Twitch wants to hold the trolls accountable — if it can figure out who they are.
Against the Stream
On May 25, a group calling itself "Artifact Streams" launched a disturbing campaign on the streaming platform Twitch. With the help of automated bots, they flooded the directory for the unpopular "Artifact" game with content violating the platform's terms of service and, in some instances, the law.
Now, Twitch is suing the trolls who hijacked it — even though it doesn't actually know who they are.
Bot Attack
On Friday, Twitch filed a lawsuit in a California court that details how defendants "John and Jane Does 1-100" shared dozens of clips — including videos of hardcore pornography, copyrighted movies, and the March 2019 Christchurch mosque attack — on the platform.
As quickly as Twitch could delete the offending profiles, new ones would appear and keep sharing the same content. When the platform took the bold move of suspending all new user streaming for two days, members of the Artifact Streams group resorted to using old profiles, including ones it purchased.
Identity Unknown
Twitch wrote that it filed the lawsuit "to end Defendants’ unlawful and highly offensive activities... and hold Defendants accountable" for their actions, which the platform claims are "ongoing."
It's not clear how the lawsuit might help with those objectives.
However, if Twitch can identify the people behind the campaign, the sharing of the Christchurch video alone could be enough to land them behind bars, depending on their location — on Tuesday, a New Zealand judge sentenced one man to 21 months in prison for distributing the video to 30 people online.
READ MORE: Twitch Sues Troll Streamers Over Violent Videos, Pornography [Bloomberg]
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