Twitch has been steadily monitoring the continued rise of fake engagement on the platform over the last several months and has identified 7.5 million accounts that have broken its Terms of Service.
The company is now taking action against follow-botting and view-botting to cultivate fake engagement on Twitch channels.
All of these detected bot accounts are being removed. Twitch said streamers “may see sudden decreases in your follower and viewer count over the coming days.”
For reference, xQc was the fifth most followed streamer on Twitch with around 8,112,870 followers prior to this purge. After the bots were removed, he dropped to 5,934,825 followers, losing around 2.2 million overall.
Twitch has confirmed that most of those accounts were detected through its continued use of machine learning technology that’s being developed to catch stuff like this on the platform. But the company also thanked the community for continually reporting bot accounts and helping ensure that they can be properly handled.
Some streamers are hoping this means Twitch will be more proactive in preventing botting in the first place. But for now, the platform still points its users to a general help article when it becomes an issue or someone reports bot accounts.
