The attacks were coordinated on an external site, cozy.tv, run by white nationalist Nick Fuentes (who has since had his Twitter account suspended). Twitch publicly acknowledged the raids on Twitter, confirming its legal team is investigating and that any Twitch accounts involved have been suspended. “Over the past 24 hours, bad actors have been coordinating off-Twitch to target women and LGBTQ+ members of our community with spammy and hateful chat messages,” reads the Twitter thread. “Hate has no place on Twitch, and we’ve identified and suspended the Twitch accounts of the individuals participating. “Our Safety team is actively reviewing reports and suspending users in violation of our TOS. Our legal team is also involved and actively investigating. We’ve taken legal action against those who’ve harassed our community in the past and continue to take these activities seriously.” The platform also advises the following to help secure your stream: dial up AutoMod to L3, turn on Followers-Only and Slow Mode, enable email and phone verification, and only allow Raids from friends. Hate raids occurred across the platform last year, attacking streamers from minority communities. Essentially, bot accounts are brought into a streamer’s chat spouting hateful and abusive comments that are largely racist and transphobic in nature. While Twitch launched new security tools to combat the raids and last year banned 15 million bot accounts, this fresh wave of attacks is being mobilised off-platform. Targeted streamers have been restreamed on Fuentes’ platform and openly mocked before hateful messages are sent over. Fuentes himself has claimed credit for the raids and encouraged the practice in a disgusting video message. As such, Twitch is rightly investigating legal action and advising streamers to protect themselves online.
