our team has been working around the clock to update our proactive detection system, address new behaviors as they emerge, and finalize a new proactive channel-level security tool we've been developing for months. Hate and harassment have no place on Twitch, and we know we have more work to do," said a Twitch spokesperson.
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