https://x.com/DevinNash/status/1950694245414879405Relevant to this thread
The livestream/Twitch viewbot issue is way more prevalent and destructive for platforms than most people realize. It's a difficult problem and no one knows how to fix it yet.
When my agency was running ads on Twitch, we noticed a weird problem:
Our brand's conversions were worse the more viewers a stream had. The largest streams have the least sales. 500-1000 viewer streams often have the best sales, and outperform many 30,000+ viewer creators. We initially attributed this to diminishing viewer returns - AKA - not everyone in large streams is as invested as core, small communities. This is untrue though because the few large streams that do have authentic viewership overperform on ad campaigns. So it had to be something else.
We did some digging and were shocked at the number of top 500 broadcasters that are being viewbotted or view botting themselves. We estimate it is around 400 to 430 of the top 500, not including embeds. It is incredibly easy to do. Up until a couple weeks ago in 2025 you could literally open multiple headless browser windows to count as +1 viewer, and even now you can still count 2 viewers on two separate incognito browsers (go try it.) Twitch finally recently fixed this, so the current strategy is to spin up thousands of proxies through a service like AWS (ironically) and DigitalOcean.
Twitch doesn't punish anyone for view botting (unless a streamer shows it on screen) because according to them, "we can't know if its the streamer or someone else." However even then their enforcement is selective, with celebrities like Ray J openly admitting in July to viewbotting and getting no punishment. Because discovery is non-existent on Twitch and the platform is a Kingmaker system, there's no reason to not view bot unless you have a moral compass - a rare thing in streaming these days.
Viewbots are not only set up by streamers themselves, but also agencies and managers. This is to fool sponsors (like me) into paying $20,000+ (about $1-3 per ccv) for viewers that are not there. In 2025, most major brands have already run campaigns with horrible results, and so they and their agencies simply don't advertise on Twitch anymore. The untold story is millions gone from creators and the livestreaming platforms themselves because of this.
This combines with the Adpocalypse I wrote about here some months ago, where I predicted a 40-50% ad revenue drop due to Twitch platforming controversial political content. This ended up being exactly what happened, and this one-two combo puts Twitch on a difficult path.
I suspect the most prominent viewbotting streamers will be revealed in the coming months, one way or another. It's an open secret in the industry, and some broadcasters know where the bodies are buried. It's only a matter of time before someone blabs. No one will miss these offenders, and they're usually synonymous with pushing scam sponsors and exploiting their viewers in various ways.
Thankfully more attention is also recently coming to the matter via folks in the know such as (@Trainwreckstv and @Asmongold) - and I would trust their posts and clips on the subject entirely. They know a lot more than people give them credit for and the fact that they're both on a very small list of people who have made it legitimately pisses them off enough to educate others about it.
If you're concerned with this problem @Twitch, you need to setup manual investigative teams to analyze top Twitch streams, take down botnets, and issue C&Ds to major providers. You probably can't win the war from an engineering standpoint, for a lot of reasons beyond the scope of this thread. Anyone working on the problem at Twitch or Kick, feel free to DM me and I'll help if I can.
The livestreaming platforms aren't incentivized to do the right thing because more viewers equals more sponsor deals and a better "looking" platform. But what goes around comes around, and the bill will come due. This exact thing happened in esports, when most brands during 2019-2021 realized that teams couldn't convert product sales like they claimed. Fast forward today and esports is a fraction of its original power and mostly owned by foreign interests and gambling proxies.
The people hurt the most by these bad actors are the legitimate creators trying to make it. If you're one of these people, you're playing a rigged game by trying to funnel new viewers in from livestreaming platforms. You should be doing VOD and value creation on @YouTube (events, story-driven video) and driving those viewers into places like @Patreon that offer fair creator splits. Twitch hasn't invested successfully in small creator discovery for a decade and you are on your own. The platform will hobble onward so long as Amazon can justify the profit loss in exchange for its media impact and times are good.
