>I would just like to put on record it was never my intention to steal from other content creators.
I believe you. But that's still what you ended up doing.
>The initial idea came as a service I could provide to streamers.
Then why didn't you make it a service you could provide to streamers, instead of skipping the service and agreement part and just uploading the content first without their knowledge? A little like offering a security service by showing up outside a store with a gun and taking some money off of each customer in exchange for the protection you're graciously providing to the store owner (who has no idea this is going on). Not saying what you did is at all like a protection racket; just trying to illustrate that the difference between a service and a racket is full, up-front consent and explicit agreements.
>I pivoted as one of my streamer friends became popular through a popular clip channel. I figured Instead of trying to charge my friends for a service if I could get one clip channel big enough I could just reproduce that success for all our own clips...
Why not provide this service for your friends for free and offer it to everyone else for a fee, then? (I get the actual reason; I'm just saying it's wrong. Unfortunately, many [not all] "growth hacks" are unethical.) I understand your intention here, but it seems like you may have been placing your friends above strangers to the point of not fully thinking about how the strangers were affected.
>Also losing my entire livelihood for a programming project hurts enough even without your words.
The project could've generated clips and you could've reached out to creators and showed them how the bot worked, with examples, and worked out an arrangement with anyone who was interested. It would've been the same programming project, except it would be ethical, legal, and perhaps directly profitable.
I'm not trying to roast you here at all. You don't seem like a malicious person. You're forthright about what you did. I just think this is a lesson you should take to heart and something you should move on from. If I were you I'd probably be trying to scrub all evidence of this, honestly, instead of trying to make a big deal of it. I know it stings a lot right now, but, trust me, I think you'll be very thankful for this in the future, even if it doesn't seem like it at the moment. Cut your losses.