Ah, Twitch, the Amazon owned streaming gaming service that seems to constantly come under fire. This time, it’s for “accidentally” promoting porn and porn games. The quotes are a bit unnecessary as it does seem the issue stemmed from mishap. But we love quotes around here, they convey dramas, so we rolled with them.
Twitch launched what is known as “Boost Train” back in the Fall of 2021. This advertising platform allows Twitch streamers to pay to promote their streams. This helps streamers grow audiences, which in turn can help the streamer create revenue. Pretty simple stuff.
But promoting Twitch channels took a bad turn when some nefarious characters began using the ad platform to promote porn. Part of this was due to a change in the way the ad platform allowed advertisers to enroll and leverage the system.
When Twitch shifted things to a pay to play style model, shtf.
The ads show up as “Live channels we think you’ll like” on the Twitch interface. Its a very social experience we liken to organic recommendations.
It did not take long for bad actors or people just trying to create dramas to start infussing the ads with porno.
This promoted twitch channel reward thing was a great idea pic.twitter.com/ujr5K27xQo
— Bowie (@bowieTCG) March 31, 2022
Bruh, come on! That’s just not right.
Some streamer journalists believe that the porn plays might have been users protesting the change to boosting streams. In other words, some folks are against Twitch allowing these advertisements in the first place.
Looks like determined trolls are literally paying for accounts with access to the Boost Train… and then literally creating hype trains to get porn onto the front page.
Image via https://t.co/TKbR7jMQRK pic.twitter.com/IPHyMMD4c9
— Zach Bussey (@zachbussey) March 31, 2022
You can’t make people happy no matter what you do. And people will protests just about anything. Clearly, Twitch needs to create revenue in order to allow gamer streaming services. That’s a boatload of bandwidth happening on a per second basis.
Some people feel the Boost Trains program is a failed effort anyways. Many gamers say they aren’t gaining that many new followers anyways.
“[But Boost Trains were] deeply unpopular with the community,” Bussey told Kotaku. “It should’ve never been released. Monetizing front page discovery for a service that struggles to offer any discovery is a recipe for disaster — and so here we are.”
At least our porn games are free to play and we don’t recommend any pages. But maybe we should, now that I think about it. But hey, adult content is allowed on our site unlike Twitch, so any protests would potentially be welcomed by the audience.