Twitch reveals plan to combat hate raids after the decimating impact of #ADayOffTwitch movement

Twitch streamers often find themselves in trouble due to the actions of their viewers. This includes people using bots to up streamers' follower counts suspiciously so that the streamer gets banned for some time.

However, the Amazon-owned platform has seen a recent surge in the number of 'hate-raids' spewed on Twitch.

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What triggered Twitch streamers to partake in #ADayOffTwitch?

Hate raids essentially consist of viewers attacking streamers on their livestreams, spamming their comments with rude and derogatory comments regarding them or their content.

In the case of the recent surge of hate raids, the most common victims of this trend are streamers who are people of color and/or members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Their chats were spammed with disgusting messages and slurs, which pissed off many streamers.

I was only live for 5 mins and 38 secs #hateraid #TwitchDoBetter #followbotted #twitch pic.twitter.com/umjnj7Bdis

— xSageKin | #BLM #Twitch (@SageKin_) August 28, 2021

However, what annoyed people more was Twitch's inaction regarding the issue. After being called upon by many streamers, Twitch gave a rather bleak response to the issue of hate raids.

We’ve seen a lot of conversation about botting, hate raids, and other forms of harassment targeting marginalized creators. You’re asking us to do better, and we know we need to do more to address these issues. That includes an open and ongoing dialogue about creator safety.

— Twitch (@Twitch) August 11, 2021

However, the response did not seem fit to the severity of the issue to many streamers. This triggered the #ADayOffTwitch movement, where streamers would remain inactive on their channels on the platform on September 1.

Many big streamers participated in this movement, and #ADayOffTwitch became one of the most trending tags on Twitter.

In support of #ADayOffTwitch and those who have been affected by the recent hate raids, I will not be streaming today. It’s unacceptable to see this kind of hate because everyone deserves to feel safe on this platform. pic.twitter.com/w6KvmcjlCO

— Timmy (@iiTzTimmy) September 2, 2021

Taking #ADayOffTwitch today to stand up for myself, my community, and all marginalized creators who are subject to hate raids/harassment on Twitch. We deserve better; I don’t think it’s asking too much for me to stream w/o my chat being spammed with every iteration of the n word.

— Sydney🔮 (@Sydeon) September 1, 2021

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The movement brought forward a concrete plan from Twitch

The #ADayOffTwitch movement garnered a decimating response from the community, and the platform allegedly saw only approximately 5000 streamers live that day, which is minuscule compared to the vast number of streamers who stream on the platform daily.

Naturally, this evoked a prompt response from the purple platform, and this time, the response seems slightly more concrete.

Twitch shared a page where the platform listed its plan of action regarding hate raids.

Twitch's plan to combat hate-raids (Image via Twitch.tv)

The platform acknowledged that these methods are by no means a solid plan of action and simply a temporary resort while it is working on a concrete tool to combat hate-raids.

Twitch announced:

We are continuing to build new features to prevent the harm caused by malicious spam, botting, and raiding, but in the meantime we wanted to highlight the tools that are currently available to help combat this kind of behavior.

The #ADayOffTwitch movement clearly got the expected result, as the platform has finally acknowledged the issue seriously and announced a solid plan of action to combat the issue of hate-raids.