The bots have been caught.
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Bots are a known issue for Twitch, Amazon’s video game streaming platform. Improved machine learning has found millions of these accounts, and they’re now being dealt with, which could affect some streamers’ stats.
Twitch discovered 7.5 million bots that were follow-botting or view-botting, the company tweeted Wednesday. Follow-bots are used to improve a streamer’s follow numbers while viewer-bots inflate the current number of viewers watching a stream, which can help boost a channel’s discovery chances on the platform. Twitch says it will enforce its terms of service on these bot accounts, including taking legal action if necessary, which may lower a channel’s follower and viewer counts in the coming days.
🛡️ We have been monitoring the rise of fake engagement on Twitch and have identified 7.5MM+ accounts that break our TOS by follow-botting and view-botting. We are taking action on these accounts and appreciate all of the reports about this issue.
— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) April 14, 2021
Machine learning helped sniff out these bots, and Twitch says it will improve operations going forward. While some streamers looking to boost their numbers may purchase these viewer- and follower-bots in the lesser-known places on the internet, there are users who use these bots to troll certain channels. A stream could find their chat flooded with spam by the bots and this could lead to other issues if the channel gets reported for a TOS violation.
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