The German player of the year, streamer Pia “Shurjoka” Scholz, uses the news service Twitter to denounce the streaming service Twitch, where she makes her money. Twitch is failing to protect its streamers. It is now “everyday” on the platform that streamers make fun of the topic of suicide or spread violent fantasies. Twitch does not respond to complaints.
Warning: The article discusses the topic of suicide.
Shurjoka is now denouncing Twitch for this:
“Twitch monetizes hate”
What things did Shurjoka report? Shurjoka is apparently primarily concerned with statements from the streamer Nemesis316.
Shurjoka accuses him of only being successful because he constantly deals with her. In December 2023, she had him banned from Twitch with a DMCA strike.
The streamer Nemesis 316 streamed 1,018 hours of “Dead by Daylight” in 2022 and reached an average of 15 viewers.
In 2023 he streamed 1,103 hours of “Just Chatting” and reached an average of 173 viewers.
She accuses the streamer of repeatedly breaking Twitch’s rules – but Twitch wouldn’t punish him for this and even promoted him to partner.
Shurjoka says that she discussed in a panel that she and those around her had reported seventy criminal offenses on Twitch: violations such as Holocaust relativization or torture fantasies.
But the customs on Twitch are so rotten that streamers would publicly admit that they actually did that and are still amused by it (via Twitter):
Twitch monetizes hate, torture fantasies and jokes about solidarity in 2024.
Yesterday I spoke on a panel about how Twitch doesn’t moderate hate, so little that fully monetized streamers themselves laugh and admit they’re violating the rules.
Shurjoka streamer believes: Twitch rejects reports without checking
What particularly annoys you? Above all, Shurjoka denounces the fact that she has repeatedly reported clips in which suicide is trivialized. But Twitch rejects these reports.
She says: She was assured that real people would check her reports – but today all reports were viewed and rejected within 1 minute.
Can’t she clarify this another way? Shurjoka says she sought a direct conversation with a Twitch employee who pointed out to her the importance of providing specific timestamps in reports. If this were the case, the responsible TEE department would respond immediately to reports.
But even formal, correct reports had no effect and the conversation came to nothing.
Shurjoka says: Twitch apparently laid off all employees from the TOS team in 2023 and the rest of the company didn’t notice.
It now seems as if violent fantasies are just part of the business for Twitch.
She says: It’s an “outrageous thing what’s going on here”.
Twitch seems to have a major weakness in the legal area
What could be the problem? In December 2023, Twitch acted in the Shurjoka conflict and permanently banned a streamer because he allegedly made fun of trauma.
But he then went to court and literally presented Twitch in a trial before the Braunschweig regional court. The streamer had hired a lawyer specializing in media law from a law firm that also represents AFD politicians in legal disputes.
According to the streamer’s account, Twitch did not appear professional in court. Their lawyers allegedly could not provide any concrete examples of misconduct and Twitch did not adhere to the necessary conditions to ban the streamer, such as a warning and a precise reason.
Apparently Twitch’s only strategy was to explain to the court that German law does not apply in the event of a streamer being permanently banned and that the case must be handled under US law. When this strategy was rejected, they appeared quite helpless.
Other German streamers have also successfully taken action against Twitch in the past and have sued the platform.
In general, Twitch has repeatedly shown weaknesses in America when legal problems arose. The music industry put legal pressure on Twitch in 2020 and they immediately seemed to panic and passed this panic on directly to the streamers:
There are copyright penalties for streamers – Twitch admits: “It’s on us”