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Twitch launches anti-bot crackdown and viewership numbers plummet across the platform overnight: Turns out 50% of the audience was just robots pretending to enjoy hot tub streams. (spilled.gg)

submitted 4 days ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/Technology@programming.dev

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Twitch's new anti-bot system caused viewer counts to nosedive across hundreds of channels, with some losing over half their displayed audience.

Channels running 24/7 reruns saw the biggest drops, with Mira falling from 2,000+ to under 200 viewers overnight.

The cleanup affects sponsorship deals and ad rates since brands have been paying premium prices for audiences that were partially fake.

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[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago

Yeah, but you need decent "quality of network" to grow the number of actually-existing users. New users are gonna see the softcore streams and think they signed up to the wrong kind of streaming webpage.

this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025

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