Posted in: Games, Twitch, Video Games | Tagged: Hate Raiders, racism, Twitch

Twitch Has Filed Lawsuits Against Two Hate-Raiders

Published Fri, 10 Sep 2021 22:12:10 -0500

Twitch has officially filed a lawsuit this week against two different hate-raiders, the first sign of legal action against those who practice it. The lawsuit came down yesterday and was made public today on Scribd, in which they have continuously been on the platform posting "racist, sexist, and homophobic language and content", even after those in charge tried to stop them with suspensions and bans in an attempt to prevent both of them from continuing to do so. The names of both individuals are not known as of the time we're posting this news, as they are only referred to by aliases: CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose. Both of whom are currently believed to be living in Europe. Here's a little more info from PC Gamer, who reached out to the company today about the lawsuit.

Twitch Launches A Redesign To Kick Off TwitchCon 2019 — Credit: Twitch

"Despite Twitch's best efforts, the hate raids continue," the lawsuit states. "On information and belief, Defendants created software code to conduct hate raids via automated means. And they continue to develop their software code to avoid Twitch's efforts at preventing Defendants' bots from accessing the Twitch Services."

Twitch echoed that point in a statement sent to PC Gamer, saying that the "highly motivated" hate raiders are "creating new waves of fake bot accounts designed to harass creators even as we continually update our sitewide protections against their rapidly evolving behaviors."

"While we have identified and banned thousands of accounts over the past weeks, these actors continue to work hard on creative ways to circumvent our improvements, and show no intention of stopping," a Twitch spokesperson said. "We hope this complaint will shed light on the identity of the individuals behind these attacks and the tools that they exploit, dissuade them from taking similar behaviors to other services, and help put an end to these vile attacks against members of our community."

The lawsuit comes out of the fallout from the September 1st event A Day Off Twitch in which thousands of streamers took the day off in protest of the platform, who at the time appeared to be doing nothing about the raids. Now it looks like this lawsuit will be a warning against others that they are done handling things internally and intend to seek people out wherever they may live for this behavior. The two big questions going forward is whether or not they'll be able to identify both individuals, and if more lawsuits are on the way.

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