Sentenza
Member
Another shitstorm brewing for Twitch.
I'm learning just now that they apparently allow minors as young as 8-9 years old to stream, either by not putting severe restrictions in their terms of service or by not enforcing them properly.
As a direct consequence, a bunch of pedophiles are gathering around these children on a regular basis.
Bloomberg has a disturbing reportage on the topic, going as far as listing some fairly creepy episodes as examples:
Reddit summary of article:
An example among many:
Good luck defending this creepy shit, Bezos.
I'm learning just now that they apparently allow minors as young as 8-9 years old to stream, either by not putting severe restrictions in their terms of service or by not enforcing them properly.
As a direct consequence, a bunch of pedophiles are gathering around these children on a regular basis.
Bloomberg has a disturbing reportage on the topic, going as far as listing some fairly creepy episodes as examples:
Reddit summary of article:
"Every day — On Amazon's Twitch measurably hundreds of new preteens live-broadcast themselves. Every hour — networks of child predators meticulously identify, index, and follow them.
Through the website's live-chat feature, they push them towards broadcasted gestures, off-platform communication and disclosing/filming their home.
They manipulate, they threaten, they coerce, they blackmail broadcasting children as young as 8 years old.
Varying degrees of the above scenarios measurably take place each and every hour.
Unlike its competitors — YouTube-Live, TikTok-Live, Facebook-Gaming who've industry standard policy/systems to prevent this — Amazon's Twitch, in pursuit of maximizing platform growth, has opted to forgo these vital safety measure :
Employing a minimum follower/subscriber account to live-stream from (this is crucial) mobile devices, a policy specifically conceived to filter malicious entities and preteens going live on their phone.
Unlike YouTube, on Twitch anyone can create a brand new account (often completely skipping e-mail/phone verification) and start streaming immediately. Children do so hourly.
Further, Amazon's Twitch has a severely underdeveloped Trust & Safety department which has not scaled in proportion with the website's pandemic growth.— Through its triage system, (despite official proclamations) it demonstrably prioritizes mass reports, not individual ones; Not even scanning for urgent key-terms such as "preteen/child/grooming". Consequently, it is the overwhelming case for on-site reports indicating broadcasting preteens to insufficiently get addressed.
Thus, the grooming/predation does take place over days/weeks with no on-platform way of drawing attention to it."
An example among many:
Even in the many instances when Twitch has eliminated inappropriate content or suspended clearly underage users, it's easy enough to create a new account. When one viewer "dared" a child to pull down her pants during a livestream in late May, the child responded that she wouldn't do so because she had already had one of her three accounts suspended. The viewer, who followed primarily young girls on Twitch, replied in the chat: "u can always make a new account easy." Later in the broadcast, she pulled her shirt up.
Good luck defending this creepy shit, Bezos.