Twitch Lawsuit Underway Over Harassment of Queer and Black Folks

Alright fellow gamers, we’re back with more Twitch updates! The live streaming platform has announced that they’re suing multiple streamers for bigoted targeted harassment toward Black and LGBTQ Twitch streamers.

The 19-page suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It highlighted bigoted actions implemented by the accused Twitch accounts CreatineOverdose and CruzzControl. These users conducted “hate raids” in August of this year targeting Black and LGBTQ users. The marginalized content creators were being bombarded with racist and homophobic content. Slurs and other graphic depictions of violence were flooding the users streaming channel chats; this hate was being spewed by bots deployed by the defendants.

Twitch revealed that the defendants CreatineOverdose and CruzzControl “continue to promote and engage in hate raids” regardless of the efforts to ban them on the platform. The site now is seeking permanent ramifications against the two account creators. 

Twitch user CreatineOverdose has been found to be directly linked to these targeted attacks by spamming minority channels using racial slurs and violent claims in support of the KKK. And user CruzzControl allegedly has been responsible for more than 3,000 bot accounts that have been involved in the raids and openly admitted to coordinating them.

“If they are not stopped, Defendants will continue to harass and disrupt the Twitch community with hate raids,” the streaming company states.

“Hate raids” were created from a misuse of the sites raid tool. The raid tool was designed with good intentions: it allows users to send all their users to another channel as theirs is ending. This tool gives larger accounts the opportunity to support smaller content creators channels by increasing their exposure. However, the increasingly popular hate raids have now taken over to shower marginalized Twitch members streams with trolls and bots hurling hate and abuse. 

The other side of the hate raiding trend is doxxing, a dangerous phenomenon that can lead its victims to be physically assaulted, stalked, or even subjected to death threats by revealing their target’s name, phone number, and address. Swatting is the extreme form of Doxxing where harassers call in fake emergencies to SWAT teams that will be sent to the individuals home; some swatting has resulted in the users death. 

Although users feel there should be more action taken on Twitch’s end to make things safer for the community, Twitch content creators feel the lawsuit is a step in the right direction to show hate raiders there’s consequences to their bigoted actions.