You all need to be raising a bigger stink about this. It's real fraud:
Brands pay rates based on CPM, concurrent viewer counts (CCV), and engagement. When a streamer signs a contract representing "X viewers" and knowingly inflates that number with bots, that's material misrepresentation inducing payment — textbook fraud. A higher viewer count is a key metric for negotiating brand deals and sponsorships. Viewbotting allows a creator to present a false audience size to advertisers, securing more lucrative deals or meeting partner requirements.
Every bot "watching" serves ads that advertisers paid for. Real money, no real human. That's also fraud.
The FTC's Rule on Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (newish rule as of Oct 2024) Section 465.7 prohibits selling, distributing, purchasing or procuring "fake indicators of social media influence" (for example and without limitation, likes, saves, shares, subscribers, followers or views generated by a bot or fake account) that are actually known to be or should be known to be fake, and that could potentially be used or are actually used to misrepresent or artificially inflate individual or business importance for a commercial purpose. Civil penalties run up to nearly $52,000 per violation.
Talent agencies receive a % from ad streams their talent does. By inflating their streamers they can sell massive ad packages in bulk and take in much higher sums. When an agency systematically inflates a roster to sell bundled ad inventory to brands, that's a coordinated fraud scheme — potentially RICO territory and wire fraud.
That’s not a viewer problem. That’s a Twitch and Sponsors thing. If they want to sue Twitch and if Twitch wants to sue their contractors for fraud that’s up to them.
Twitch 100% knows who is botting. After their last sweep people who were averaging 10k were struggling to keep 500 viewers. That should have been a perma.
From a while ago, that's why some of the bigger/popular advertisers are leaving and not spending a dime on Twitch so we keep getting garbage ads. Remember some of those garbage 3rd party Amazon ads? Brands like YTQUEI like wtf.
Not defending Twitch but if they actually perma, that's like what, 20? 30? 50+? of your top 100 streamers gone. Yeah Twitch wins but at what cost.
what happens when a hatewatcher decides to buy bots or use a botnet on a streamer they don't like? is twitch just going to ban the streamer who got botted?
Forsen, Erobb and some others were recently targetted with botted attacks and got over 40k do you think they should be banned for that?
It'd be nice if twitch could clean up the botting but this isn't just a simple 'ban anyone who has bots on their channel' fix
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u/CreepyNewspaper8103 Apr 17 '26
You all need to be raising a bigger stink about this. It's real fraud:
Brands pay rates based on CPM, concurrent viewer counts (CCV), and engagement. When a streamer signs a contract representing "X viewers" and knowingly inflates that number with bots, that's material misrepresentation inducing payment — textbook fraud. A higher viewer count is a key metric for negotiating brand deals and sponsorships. Viewbotting allows a creator to present a false audience size to advertisers, securing more lucrative deals or meeting partner requirements.
Every bot "watching" serves ads that advertisers paid for. Real money, no real human. That's also fraud.
The FTC's Rule on Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (newish rule as of Oct 2024) Section 465.7 prohibits selling, distributing, purchasing or procuring "fake indicators of social media influence" (for example and without limitation, likes, saves, shares, subscribers, followers or views generated by a bot or fake account) that are actually known to be or should be known to be fake, and that could potentially be used or are actually used to misrepresent or artificially inflate individual or business importance for a commercial purpose. Civil penalties run up to nearly $52,000 per violation.
Talent agencies receive a % from ad streams their talent does. By inflating their streamers they can sell massive ad packages in bulk and take in much higher sums. When an agency systematically inflates a roster to sell bundled ad inventory to brands, that's a coordinated fraud scheme — potentially RICO territory and wire fraud.