(Los Angeles Blade photo by Brody Levesque)
Twitch, the social media platform that focuses on video game livestreaming including broadcasts of esports competitions, acknowledged March 14 that LGBTQ and women users of the platform’s services had been attacked in “hate” raids over the past week.
Twitch Support notified users March 11, saying “Over the past 24 hours, bad actors have been coordinating off-Twitch to target women and LGBTQ+ members of our community with spammy and hateful chat messages. Hate has no place on Twitch, and we’ve identified and suspended the Twitch accounts of the individuals participating.”
Over the past 24 hours, bad actors have been coordinating off-Twitch to target women and LGBTQ+ members of our community with spammy and hateful chat messages. Hate has no place on Twitch, and we’ve identified and suspended the Twitch accounts of the individuals participating.
— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) March 11, 2022
We’ve found that enabling the following settings has a big impact in helping prevent these cases: dial up AutoMod to L3, turn on Followers-Only and Slow Mode, enable email and phone verification, and only allow Raids from friends.
— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) March 12, 2022
Blaine Polhamus, contributing writer for online esports webzine Dot Esports, reported that a series of coordinated attacks sourced to Cozy.tv had Twitch users/streamers such as EarthToBre, Blizzb3ar and xProvexx reporting a flood of users from Cozy.tv users descending on Twitch who reportedly spammed Twitch chatrooms, Discord servers and flooded creators’ DMs with hateful, homophobic messages.
Dot Esports also reported xProvexx quickly found the source of these hate raids, linking it back to website Cozy.tv. Nicholas Joseph Fuentes, the co-founder of the right-wing extremist streaming website, made a statement both claiming credit for the waves of harassment and further encouraging it. A known white nationalist and far-right supporter, Fuentes has been banned from Twitch, Reddit and YouTube.
Fuentes is an American far-right and white nationalist political commentator and live streamer. The Anti-Defamation League has described Fuentes as a white supremacist. A former YouTuber, his channel was permanently suspended in February 2020 for violating YouTube’s hate speech policy.
The Guardian UK reported that Fuentes, who founded the America First Political Action Conference which took place recently in Orlando, Florida, is a a notorious anti-Semite. Fuentes was the individual who introduced Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene during the Feb. 25 event. He also attended the deadly “Unite The Right” rally in 2017 and was recently subpoenaed over his involvement in the pro-Trump insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
