Troll Patrol: How Amazon’s Twitch Is Protecting Its LGBT Community
With an aggressive mix of filters, moderators, and lawyers, Twitch is trying to keep the Internet’s horde of harassers at bay.
Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
On May 25, Twitch, the livestreaming service owned by Amazon.com, came under attack. A band of anonymous trolls began flooding the service with pornography, copyrighted movies, violent videos, misogynistic programming, and racist content. In response, Twitch did something unusual for a major social media platform during an era in which online harassment often goes unchecked for long periods of time. Twitch took immediate and decisive action to protect its community.
For the next two days, as it grappled with the attackers, Twitch prevented all new users from streaming. It imposed two-factor authentication for certain accounts. And it filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking damages for trademark infringement, breach of contract, and fraud from the anonymous assailants.