How much power Should users influence how technology companies govern their platforms? This week, prominent users of Twitch and Reddit separately coordinated two platform shake-up actions with the goal of making the digital spaces in which they work and play safer. In the latter case, at least, it seems that they have already seen results.
On Twitch, top streamers went on strike under the #ADayOffTwitch banner on Wednesday to push the company to end a wave of harassment against marginalized streamers. Meanwhile, on Reddit, moderators made dozens of subreddits private to protest the company’s policies around Covid’s misinformation. Speaking with WIRED, organizers are cautiously optimistic that their actions will help stimulate change.
“Maybe I’m a dreamer,” says Raven, the Twitch streamer. “I think we need to normalize being able to really make changes for ourselves.”
Raven, who runs RekItRaven on Twitch, helped lead Wednesday’s #ADayOffTwitch initiative in response to an epidemic of harassment on the platform known as hate raids, a huge, often-coordinated bot attack that floods chats. serpentine text with fanatical vitriol. Over the past month, trolls and their robots have regularly entered Raven’s Twitch channel and filled the chat with derogatory language, including messages such as “This channel now belongs to the KKK.” Harassers have also directed and posted the addresses and personal information of black streamers, prompting notification of detection incidents. While hate incursions have been a perennial problem on Twitch, the problem has increased dramatically over the past month.
Last month Raven released the hashtag #TwitchDoBetter to pressure Twitch to keep bot accounts from harassing them. Shortly afterwards, Twitch acknowledged the problem, piulant on August 11 that “we know we need to do more to solve these problems.” The company added that they were able to “identify a vulnerability” in its filtering system and released an update to more fully identify hate speech. However, incursions of hatred spread.
Raven is exhausted but feels in her heart that it is unfair for them or any other marginalized streamer to have to choose between doing what they love and their mental health. And for people whose livelihoods depend in part on transmission, hate raids can also affect income. Tanya DePass, a Twitch transmitter that goes through CypherOfTyr, has limited its transmission from two to four days a week to just one or two. She asks, “What job can account for 50% of your earnings and it literally does nothing to protect you other than going there? Here are these tools that we now see how robot creators and attackers can easily navigate? ”(Twitch means a 50% reduction in subscription revenue from partner streamers. The breakdown of the revenue division for donations to the platform is less clear.)
#ADayOffTwitch called on streamers to step away from the platform to raise awareness about the hate raid epidemic. More than 10,000 live broadcast transmitters were broadcast live on Wednesday afternoon compared to the same time in recent days, according to TwitchTracker data. Raven says his goal is partially met: “People talk about it all over the world. We have created a sense of solidarity. Twitch has responded and met with me. “
In a statement to WIRED, a Twitch spokesman said the company supports “streamers’ rights to express themselves and draw attention to important issues of our service … We are working hard to improve evasion detection Channel – level ban and additional account enhancements to help make Change a safer place for creators “.
On Reddit, users frustrated with the company’s policies also get what they asked for. Last week, moderators of dozens of subreddits, some of them with millions of subscribers, coordinated a shutdown to protest the platform’s admission to Covid’s misinformation. They changed their subreddits to private messages and posted messages accusing Reddit of not implementing anti-misinformation policies. Some demanded that Reddit remove communities dealing with false information about Covid prevention and vaccination. These communities have also been known to cause other subreddits, i.e. members would jump to other subreddits and spread them with falsehoods about the antiparasitic drug ivermectin or the effectiveness of vaccines. (Reddit says that / r / NoNewNormal, a big skeptic subreddit of scientifically proven Covid treatments, instigated about 80 of these brigades for 30 days).