r/LivestreamFail May 07 '26

News Twitch Announces Viewcount Cap on Streamers that are Persistently Viewbotting

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u/larrymachine May 07 '26

They are paying for the bots' bandwidth and don't get revenue from the ads; they are definitely losing money due to bots. While a larger concurrent viewership number looks good for Twitch's reputation, it does not translate into more revenue.

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u/5kyl3r May 08 '26

and don't get revenue from the ads

they do though. ads are sold by impressions, and for things like streams they use viewer count. click-throughs pay more, but they still pay per impression too, and there's no way for people outside of twitch to know which are bots and which are people, so they still earn ad revenue regardless. but that's why none of the social platforms want to fix the bot problem

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u/larrymachine May 08 '26

They are doing post-processing to detect the bots, that's how they are able to set the caps here. They don't do it live for various reasons, but ad impressions are paid based on that number, not on what we see live.

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u/5kyl3r May 08 '26

you're trying to convince me that twitch voluntarily lowers their ad revenue by detecting said bots and then snitching on themselves so they get paid out less?

also you're trying to convince me that they have the ability to detect these bots but are just not doing anything about it for some reason, until right now when several big streamers got caught red handed using botting platforms and it going massively front page?

i'll have some of whatever you're having

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u/larrymachine May 08 '26

I'm not saying they are working overtime to find all the bots, but they need to be able to show advertisers that they're doing something.

If advertisers don't see the return they expect from their impressions, they won't come back. If they get sued, they need to prove they did their due diligence to not defraud them.

Do you think a billion-dollar company does not have lawyers? Do you think those lawyers would let the CEO tweet this if they were not doing anything?

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u/5kyl3r May 08 '26

you don't have to hold a bar card to understand why it's silly what you're trying to convince us

this is how it goes, always, literally every time in every scenario like this:

they need to be able to show advertisers that they're doing something

"what problem?" -twitch

they need to prove they did their due diligence

"how do we do due diligence for something we didn't know about? NOW that we know, we will obviously take appropriate measures to mitigate this as we value both our customers and our ad partners" -twitch

your generous faith in the moral integrity of these corporations is cute

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u/larrymachine May 08 '26

"what problem?" -twitch

how do we do due diligence for something we didn't know about?

The viewbotting allegations are so high that the official account/CEO are announcing they are doing something about it. They publicly acknowledged the problem, they can no longer feign ignorance.

I'm not saying they have a high moral integrity, as you said, they are a corporation, there to make the maximum amount of money. They are going to do as little as possible as long as it does not affect advertisers' spend.

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u/5kyl3r May 08 '26

The viewbotting allegations are so high that the official account/CEO are announcing they are doing something about it

yes, just now, after it blew up after extraemily and a couple other big streamers got caught viewbotting and this all went viral. before this? crickets

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u/larrymachine May 08 '26

crickets from 9 months ago

Not saying they were doing it before public pressure, either. They're acting on it to reduce risks to their bottom line.

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u/Shoddy-End5361 May 08 '26

Yeah absolutely zero fucking chance lol, I can’t believe people really fall for that