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Twitch booting over 7.5m bot accounts from platform

Twitch booting over 7.5m bot accounts from platform

Streaming service Twitch has discovered more than 7.5 million accounts that are bots on its platform.

In a post on Twitter, the company said that it has been keeping an eye out for these fake accounts and is taking action to remove them. These are seemingly being used to inflate follower counts and the number of views streamers are getting on Twitch and were discovered using machine learning. 

"We have been monitoring the rise of fake engagement on Twitch and have identified 7.5MM+ accounts that break our TOS by follow-botting and view-botting. We are taking action on these accounts and appreciate all of the reports about this issue," the company wrote.

"A majority of these accounts were detected through ongoing machine learning technology that will continue to improve and we will continue to operate going forward. We engage in enforcement when necessary including pursuing legal action.

"As a result of these removals, you may see sudden decreases in your follower and viewer count over the coming days."


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PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.