• Twitch’s new anti-bot system caused viewer counts to nosedive across hundreds of channels, with some losing over half their displayed audience.
  • Channels running 24/7 reruns saw the biggest drops, with Mira falling from 2,000+ to under 200 viewers overnight.
  • The cleanup affects sponsorship deals and ad rates since brands have been paying premium prices for audiences that were partially fake.
  • yucandu@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Bots aren’t really good for Twitch as a network.

    But investors don’t look at “quality of network” they look at number of users.

    • blackfire@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      What investors they are owned by amazon and with the discounted rate I’m sure twitch gets its literally sucking money from them. Ad nets don’t want to pay for fake views so this is in twitches long term interest to do this.

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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      9 days ago

      Yeah, but you need decent “quality of network” to grow the number of actually-existing users. New users are gonna see the softcore streams and think they signed up to the wrong kind of streaming webpage.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      They have to if they want to make profitable investment.

      I know “turning a profit” hasn’t been fashionable of late (which is why these phoney baloney bot populations have been tolerated for so long). But we’re running out of free money to throw around for anyone outside the MAG7.

      Could be that purging the fake accounts is something their investors are demanding. Idk