Streaming platform Twitch is once again trending in the gaming news world. Not for good reasons, though, as the platform is receiving a fair amount of criticism for a decision it made recently.
Twitch streamers (and Twitch itself) generally make their money by viewers buying subscriptions to specific channels. Subscriptions make it so they won't see any ads on that specific channel, as well as lets them comment in subscriber-only chats. Most Twitch streamers have it set so when someone buys a sub, a popup appears on the stream with their name, a cute graphic, and a little music jingle. The streamer will usually give the buyer a shout out as well, thanking them for supporting the channel.
Twitch allows viewers who have bought subscriptions to cancel them, if they need or want to, but they have to give a reason. Twitch has been getting criticism for a new possible reason it lets viewers choose. Someone can now choose to get a refund because "I just wanted to get a shoutout." This is on top of criticism that Twitch has already received this month for its "Womxn's History Month" tweet.
Streamers, of course, are not happy with this new reason. They say that this will give people a new way to troll or harass streamers, which is something that Twitch is famously unhelpful about. Buying a subscription just to get the streamer's hopes up, only to cancel it later to deny them any actual money. There also also worries that trolls could use this feature to come into sub-only chats and troll.
On the one hand, even using this function as intended: someone buying a subscription because they "just wanted to get a shoutout" is arguably an awful thing to do. Especially for small streamers, or those who depend on their streaming income as their livelihood. That isn't even mentioning the ones who will use this feature just to troll streamers, which wouldn't be surprising considering how awful trolls on Twitch can be.
Of course, while this reason is new, people could already get free shout outs or troll streamers by buying subs they intended to immediately refund. They just would have had to pick a different option when requesting that refund, so this doesn't really add anything new. What this really does is give Twitch better data on how many viewers might be buying streams just to "get a shoutout." This would be something it wouldn't have known before. It might possibly use this data as a part of its content moderation efforts or to deny future refund requests with.
Source: Dexerto