Twitch continues getting hammered for how it’s handled the exit of popular streamer Ninja, who took his talents to Microsoft owned Mixer in recent weeks.
Twitch came under fire for how they handled Ninja’s exit, going as far as to suggest porn to visitors to Ninja’s vacant channel on Twitch, infuriating Ninja and causing an uproar among their fans.
Twitch has also been hit hard by their handling, or lack there of, of clear violations of their Terms of Service, failure to act against instances of animal abuse and the use of racial slurs, and seemingly treating certain streamers differently than others.
Former Twitch executive Justin Wong has chimed in, commenting specifically on the aforementioned fiasco with how Twitch handled Ninja’s exit.
1/ Twitch's decision to unilaterally promote other channels on @Ninja's channel represents a long-running internal conflict at Twitch: who owns the viewers – the streamer or the platform?
— Justin Wong (@JustinWong) August 12, 2019
👇 a thread https://t.co/vrXMqIazZ9
Wong went on to say the following, in a series of tweets.
“Some background: when a viewer hits an offline channel page, they’re far more likely to bounce from Twitch” Wong tweeted. “It’s a super leaky part of the acquisition funnel and something Twitch has been trying to solve with things like Autohost. They want to get you in front of content ASAP.”
“But Autohost puts control in the streamer’s hands. They can choose which channels they want to host, and they can even opt out of autohosting entirely. This is Twitch acknowledging that the streamer should have a say in who gets promoted to the following they’ve built.”
“Here, Twitch put the Fortnite directory on Ninja’s channel without asking, and they did this to only his channel after he left for Mixer. Ninja had no say in the decision and no say in who appears in the directory (like porn). Twitch stole his ability to participate twice.”
“Twitch says it’s an experiment, so if we take them at their word, they want this on every offline channel. This would effectively remove participation from every streamer. You would have no say in who gets promoted on your channel when you’re offline.”
“They reverted it after the blowback, but the fact that this made it live at such a sensitive time is mindboggling. They ran this experiment on their highest-profile departure ever while their other partners are watching. It seems vindictive, but I think it’s just out of touch.”
“@Ninja should still own his channel, and while he may no longer be a Twitch partner after *EIGHT YEARS* of streaming, he’s still a user. And that’s a terrible way to treat your users.