Hate raids have been an ongoing issue for Twitch in the past few weeks. Creators have called out Twitch for not doing enough to protect marginalized streamers from hate raids. Now, Twitch is taking legal action against two streamers. These streamers are said to be a prominent force behind hate raids: CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose.
The suit claims CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose have orchestrated many hate raids targeting marginalized streamers. According to Twitch, they attack streamers by “flooding” their chats with bots that write out racist, sexist, and homophobic language and content. While raids vary in size, some can reach over a thousand bot accounts. The only way for streamers to get them out of their chat is to ban all of the accounts manually. With some raids being in the thousands, it’s a highly tedious process.
Twitch’s action against the two streamers
Twitch at first suspended CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose, but eventually, the platform decided to ban them permanently. However, both streamers continued streaming on the platform by using a new, alternative Twitch account. They continued to send hate raids on their new accounts.
Now, Twitch hopes the case against the two streamers will lead to a permanent ban for CruzzControl, CreatineOverdoes and their coconspirators from using the platform ever again. They also want the streamers to pay an unknown amount to compensate for the damages they caused and for “reasonable” attorneys’ fees.
In an interview with Polygon, Twitch said that removing these two streamers from the platform will “put an end to these vile attacks against members of our community.” However, this leaves us wondering how the platform will ensure these two streamers will be unable to use the platform again. The most likely option is for the company to build up its internal technology to catch accounts operated by banned streamers. Additionally, hate raids are a platform-wide problem; removing a few bad actors won’t solve it. We will still have to see more from Twitch to ensure hate raids are gone for good.