Twitch Will Take Legal Actions Against 7 Viewbots Sellers

hitmeasap Level X⁵

June 18, 2016, 2:22 pm

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Twitch Will Take Legal Actions Against 7 Viewbots Sellers

Twitch will take legal actions against 7 sellers of viewbot services. It's been known for a very long time that streamers are using viewbots to increase their amount of viewers to rank higher on Twitch. They do so to get more exposure and to get more viewers.

Today we are adding a third layer. We are taking the next step toward protecting Twitch viewers and broadcasters from the damaging effects of this kind of malicious activity by taking public legal action against seven of the most active sellers of viewbot services.

It's quite similar to fake followers on twitter or instagram and especially views on youtube videos. Would you consider to increase your viewers by doing this, if you were a streamer?

These 7 viewbots sellers. Do you feel for them or do you think Twitch are doing the right thing here?

You can find the article here:
On Artificial Viewers, Followers, and Chat Activity

Best Regards,
hitmeasap

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anwebservices

Well fair enough! I agree to their decision and it will make them better for sure because they want to know what and who is "really" popular, not who pumped they popularity with fog and dust. I guess all social media sites would need to do such actions, same as the Google is doing with their algorithms to clean out imaginary influencers and provide you with real and original details. Only difference is that Twitch will use legal actions for this cleanup. My thumbs up for Twitch for this decision.

10 years ago

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hitmeasap

I totally agree with you anwebservices. Even though at some point, I feel a bit sorry for the sellers, as they might face legal actions if they still provide these services. However, I do still believe it's the best possible option. Legal actions are often used as a "scare tactic", and hearing these kind of things from Twitch, which isn't your local neighbour who is selling cookies or lemonade at the side of the road, this might actually turn up with great results for them. I know I wouldn't risk facing legal actions for something like this.

Best Regards,
hitmeasap

10 years ago

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TommyCarey

I was just reading about this today

Twitch Will Take Legal Actions Against 7 Viewbots Sellers

I didn't get to finish reading through. Were they taking action against those streamers that were inflating their views? I guess it would be similar to websites where you can't really hurt someones rankings too much by running a negative SEO campaign on their pages. Google can't differentiate an SEO company trying to hurt you vs you doing it yourself

If I were a streamer I would know about this, but probably not do it because I would be playing video games for fun. I can see how the urge to increase your followers and views is enticing because they more you get, the more chances you'll get donations or even a sponsorhip. But the draw to this would not get me since I play video games for fun and not a paycheck.

10 years ago

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hitmeasap

They are taking legal actions against the providers of viewers but they do investigate and lock streamer accounts too, in case they can prove that the streamer have been using fake viewers to increase their viewers count. I think it's good that they're taking this seriously as streamers on twitch, like you said, are making money from donations and sponsorships. If some streamers were allowed to use viewbots to increase their viewers count, they would beat the competitors with ease.

However they do state this:

How to Deal with Being Botted
Twitch will not punish a user for the actions of another. If you are not responsible for botting, Twitch will not take action against you.

You can read more about this here:
How to Handle View/Follow-Bots

10 years ago

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idealmike

Well it was only a matter of time I guess. This happens with virtually every service at some point but we've never seen legal actions being take against those people before though. I don't understand how they are going to be able to take them to court though, I mean, they might know the persons account that is selling them but that's just an account with a username and the real persons name and address etc is never shown and to get it they would have to press that site to hand over those details and that would be against their privacy policy. Although though do appear to have their names already but how do they know those are their real names? But I guess they got those details from doing a whois on their websites. I guess they are regretting not paying a little extra for domain privacy now even though that's not 100% infallible anyway. I think the best thing those site owners can do now is immediately pull down their sites as this will show as good willing to abide by Twitch's wants when it comes to their day in court but it will be interesting to see how this pans out and what happens to them.

10 years ago

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Corzhens

I hope that news is true because it’s about time to stop the proliferation of bots in the internet I mean the bots that create fake numbers. One webmaster said that bots are like a virus that is ruining the healthy condition of the internet because it is diluting the numbers in the statistics like followers, likes, views and traffic. I guess Google should follow that cue and should also embark on a radical policy against bots.

8 years ago

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SEOClerks

Twitch Will Take Legal Actions Against 7 Viewbots Sellers

Twitch Will Take Legal Actions Against 7 Viewbots Sellers

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anwebservices

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