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Twitch Sues Two Alleged Hate Raiders

Hate raids are an ongoing problem on the streaming platform, and Twitch is now taking legal action.

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Taking the legal route against hate speech on the platform, Twitch is suing two individuals who have allegedly participated in creating and facilitating hate raids against multiple creators.

Twitch has always suffered from toxic chats--namely, comments that attack marginalized creators based on their race, gender, or sexuality--but recently, such activity intensified into "hate raids." Perpetrators of hate raids often use bots to overwhelm the chat with harmful language, usually at a rate that exceeds the streamers' ability to moderate the chat.

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Twitch acknowledged the hate raid problem--in conjunction with campaigns by Twitch streamers that asked for the company to do more about hate raids--and promised that it was looking for solutions. Now in a lawsuit filed on September 9, Twitch named Cruzzcontrol and Creatineoverdose as two individuals who created bots and launched multiple hate raids against racial minorities and LGBTQ+ community members.

The company claimed it "took swift action against Defendants by suspending and eventually permanently banning Defendants’ known Twitch accounts." The two individuals, however, continued to make new accounts and altered their "hate raid code" in order to avoid detection and suspension.

The lawsuit, then, is an attempt to put a firm end to the defendants' participation and creation of hate raids. Twitch believes Cruzzcontrol resides in the Netherlands and Creatineoverdose currently lives in Austria. The real names of both individuals is currently unknown.

Twitch streamers have been dissatisfied with the platform's seemingly slow response to the influx of hate raids. On September 1, Twitch streamers appealed to the platform for solutions and organized a day-long Twitch boycott called #ADayoffTwitch in order to pressure the company to do more about the influx of hate raids. The campaign was a follow-up to #TwitchDoBetter, one that also called for Twitch to offer tools for marginalized creators to defend against hate speech bombardment. Twitch responded to the campaigns on Twitter and promised that it was actively looking to prevent hate raids by "updating sitewide banned words filter" and continual removal of identified bots.

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phattsao

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What's even the crime here? Their "terms of service" don't mean anything in the outside world.

This seems like an internal Twitch moderation problem, not a legal one.

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Swampthing

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@phattsao: There doesn’t have to be a crime for a civil lawsuit. People here keep getting this confused over and over again. Criminal law and civil law are two different things. All the civil lawsuit does is compensate for damages. You could even be acquitted of all crimes, and still be successfully sued.

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sippio

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@Swampthing: I always tell people to understand the Difference remember OJ Simpson.. He was Acquitted of criminal murder charges but lost everythig when founf guilty in the civil lawsuit by the Goldman family.. H elost his Heisman,,What few assets he had left after his lawyer dream team. WHich was also the most expensive legal team assembled at the time..

**As far as Twitch goes= this is a desperate publicity stunt to scare people into stop bothering streamers they find offensive..

And everyone finds different types offensive.. I find Madden Ultimjate Team card pack openers offensive cause they aren't using their own RL money for the cards and even if they are it's promoting a garbage mechanic tht ruined Madden & all EA sports games bakc in 2013 or 2014 when it started...

Funny how they call it 'Hate Speech" when it's nothing mor ethen not aggreing or someone talking smack.. Nobody over 30 believes this nonsense. And those that do are pretending for probably weird personal or political reasons. Just like anyone believing we accidentally left 100 million in military gear behind for Goat Farmers to inherit.. Today someone agrees with the reason to lose free speech cause maybe they agree witht he reasons but these companies could care less if a streamer has hurt feelings or is stream sniped. My god the arrogance that a streamer will live stream and complain if someone uses it against em..

Solution= dont live stream or dont complain.

I like the option where they go away forever.

TLDR~ The sickening OJ legal team knew he was guilty and didn't care & falsly painted everyone else as evil..

F.Lee Baily,,Johnny Cochran, and of course the biggest slimebag of em all Kardashian! Ironic and disgusting the way the OJ docuseries painted Kardashian as only learning at the end that OJ was guilty and stoppe dbeing friends with him..I remember my sister and her husband making everyone watch it to see what a fake fraud he was and how his powerful family changed the truth that they ALL knew he was guilty and represented him anyways and actually won..

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Starry_Notion

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I think this downplays the severity of the problem, when you think all these raids consist of bots + person/people controlling them. There are actual discord servers where trolls congregate waiting for their "raid leader" to give out a link to a stream. You get hundreds, if not thousands, of actual people reveling in the fun and excitement of raiding with likeminded trolls..

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jenovaschilld

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Edited By jenovaschilld

I would hope there could be a better response then that, like give twitch streamers and moderators better tools, and Twitch itself to make changes stopping, these kind of raids. If a platform cannot control bots in there social app, where a large primary users are minors, then this social media company needs to have some major changes. Maybe broken up.

These hate groups are a tiniest % of the population, but a lazy company only enables there need to be noticed behind the safety of their keyboards.

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Thanatos2k

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Edited By Thanatos2k

@jenovaschilld: It's pretty simple. The streamers are not the customers of Twitch. Streamers are the PRODUCT. The people in chat are the customers. They're going to do the bare minimum to those people, because losing customers means losing money. Lose streamers, and the customers just watch a different one.

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Blk_Mage_Ctype

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Edited By Blk_Mage_Ctype

Unfortunately, this is just more faux-progressive posturing and Virtue Signaling from Twitch which won't actually go anywhere because it simply cannot go anywhere. Seriously, even if they could file lawsuits against two people in Europe who are most likely minors, what court is going to rule in their favor when it ultimately comes down to Twitch failing to properly police their own website?

Factually speaking, Twitch has had Hate Raiders since day one, and has done little to stop them. Heck, some users have effectively been driven off Twitch due to the sheer amount of bullying, threats, or just plain toxicity they've been exposed to. Heck, some Twitch Streamers have been punished by Twitch for fraudulent reports by haters against their channels, simply because Twitch took the easy way out and axed the victim rather than actually investigate the fraudulent reports and take the appropriate action against the haters.

Twitch only pretends to care now because it involves "marginalized streamers" whom they can use as a means to push themselves as Social Justice Warriors who are fighting to protect all of the mistreated acronyms.

If Twitch really cared, then they'd hire more moderators, add more tools to allow content creators easier methods of moderating their stream chats, and start MAC Banning offenders so that they couldn't just start new accounts and get right back to harassing users. This is just a disingenuous publicity stunt which will go nowhere.

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SbargoVox3

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Edited By SbargoVox3

@Blk_Mage_Ctype: "Virtue signaling!" cry those who cannot fathom that there are people who support the oppressed, abused, or othered without it directly benefitting them. Selflessness is beyond them.

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faithxvoid

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@sbargovox3: Gee whiz, guys! How do you have time to play video games when you're so busy being heroes!

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Marikhen

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@sbargovox3: So then how is it now, only when Twitch's problems with "hate raids" have hit some of the more mainstream distributors of news on these subjects, that Twitch publicly and vociferously has "people who support the oppressed, abused, or othered without it directly benefitting them?"

From what little I've seen Twitch's responses to date have apparently been more along the lines of Apathy's demotivational poster, "If we don't respond maybe they'll stop calling" than they have been along the lines of a reasonable, responsible, ethical, and moral response to the situation.

I could easily be mistaken, but in the current world environment it is not only much harder to naturally believe that companies have our best interests at heart, it's also significantly harder to prove that they actually do have our best interests at heart than it is to prove that they're ambivalent at best and maliciously predatory at worst.

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SbargoVox3

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@Marikhen: While being absolutely skeptical of companies' motivations is very healthy, in this case, consider the alternative: Twitch continuing to do nothing and leaving it to creators to attempt to vainly moderate the flood, would essentially assent that the concept of a hate raid, whether bot assisted or not, is a part of the engagement. It would go from being a thing that unfortunately happens to, I don't know, "yeah so what, deal with it snowflake" that people who still use "virtue signaling" as a criticism against anything social justice adjacent seem to want the internet to be.

The gain is a net positive however, regardless of what Twitch's motives are. Outright suing hate raiders sets a strong deterrent (if the case goes anywhere) and makes Twitch, and indeed the wider online community, just that bit better a place to be for everyone

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sippio

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@sbargovox3: a hater free internet isn't a better internet for everybody. I for one would have my gaming roots no other way then what it is/was.. And Halo2,Battlefields,Cods,CS etc where 12 years olds scream anything & everything wasn't a bad experience that should be eliminated. it was annoying= absolutely lol. but i knew going into it what it would be..

*I also find the annoying /cringe mushmouf rap i hear on GTA servers as worse. EVERYONE HAS A MUTE BUTTON!!!!!

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SbargoVox3

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@sippio: The problem is when those 12 year olds grow up into 22 year olds, then to 32 year olds and so on, and still behave like that. To them, that is what communication online is, that it's normal to use every slur under the sun all the time at everyone. Not all of them, of course, there are those who grow out of it, but I'd hope they also realize that we should get past the Xbox Live stuff as a whole and not just shrug and say it's an integral part to online gaming. And yes, mute buttons and even being able to toggle text chat off is great, but it's a shame you want to do that by default for every game because of shitheads.

But comparing toxic voice or text chat behaviour to organized efforts to harass streamers on a large scale, especially already marginalized ones is comparing apples to oranges.

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Thanatos2k

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@Blk_Mage_Ctype: As long as they let new accounts be able to post chat messages immediately and without limit, they will always have a problem. Just like Twitter does.

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dragonsama

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While these are 2 vile people I don't think Suing them is the answer nor is it legal.

Instead Twitch should just hardware MAC ban them. That usually takes care of the issue.

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sippio

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@dragonsama: Wont work.. take 1 down and 20 replace him.

humanity= when someone sees a weakness it is exploited.

*Has anyone wondered why they were being targeted in 1st place?

i dunno, i have assummptions but dont know official..

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Swampthing

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@dragonsama: You can sue anyone for anything. The judge is the one who determines whether it has validity or not. Legality has absolutely nothing to do with civil trials.

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deth420

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@dragonsama: No, I think they should hire local thugs. send them over to their houses and smash their hands. hard to send hate ware when you cant type.

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Darkflare_EX

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@dragonsama: I think you can sue anybody for whatever, it's just that no judge or lawyer will ever take a case for really stupid ones.

The lawsuit is about sending a message. Better be prepared to be in court if you want to be a scumbag.

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deactivated-64efdf49333c4

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@Darkflare_EX: Not much of a message, though. You can't really sue a non-existent entity based on a screen name, and I imagine you can't really demand a person's private info unless it's a criminal matter, and you certainly can't do that outside your jurisdiction.

They're basically saying "We're going to sue you...you...whoever you are! So, uh, don't come back!". They're about as threatening as an old man waving his cane at a bunch of fleeing teens who egged his house.

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Swampthing

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@Barighm: Except they are not non-existing entities. They are actual people. It’s just a matter of finding the correct real name to associate with that identity.

It’s not actually as hard as you think it is. Particularly when they have total access to the IP addresses and other data in the accounts.

Scum like this isn’t smart enough to stay completely hidden. They are usually easy to find because they love bragging about what they do.

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sippio

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@Swampthing: Dudes point wasn't just they are nameless as in a screename but also that Twitch doesn't have the right to release any private info. The bag of worms that would open.. If they are bragging in RL then that's different..

But today you agree with the reasons what about next time when you disagree with them? Don't assume Twitch cares about it's cutomers and that's the reasoning.

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deactivated-64efdf49333c4

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@Swampthing: You missed the point. You can't levy a lawsuit unto a blank name card. And, no, you don't have the right to dig up someone's name and personal informationunless actual laws are broken. That's like me sneaking into my downstairs tenant's apartment looking for evidence he shit on my lawn just because I THINK he did it. Doesn't matter that he's living in my house and I have the key to his apartment. It's still illegal. And again, you can't sue people in other countries. You have to file a suit in their courts.

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Swampthing

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Edited By Swampthing

@Barighm: You obviously don’t know the difference between civil and criminal law. No one goes to jail from a civil suit, they are assessed monetary damages. And you don’t need evidence of criminal laws being broken either.

Look up O.J. Simpson, you might actually learn something about how the law works. You can be acquitted of all criminal charges, but still be successfully sued in a civil trial.

And a private business has every right in the world to surface information on people who are causing monetary loss from twitch streamers and committing hate crimes on their service. They have the every right to gather evidence, and they have the right to proceed.

Next time do a little research before posting such an ignorant response. You clearly don’t know anything about law.

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DJK9

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@Swampthing: Wow, OJ Simpson. Great example of a "successful" civil suit.

Almost a quarter of a century has passed since and OJ has paid approximately 0.18% of his judgement.

Meanwhile OJ still lives a rather charmed life, spending most of his time traveling and golfing.

But, no, please, tell us more about how Twitch is going to successfully sue two likely minors in two different countries in Europe for being mean to people online.

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Swampthing

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Edited By Swampthing

@djk9: Wow, you’re really on a high horse. OJ is an example of the difference between criminal law and civil law. WHOOOOSH it went way over your head. Stop trying to impress everyone when you can’t even understand the context.

Hmmm… You seem to know a lot about these twitch people. Nobody said they were minors in European countries, only you.

Please tell us what else you’re hiding about them. We would all love to know more. We’ll wait…

FLAGGING.

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sippio

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@Swampthing: 'Flagging' lol

would this be the 1st time a civil suit would happen for breaking TOS? and for posting disagreeing comments to the host?

What is the reason for the civil suit? WHat was the harm?

(im asking?) is it time is money and time was wasted dealing with?

or everyones favorite = all space should be a safe space.

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WarGreymon77

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Immaturity never ceases to amaze me.

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