The massive streaming service Twitch allows gamers to connect over practically every game imaginable; however, this connection isn’t as flawless as many may wish. Last year, from February to May, Twitch “received hundreds of individual reports regarding spam messages containing racism, homophobia, sexual harassment, links to shock imagery, false implications of view-botting and soliciting child sex exploitation material” totaling 150,000 messages to over 1,000 channels. Now, the individual responsible has been identified as Brandan Lukus Apple, a resident of British Colombia.

Apple was identified after the Supreme Court made chatsurge.net give up Apple’s IP address; Now he faces two charges: a B.C. Supreme Court civil action and a criminal charge of “mischief in relation to computer data.” The former prevents Apple from running a web service that could “be used to bomb/spam/flood any TwitchTV chat.” The criminal charge, according to the Criminal Code of Canada, means Apple could face up to ten years in prison.

While Apple’s charge is unprecedented in the gaming community, it is understandable that Twitch wishes to protect its streaming service, considering its audience is bigger than HBO or Netflix. Gamer reaction, depicted in the below image, was understandably distraught over the massive flood of insults, vulgarity, and disturbing content. It is nice to see Twitch take such grand-scale actions seriously.

twitch-spam-sample

However, it is important to remember that Apple is innocent until proven guilty. While he has offered no comment or defense of his accused actions, it is up to the courts now to decide the scale of his punishment if proven guilty. With what Apple is facing, it seems unlikely that anyone would perform similar actions during the Twitch-exclusive Overwatch League, as such legal action may be an adequate deterrent.

He is set to appear again in February, so hopefully more can be learned then. If Apple is proven guilty, it seems improbable that there will be a “free Apple” movement as there was a “free Tyler1” movement. Tyler1 had a record-breaking return to Twitch after such a response, but the difference in scale and severity of the actions is tremendous; if anything, while Apple faces a severe punishment, Tyler1’s case seems to suggest that Twitch is only looking after its viewership.

Source: CBC