Twitch came under heavy fire this weekend when streamer Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins called out the company for using his dead channel to promote porn. The company has had a very negative spotlight on them for quite some time when the TOS has failed to apply to high profile partners despite on-camera animal abuse, public bathroom videography in the present of a minor, and much more. Apparently, the company also has no issue using Ninja’s old channel to promote, something that he himself had no issue with until Twitch used his dead url to promote porn. Given that his user base is primarily children, the streamer took to Twitter to call Twitch out and now the platform’s CEO has responded.
Disgusted and so sorry. pic.twitter.com/gnUY5Kp52E
— Ninja (@Ninja) August 11, 2019
In the video above, you can see that Ninja feels that despite his 8 years of streaming, his dormant channel was greedily used for promotion. If it were just for smaller streamers, there would have been no issue, but since the latest breach centered around a well-known porn account, the call-out ensued.
In his own Twitter post, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear issued his apology and statement on the now-viral video: “Our community comes to Twitch looking for live content,” Shears mentioned in his latest Twitter post. “To help ensure they find great, live channels we’ve been experimenting with showing recommended content across Twitch, including on streamer’s pages that are offline.”
He added, “This helps all streamers as it creates new community connections. However, the lewd content that appeared on the @ninja offline channel page grossly violates our terms of service, and we’ve permanently suspended the account in question.
“On a more personal note, I apologize want to apologize directly to @ninja that this happened. It wasn’t our intent, but it should not have happened. No excuses.”