Twitch Sues Troll Streamers over Violent Videos, Pornography | Hacker News Reader

Twitch Sues Troll Streamers over Violent Videos, Pornography

bloomberg.com

97 pointsjason_zig77 comments

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Guessing it's related to people streaming on the Artifact section on Twitch. Basically, there was a popular streamer who would joke about how nobody was streaming the game, so people start streaming porn, Avengers: Endgame, etc, so they'd be at the top of the list of Artifact streams when the popular streamer looked at the streams. It lasted for a few days, with Twitch doing nothing about it. The lawsuit seems like they're trying to save face because they failed to do anything about it for way too long.

https://apptrigger.com/2019/05/28/artifact-twitch-channels-p...

>showing downright despicable content such as Adolph Hitler propaganda, videos of beheadings, varying interests of pornography and even streams of anime programming

That sentence makes it sound like anime is worse than beheadings and Nazi propaganda.

That's because it (the anime programming and pornography) is worse. At least from a corporate perspective.

For the same reasons tumblr banned pornography, yet still hasn't done anything to fight child pornography, child abuse, or grooming on their platform.

For the same reasons youtube demonetizes videos about legal education or discussing alphabet/google/youtube policies, yet still allows child grooming and radicalization to be monetized and recommended to children.

As always: money.

That's from the perspective of Twitch not the article author's. I quoted it because I found it funny and I think that's what the author was going for, but now I'm regretting it a little since I feel like I just got baited.

Yeah, the last line of the article seals it as an intentional joke.

> Just like anime, Artifact was a mistake

That part is true though

For those who don't know, it's a play on "Anime was a mistake"[0] which is a quotation jokingly attributed to Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli).

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/anime-was-a-mistake

>For the same reasons youtube demonetizes videos about legal education or discussing alphabet/google/youtube policies, yet still allows child grooming and radicalization to be monetized and recommended to children.

What nonsense.

This is well documented [0] and has been going on for years. Rather than take a straightforward approach of hiring more community managers (which is expensive) to solve the problem they instead rely on algorithms that punish probable child abuse with demonetization (harking back to my earlier point that it's all about money) rather than say banning and reporting to authorities.

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190223/00430041656/youtu...

Honest question, doesn't the Twitch TOS have an arbitration agreement?

In my (nonlawyer) reading of their terms, it's not clear to me why this wouldn't fall under that policy. It doesn't seem to fit into any of the exceptions they list. How can Twitch file this suite before a normal judge?

Edit: Hah, another commenter found the filing, and it alleges a trademark violation. I wonder if that's in there purely so they can get this before a normal judge?

I wonder how could a trademark be violated in this case.

I'd like to know the law company Twitch is contracting out of because holy shit is Twitch getting ripped off here. Sueing people you don't even know the identities of has to be the easiest way of racking up legal fees I have ever seen

Could it be a pre-emptive political move to avoid scrutiny from governments where the content that was streamed (Christchurch shooting, some illegal pornography) is illegal? Also, I'm pretty sure they know some of the perpetrators but are probably still building a case. A few years ago they pinpointed the heads of a viewbotting operation and successfully took legal action. I could see them finding a few people to make an example out of, honestly.

I could see Twitch's thinking be to only catch a few people to make an example of, but in similar style cases with media companies and pirating the paperwork already has the targets name on it; the use of just placeholders imply to me that the lawyers are going to intentionally drag the case out while telling Twitch they are trying to find the "perfect target" to make an example of.

That makes a lot of sense, this is an interesting perspective.

It may be less of finding an example defendant as just providing an example that they are doing something if they're accused of not doing enough later. I expect the case will quickly settle.

Is streaming the Christchurch shooting illegal in the US, where Twitch is based?

Wouldn't just banning them and turning information over to the local police be the saner and cheaper move then?

The fact is even if traced it would end in 97% of cases with "(Home country)! You can't do shit!" While covering their asses by cooperating.

This may be necessary to determine the identities of the actual people they want to sue, like to enable a subpoena to the ISPs in question.

Agreed. There are a lot of actions that courts can take that companies cannot. (and court-imposed fines have a lot of teeth)

That'd be Amazon, their parent company, one of (along with the other FAANG companies) the savviest consumers of legal services in the world.

Why the N in FAANG? Why isn't it FAAMG? I can't get a reasonable answer to this.

Isn't the N Netflix? I think it's just Bay Area/Silicon Valley companies, while Microsoft is up north in Washington.

Yeah, N is netflix, but in this context what's being referred to is the Big 5 tech companies, which should be Google|Alphabet/Amazon/Microsoft/Facebook/Apple.

I think the original FAANG formulation had to do with fastest-growing stocks and now it's infected the discourse about the tech oligopoly. Other theories welcome.

Yeah, I think it has to do with stock price appreciation. Since 2009, Google has grown 7x, Apple 9x, FB was non-public but a rough private market valuation gives about 9x, Amazon 32X, and Netflix 70X. MSFT has grown 5x, but 2x of that is since 2017 and virtually all of it since 2015 (while FB started its rally in 2013 and the rest in 2009), so it's been left out of the discourse.

Personally, I'm a fan of the acronym MAGA for the top tech companies, because that's the initials of the largest 4 (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple) and they are Making America Great Again, with multiple levels of irony that your personal political views and historical knowledge can help you unpack.

You've also pointed out that FAANG is outdated, so I'm switching to FAAAM

This is like a scrabble game where we're waiting for more companies that start with a consonant to hit a 1T valuation.

Yeah I have no clue. I'm partial to Patrick's "AmaGooBookSoft" but then you're leaving out Apple.

I think I switched to AppAmaGooBookSoft in ~2015.

FWIW, I think you started it as AmaGooFaceSoft, then AppAmaGooFaceSoft[1], then AppAmaGooBookSoft.

I personally prefer the AppAmaGooFaceSoft over the ...BookSoft version.

Based on the fact that I can say the above with a small amount of authority, I think it's safe to say that I have read too much of your stuff.......

[1]The Blue Googles confirms that you used AppAmaGooFaceSoft as well. I prefer it and use it not infrequently.

My assumption: because people really want it to sound like a real word, but dropping the "N" makes a very unfortunate cognate with an offensive English term, and "FAAMG" doesn't sound like a real word. Netflix is just there to avoid what "FAANG" would be without it.

They’d want to keep things anonymous even if they know the identities of the streamers, which they can probably guess from emails and IP logs. If they name names the narrative changes to “website owned by worlds biggest company trying to put 15 year olds in jail for having fun”.

I don’t know very much about the intricacies of this but wouldn’t it be possible to get a judge to decide this is worth a warrant which could then be used to deanonymize?

Another commenter said the legal filings allege trademark violations. If this is the case, the suit may be an example of "policing" a trademark, which involves going after all trademark violators in order to maintain the legal right to enforce the trademark.

If you fail to adequately police a mark, you can lose the ability to enforce it.

Disclaimer: although I am a former lawyer, I did not specialize in trademark law.

One has to sue John Doe in situations like this to avoid the statute of limitations expiring.

A certain twitch category I frequent has had streams advertising phishing websites (phishing game credentials) on it 24/7 for a few years and twitch has never done anything about it. I guess if it doesn't cause public outrage then it's fine.

Sounds like so called "trading" portals for skins in CS:GO ...

""The company said that if it learns the identities of the anonymous streamers who have abused its terms of service -- named in the lawsuit as “John and Jane Does 1-100” -- it will ask the court to prohibit them from using the platform and order them to pay restitution and damages.""

Restitution and damages for what?

if nothing else: legal fees. If a streamer violates the ToS, and hides their identity then serving them a restraining order can cost quite a lot.

I’m sure there are other things - eg punitive damages exist for the purpose of ensuring that the cost of violation is more than just the direct harn

Also the videos were presumably damaging to the Twitch brand for anyone who saw them, which translates into lost revenue for Twitch.

I just figured that that was a pointless argument (people on HN seem to dismiss the concept of brand image and how that might have value), but you are of course correct - legal costs however are very directly enumerable

Can't access the filing, but I did find a preview of it.

The complaint lists four causes: (1) federal trademark infringement, (2) breach of contract, (3) trespass to chattels, and (4) fraud.

https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/28635117/Twitch_Int...

Seems like it's admitting that they both don't know how to stop people technically and don't know who any of the 100 people are.

How would they know who they were? Filing a lawsuit is a tool to find out.

What could they do though? I thought courts in the USA ruled that an IP address can't be used to identify a person. It seems like the most they could do is ban the account, which they can do for any reason they want.

They just said an IP can't solely be used to identify someone. You can use the IP address to get the name and then acquire additional information to prosecute the case. But you need to start with the IP address to get the ball rolling.

Interesting. So for instance if the offence is sharing a Hollywood movie on Bittorrent, the ip address would not be enough to get fined? What then? Use ip to get search warrant?

(I'm from Europe, asking out of curiosity.)

IANAL but it would go something like this: Twitch has IP addresses of the trolls, but no way to tell their real identity. So they file the lawsuit and then use it to subpoena the ISPs assigned those IP addresses to get their client information.

But there's no way they can prove that it was actually the owner that did this. An argument could be that someone got access to the WiFi, either maliciously or otherwise.

It's not enough to be used as evidence in court.

Most likely did the majority of the bots use proxies and VPNs, which may or may not provide additional information about their customers, but even then it has to be proven that is was the same user that did the acts which is very difficult.

It is enough to be used as evidence, it isn't enough, by itself, to definitively prove identity. It might be enough to get a subpoena to image the computers at the IP address. From there you might find the offending material that was broadcast, VPN accounts, chat logs talking about planning it, etc...

I basically gave up on twitch after it stopped working on the Xbox 360. The app just shows thumbnails but never streams. It doesn't work right in the browser for me either, probably due to running an old version of Chrome, but it used to work, and the browser hasn't changed, so I blame site "upgrades" (read: changes that break what was previously working.)

X360 is literally a 15 year old console... Of course twitch doesn't work on it anymore.

Have you considered running something more modern?

Can they really sue someone for streaming porn / legal content? Is violating the twitch TOS really such a crime that they can prosecute you?

Finally - make being an asshole cost money.

Agreed. Maybe also introduce some sort of system which rewards good behavior? A sort of, hmm, social score?

Dude there’s a difference between saying “we won’t host violent videos so some trolls can get off” and “we’re going to police every action”.

People like you who will inevitably bring up the “slippery slope” argument seem to ignore a) twitch etc are private companies and you can’t force speech on them, and b) there’s is no difference between threatening or broadcasting violence against people and having an unpopular opinion.

Unpopular opinion: America should be communist.

Opinion that might get you banned: “go out & beat up or murder people who disagree with me”

Sure but Twitch is here suing people in a real court. It's not about whether Twitch is forced to host your speech or whatever. Here the government is getting involved.

>It's not about whether Twitch is forced to host your speech or whatever.

That's exactly what it's about.

>Here the government is getting involved.

Which is not the same thing as the government abrogating anyone's freedom of speech, fairly obviously.

To get people off their platform they have to serve a restraining order. If someone is hiding their identity the only way to get it is through the courts. For obvious reasons ISPs don’t give that info out to anyone who asks.

Doing that costs them a lot of money, so why shouldn’t they also seek to recover those costs?

Paywall: https://outline.com/KRAU7W

I was going to upvote this but it turns out outline.com hides it's content behind a computational paywall. You have to execute their code in order for text to display.

Here's a version that is just accessible text: http://superkuh.com/twitchsues.txt

I can't use that site because I am under 90 years of age.

Firefox: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox Chrome: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome This extension disables most paywalls.

I suspect this is in part retaliation of someone or people getting banned for stupid reasons

I think it is interesting how people use porn streaming sites for general non-porn related streaming now since these other platforms keep shooting themselves in the foot, playing a war of attrition to keep their own investors and advertisers placated.

But now the porn platforms also have their own pornographic advertisers, and lower overhead costs on moderation.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say... Who is using porn streaming sites for non-porn related streaming?

I was talking about the growth of porn sites for general user submitted content that isnt of the pornographic variety

Users use them for that, you want usernames per site? How am I supposed to answer that. I assumed A lot of people are already familiar with this use case and also find it discussion worthy

Yes this is genuinely news to me and sounds intriguing. I was hoping for some examples or an article about that phenomenon.

I am curious as whether this will be relatively forgotten or it will become a manifestation of the streisand effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect ). With hordes of troll users streaming crap, just for fun and to fight against what they perceive to be a corporate overlord (twitch being owned by amazon).

The Streisand effect is not wanting people to know something, and in trying to prevent that drawing attention to it.

That’s not what is happening here: everyone knows there’s a bunch of basement trolls who stream violence (which is of course against tos), and from twitch’s POV publicity is a win:

* they get public appearance that they’re trying to do something about.

* the specter of being sued may discourage some people from abusing their platform

> That’s not what is happening here: everyone knows...

I didn't know. The Streisand Effect absolutely applies, at least in my case.

The Streisand Effect implies that the subject did not want the publicity but got it by trying to hide or cover up something. Here Twitch wants people to see that they are taking action. Now if the publicity leads to additional trolling of their platform thus exacerbating the problem, then you could make an argument that this scenario fits the Streisand Effect.

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