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Comment by eterm | Hacker News Reader

Most the big streamers got to where they are by view botting, the "fake it til you make it" approach.

I'm not recommending that, it's something that Twitch are hotter about catching and banning these days, but it has meant that there has been an entrenched set of "big streamers" for some time now with less ability to break in.

Really the only way is to be playing a game for a while that suddenly gets big so you can be one of the better players for a while, or be playing a niche game that a 'big streamer' happens to play and you'll pick up some viewers when they inevitably move on to the next thing.

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> Most the big streamers got to where they are by view botting, the "fake it til you make it" approach.

I'm sorry but this is not true. There have however been perception issues around viewbotting. One such:

For most of the life of host mode when a small stream would get hosted by a big stream, nearly all of the transitioned viewers would stay (through inaction) in the host's channel. Many would be AFK. The small streamer ends up with a large viewercount but a disproportionally "dead" chat, leading to cries of viewbotting.

Coincidentally, big-to-small hosts like this are frequently how fantastic but relatively undiscovered streamers get their "big break", further entangling the accusations with their success.

Source: Worked for five years at Twitch, built host mode

(PS: As someone who became good friends with some of these "big streamers" and those at Twitch combatting viewbotting, I can't help but feel insulted on both their behalves that the amount of invisible effort they pour into their craft so frequently gets shat on.)

Sounds like from your description host mode is essentially Twitch driven viewbotting.

> > Most the big streamers got to where they are by view botting, the "fake it til you make it" approach.

> I'm sorry but this is not true.

How can you possibly claim you know that most big streamers never used bots or bought views? None of them would ever tell a Twitch employee if they did. If you had the capacity to detect all bots then there would be zero botting on the platform, which is certainly not the case.

How are you going to question a Twitch employee but not someone making the absurd claim that "most of the big streamers got to where they are by view botting"?

The bigger streamers that weren't already famous have had followings for many years, going from few viewers to the thousands they get now. Saying most of them view botted is pretty wild. I'd love to see some actual evidence..

Buying follows is an open secret on Twitter and Instagram, and I personally had my twitch credentials stuffed to have my account follow accounts with 1 video and thousands of followers

> had my twitch credentials stuffed

"Credential stuffing" is such a goofy, overly fancy term for reusing or having a crappy password.

And were any of those accounts that you followed "big streamers"?

The fact that botting exists does not mean that's how most big streamers got started.

This is not like Twitter or Instagram where you get things or clout purely on your follower numbers. Twitch has viewer counts during a livestream, and it's easy to tell botted accounts or inflated viewer counts based on chat participation. It's relatively easy to spot inflated viewer counts when there are 1,000 viewers on a channel but very few comments in the chat, for example.

And most streamers have a long history of streaming. For example, some of the bigger ones I can think of, Reckful, Destiny, Lirik, Alinity, Tyler1, Day9, etc.

I hear you, I'm sure some streamers got to where they are with sketchy policies but for the most part the streamers I follow are either Dota 2 pros that have spent years of their life getting good at the game and also stream very consistently (almost everyday) while still being entertaining for 3-5 hours at a time, they also have dedicated editors which will do shorter clips with the occasional meme on youtube if you weren't able to catch the stream live.

For programming related streams I follow Jonathan Blow because he has a unique viewpoint around programming and also because I trust him because he's shipped multiple succesful games.

Be succesful IRL seems to be one of the best ways to get a popular stream.

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