Twitch is facing heavy criticism after they published pornography on well-known Fortnite gamers page, which has been dormant since announcing his move to a competing platform.
The incident came after Richard Tyler Blevins, known in the gaming community as “Ninja,” left the platform for rival platform Mixer, leaving his Twitch account permanently offline.
Blevins, who had garnered over 14 million followers on Twitch, took to Twitter on Sunday afternoon to apologize to his followers for the action, calling it “disgusting.”
“There was a porn account which was number one being recommended on my channel. And I have no say in any of this stuff. This is the line, this is the straw,” Belvins said in the video.
“We’re trying to get the whole channel taken down to begin with, or at least not promote other streamers and other channels on my brand, on my frigging profile,” the 28-year-old gamer added. “So for anyone who saw that, for anyone whose kids, or anyone, who just didn’t want to see that, I apologize, and I’m sorry.”
Blevins added another tweet, writing, “This wouldn’t even have been an issue if they didn’t use my channel to promote others in the first place…”
Even though Blevins account has been offline for the past couple of weeks, the videos on the channel are still available to view. According to CNET, the incident only occurred because Twitch took the “unusual step of promoting a feed of ‘popular Fortnite channels’ across the streaming service in place of the usual offline page.
Subsequently, “the top channel on that feed featured hardcore pornography.”
Following the incident, the Twitch CEO Emmett Shear spoke out, saying that the reason they shared the content to Blevin’s page was due to experimentation with such a feature.
“Our community comes to Twitch looking for live content. 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,” Shear wrote.
“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,” he added in the next tweet.
Shear added that following the pornography mistake, Twitch has temporarily stopped the recommendation feature until they figure out how that specific content was shared.
“On a more personal note, I want to apologize directly to Ninja that this happened. It wasn’t our intent, but it should not have happened. No excuses,” Shear concluded in the tweet series.
The fallout
Blevins was not the only one to be angry about the pornography feature on his Twitch channel.
#TwitchIsOverParty began trending Monday morning following the fall-out as users took over Twitter to express solidarity with Blevins and just general concerns with Twitch.
This is also not the first time inappropriate content has been allowed on the platform. In May, one channel was featured on Twitch’s home page after trolls used it to stream porn.
Twitch responded saying: “We take what happened very seriously and are making additional changes to prevent this kind of coordinated activity on our service in the future. Thank you all for your patience.”
According to Trey Patterson, writing for the Net Nanny, “Due to it’s exploding popularity among younger audiences and young gamers, Twitch is definitely a platform that parents will want to pay attention to. When it comes to concerns on the streaming platform, there’s a few to consider as it can leave children vulnerable to inappropriate content and online predators.”
Patterson also urged parents to do research on the platform and the channels their kids were viewing before allowing them to watch.
“If your child is mostly watching other gamers live stream, the best thing to do is to research the people and channels that your child watches and ensure that they are watching streams that are age-appropriate.”