#ADayOffTwitch
Yesterday was the day of the hashtag #ADayOffTwitch to protest against the – in the opinion of the fans – lack of actions of the platform against “hate raids”. These are organized attacks in which channels from marginalized Twitch streamers are flooded with insults and insults.
Audience numbers
Twitch is still very active today despite the protests and many streamers are online, but the action still seems to be having an impact. According to TwitchTracker, concurrent viewers peaked at around 3.5 million yesterday afternoon, down from 1 million concurrent viewers from the previous day.
It’s the only day in the past week that it didn’t break the 4 million simultaneous viewer mark at this point. The graph only goes back a week, but the number is undeniably lower than the numbers seen in the Concurrent Viewers graph for the entire year at the bottom of the page.
Part of this success for the strike faction is undoubtedly due to the participation of streamers like Kaceytron and HasanAbi, who together have more than 2 million followers. Both expressed their support for the action and did not stream today. RekItRaven, who got the ball rolling with the hashtag #TwitchDoBetter, said on Twitter that the day felt “cathartic”.
Twitch itself has already responded indirectly, releasing a new page on “Combating Targeted Attacks,” including advice on how to avoid them and what action to take if they do.
The platform writes: “We support the right of our streamers to speak up and raise awareness of important issues in our service. No one should face malicious and hateful attacks based on who they are or what they stand for, and we’re working hard on improved channel-level bans detection and additional improvements to accounts to make Twitch a safer place for creators to use.”