Last month, the popular streaming service Twitch came under attack when the stream category devoted to Valve’s turn-based strategy card game Artifact became flooded with all manner of inappropriate content, including porn, racist memes and videos, and most disturbingly, footage of the Christchurch Mosque attack which tragically occured last March.
During the attack, Twitch went to extreme measures to quell the flood of content by vehemently taking down the posts, banning the accounts associated with the posts, and disabling streaming for all new accounts for almost 48 hours.
Now, Twitch and its parent company Amazon, are going on the offensive. Twitch has recently filed a lawsuit against a hundred unnmaed defendants for violating its terms of service and causing irreparable damage to the platform, its reputation, and its community.
In the official complaint, the grounds for the lawsuit are presented:
“Twitch took down the posts and banned the offending accounts, but the offensive video streams quickly reappeared using new accounts. It appears that Defendants use automated methods to create accounts and disseminate offensive material as well as to thwart Twitch’s safety mechanisms.”
(Thanks, PC Gamer!)
Because of the attack on Artifact, thousands of Twitch users were subjected to inappropriate and downright disturbing content that caused them emotional damage, as well as reduced their use of the streaming platform. Especially with the number of youths and children that are active on Twitch, the attack violated several policies and agreements included in the Twitch ToS.
The attack on Artifact came after Valve, the game developer and company behind PC gaming platform Steam, announced that it would put the card game on the shelf for an indefinite period of time while it tried to iron out the game's many faults. The flood of inapproriate content that ensued was how some members of the gaming community expressed their backlash at the announcement, obviously causing damage not just to Valve, but also to Twitch and its community.
What do you think about Twitch’s decision to hunt down these perpetrators? Do you think the users who coordinated the flood of inappropriate content deserve to be sued? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!
