The CEO of streaming platform Twitch has apologised to Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins after his former page on the site was used to display other creators’ content – including a pornography video.
Who is Ninja? Ninja was one of Twitch’s biggest stars, but left the platform for Microsoft’s rival service, Mixer, on August 1. At time of writing, his Twitch page appears as it would if he were simply offline, with an inactive main screen and archived content available to view. However, between his departure and now, Twitch had been trying something different.
Instead of archived content, Ninja’s page had shown a message saying he was “in another castle” – a Mario reference – and a list of other channels streaming Fortnite, the game which made him famous. Daniel ‘Keemstar’ Keem, of the Drama Alert YouTube channel, spotted yesterday that one of those channels was in fact showing pornography. He tweeted a screengrab as proof, which, be warned, obviously has some NSFW content: link.
Ninja deemed this the last straw and released a video distancing himself from his old page – “I have no say in any of this stuff”, he says – and apologising to anyone who saw what was there.
Ninja points out that he spent eight years building a following of 14.5 million people on Twitch, and, clearly agitated, alleges that the platform doesn’t treat other streamers who have left it in the same way: “they don’t promote other streams, they don’t promote other popular channels, but they do on mine. […] We’re trying to get the whole channel taken down, or at least not promote other streamers and other channels on my brand, on my freaking profile.”
Disgusted and so sorry. pic.twitter.com/gnUY5Kp52E
— Ninja (@Ninja) August 11, 2019
This prompted Twitch’s CEO Emmett Shear to tweet an apology. Regarding the apparent change in policy over Ninja’s old page, he explains that “our community comes to Twitch looking for live content. To help ensure they find great, live channels we’ve been experimenting with showing recommended content across Twitch, including on streamer’s [sic] pages that are offline,” Shear says.
4/ On a more personal note, I apologize want to apologize directly to @ninja that this happened. It wasn’t our intent, but it should not have happened. No excuses.
— Emmett Shear (@eshear) August 11, 2019
“This helps all streamers as it creates new community connections. However, the lewd content that appeared on the Ninja offline channel page grossly violates our terms of service, and we’ve permanently suspended the account in question. We have also suspended these recommendations while we investigate how this content came to be promoted.”
This leaves open the possibility that such promotions may be resumed in the future. Shear concludes by saying: “I want to apologise directly to Ninja that this happened. It wasn’t our intent, but it should not have happened. No excuses.”
Ninja’s last word on the matter came just before Shear’s apology, thanking Twitch for restoring his channel to “how an offline page should look.”