Twitch: Over 7.5 million bot accounts deleted

Twitch: Over 7.5 million bot accounts deleted

Twitch

Twitch officials announced on Twitter that over 7.5 million bot accounts were recently deleted from the platform. These accounts are said to have in some cases extremely falsified the number of viewers and followers of some streamers.

And in fact, some well-known names on the platform have now suffered sharp drops in their follower numbers. The most prominent example is Felix "xQc" Lengyel, who lost over 2.5 million followers between April 11 and 14, 2021. Its total number plummeted from just under 8 million to 5.5 million. During the same period, Chance "Sodapoppin" Morris lost over 3 million followers. This means that its total value has almost been halved. In the top 50 of all Twitch streamers, xQc and Sodapoppin were hit hardest by bot deletion. There are also drops in other Twitch giants such as Shroud, Pokimane or Myth, but these are still relatively limited with losses of between 10,000 and 250,000 followers.

Recommended editorial content At this point you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. Just last week, Twitch officials introduced stricter rules for misconduct outside the platform. This means that streamers can also be banned for things that they share with their fans on YouTube, Instagram and Co. The latest figures on blocked partners were published in March. In the first three months of the year alone, Twitch had to temporarily or even permanently ban over 270 partners from the platform.




Twitch is purging 7.5 million bots that inflated view and follower counts

a close up of a clock

Twitch has discovered over 7.5 million bot accounts that have been inflating streamer stats, the Amazon-owned company tweeted. It has now started removing those accounts and warned users that 'you may see sudden decreases in your follower and viewer count over the coming days.' 


The bots were doing actions called follow-botting and view-botting, the company noted. Follow-bots can inflate a streamers follow numbers, while viewer-bots can boost the view counts. Both stats are used by Twitch to boost a channel, increasing its chances of being discovered. 


Multiple streamers saw steep drops, with Twitch's fifth most popular streamer xQc losing 2.2 million overall, dropping from around 8.1 million to 5.9 million, according to SocialBlade. Chance 'Sodapoppin' Morris saw an even steeper decline, losing 2.8 million followers — about 45 percent of his total count. Other top streamers saw far less precipitous drops, or even gains over the last week. 

a close up of a clock: The twitch logo is seen at the offices of Twitch Interactive Inc, a social video platform and gaming community owned by Amazon, in San Francisco, California, U.S., March 6, 2017. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage The twitch logo is seen at the offices of Twitch Interactive Inc, a social video platform and gaming community owned by Amazon, in San Francisco, California, U.S., March 6, 2017. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

On top of removing the bot accounts, the company said that it may also take legal action and has previously sued viewerbot sellers in order to curb fake popularity ratings. However, the company noted that 'we don't punish users who are victims of bot attacks.'