On July 28,Twitchprovided an update in its ongoing battle against artificially-inflated viewer counts, or viewbotting, via some coding changes to the site’s bot detection systems.TwitchCEO Dan Clancy stated that the “cat and mouse game” between Twitch and viewbotting services aims to give content creators accurate numbers while minimizing the risk of legitimate users getting caught in the crossfire.
While some ofTwitch’s top content creators have broken record viewership numbers, that has not stopped the Amazon-owned service from developing countermeasures against illegitimate users. According to Twitch CEO Dan Clancy on Twitter, the streaming site recently updated some code used to detect and remove viewbots from the platform. Twitch stated that the site’s changes to detecting viewbots will roll out over the next few weeks, but warned content creators that their view counts will be impacted if they have been viewbotted before. Additionally, the changes to Twitch’s code and bot detection processes will impact third-party websites that unofficially track a channel’s viewership totals over time. Twitch acknowledged that viewbotting can sometimes be out of a streamer’s control and stated that the metrics should align with actual viewership counts.
Twitch Is Making Code Changes to Its Viewbot Detection Tools
In response, Clancy, who has come under fire forviolating Twitch’s unwritten rules against self-promotion, stated that eliminating viewbots while minimizing harm is a balancing act that needs to be maintained. Clancy added that bots used to inflate viewership can either be used for harassment or to falsely inflate a viewership count, and stated that the average concurrent viewer counts must measure people who are watching or chatting with a streamer at any point. Clancy described the fight against viewbots as “a bit of a cat and mouse game” as bots develop different ways to avoid Twitch’s detection changes.
Clancy stated that further updates to improve viewbot detection will be made over time. WithTwitch and Kick competing for both viewershipand content creators, it remains to be seen how effective the former’s viewbot countermeasures will be once fully rolled out.
Amazon
Amazon first began as an e-commerce company that provided customers with books and other media. It has since evolved into a massive company with many subsets, selling products, providing custom content through Prime Video, and even has its own video game development company.
