On August 11th, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins posted a video to Twitter in which he expressed his frustration with Twitch for seemingly promoting porn on his channel. Now, Twitch’s CEO has responded to the controversy directly and offered an apology to the streamer.
The controversy began when Twitch decided to promote other channels on Ninja’s inactive channel in order to send users somewhere else. Most of the channels streamed Fortnite, and it seemed like Twitch wanted to give users other options. But on August 11th, the number one link directed users to a porn channel.
When Ninja found out, he posted a video on Twitter in which he looked visibly frustrated. He talked about how he let Twitch slide for promoting other channels on his inactive account, but that he saw this oversight as the last straw. A lot of kids follow Ninja, and the streamer worries the link may have sent underage fans to a place they shouldn’t go.
Ninja recently made a deal with streaming site Mixer to stream with them exclusively. The move from Twitch to Mixer seemed smooth, with both parties going about their business as usual. Now, Ninja feels betrayed.
Twitch’s CEO Emmett Shear has responded to the controversy directly. In a twitter thread, he addressed the situation, explaining that Twitch has recently begun experimenting with promoting live channels on streamer’s pages when they are offline. Shear apologized directly to Ninja in the Tweet and said that Twitch has disabled the new feature and banned the porn channel, which had violated the company’s terms of use.
Ninja has not yet made any comments, but his wife and manager Jessica Blevins posted a Tweet that called out the CEO’s response as disingenuous. She labeled the comments as “PR control” and said that Twitch always intended to destroy the Ninja brand. She cited a Tweet from the co-founder of Twitch in which he shared a link to Ninja’s Mixer announcement video with the text “RIP ;)” attached to it.
Twitch has made some other choices with Ninja’s channel since he left that make light of the streamer’s deal. Shortly after he made the jump, Twitch put a Mario reference on Ninja’s channel, joking that the streamer was “in another castle.” Most saw the move as good fun, but it seems Ninja and Jessica believe that Twitch feels petty about the split.
Whether Twitch feels petty or not, Ninja does have a lot of young followers. Giving a seemingly untested algorithm the keys to Ninja’s front page seems irresponsible in that, porn or not, it could easily recommend something not suitable for children.
Now, Ninja has made it clear that he wants his Twitch page removed completely, and only time will tell if he gets that wish.
Source: Dexerto