Pirate Software

The more I see the public discourse on this the less it all makes sense. If Twitch can identify viewbots through historical data then why can't they strip only viewbots instead of just apply an arbitrary cap on views overall? It's because they can't. The viewbots people use today are primarily done through embedded traffic on third party sites. Distributed over many different areas and routed back to the channel. That means it's real people, real traffic, and real websites but the stream is in the corner as an ad or hidden as a single pixel. This still counts as a viewer and inflates the channels numbers. The view capping they are planning doesn't actually fix the issue and it will likely paint targets on streamers backs. If someone gets capped it will be seen as "proof" of view botting even if it was someone else trying to hit that streamer. We already see tons of people using third party browser plugins and starting witch hunts over flimsy data thinking viewers are bots. This just makes it "official". The real issue here is embeds over anything else. If you want to do actual damage to view botting then kill off embeds and shift everything back to user traffic in-site. From there you can actually fight this behavior instead of using blanket methods like this.

A number of streamers have suggested that embeds are the primary viewbot vector. While this is an attack vector we monitor, embeds only account for 0.37% of total hours watched on Twitch and are not the primary source of the problem today. We have policies around embed usage and actively detect and take action against sites that violate them and will continue looking at ways to address this attack vector.

A note on our work to combat viewbotting, from CEO Dan Clancy: There’s been a lot of discussion recently about viewbotting on Twitch, and I wanted to share an update on our enforcement efforts. Viewbotting is bad for our business. We don't benefit from it, and we believe it harms the creator ecosystem overall. However, effectively combatting viewbotting is challenging. As we deploy updates to our real-time detection algorithms, viewbotting companies quickly respond with updates to avoid detection. Also, our detection systems must be precise to ensure that legitimate viewers are appropriately counted. Today, we’re introducing a new enforcement type that we plan to roll out over the next few weeks. For channels identified as persistently viewbotting, we will apply a cap to the streamer’s CCV for a fixed period of time, on all of the Twitch surfaces. The cap will be based upon historical data regarding that creator’s non-viewbotted traffic. Repeated violations will result in longer penalties. Streamers will be notified when an enforcement is applied, along with the duration of the penalty, and can appeal through the appeals portal. While streamers will be notified, we will not make a follow-on announcement when we begin issuing these enforcements, and will not publicly share details about when and where these enforcements are applied. Unfortunately, providing details simply makes it easier for companies to work around our interventions. We believe this approach will help us make meaningful progress against viewbotting. We will continue refining our systems and expand when we apply these enforcements over time. - Dan Clancy

For those saying that embeds no longer work or that this route was fixed I went and tested it myself. I used an unmonetized alt account and created an embed using an iframe that was a 1x1 pixel. I then gave the webpage for this to a number of people and instructed them to view the page in an incognito tab. It worked and each of them counted as a viewer despite the page being blank for them. This NEEDS to be fixed and no amount of bullshitting about the problem changes that. Now dial that up to be an actual service. Embed the stream in ads globally. Have every one of those ads delivered to a different user with a different IP address. Displayed below is a description of a service that does exactly that. With the upcoming changes this doesn't get fixed and neither do other methods. They just pass the risk onto streamers with viewership caps that can be targeted on victims instead of actually hitting the problem.