Tapping in on the Twitch viewbotting discussion as an actual agency brand advertising executive. This Twitch post is unlikely to convince any advertisers or streamers that the issue is improving. Here's how to actually address this problem - Viewbotting is an engineering and incentives problem disguised as a cultural one. There is no solution to this problem that can ever be achieved via culture change or moderation. People are debating the efficacy of the solution in Twitch’s post when the entire implementation isn’t even relevant. Given Twitch’s track record, no one should believe Twitch will enforce this “viewer cap” change appropriately even if they did have the proper backend data (and I think they don’t.) They won’t even enforce against popular streamers who have viewbotting programs visible on their screen, streamers who roleplay bringing slaves on their broadcasts and feed them treats, or broadcasters who advocate blatent political violence, and so on. Many streamers are on their 8th or 9th temporary bans for various TOS-breaking content. No one believes Twitch's intervention via moderation will change anything. So again it’s a matter of engineering and incentives. I’ll break down each one. But first a productive question to ask. Why does Youtube Live - which now eclipses Twitch’s live viewership by 40% - have nearly no problems with bots and viewbotting? Well first the engineering problem. Viewbotting gets solved by better detection, pattern recognition, IVT analysis, device fingerprinting, IP patterns, watch-time anomalies, removing off-platform embedding, and other boring backend stuff. As Dan correctly noted, these are things you can’t be public about because they’ll quickly see counterplay from the viewbot services. You just have to lock in and fix it. Google has spent billions of dollars solving this because advertisers don’t like invalid traffic. Their IVT rate now sits at a healthy 11% or so, easily beating competing live services like Tiktok (24%) and Twitch (35%+.) Twitch hasn’t taken this problem seriously. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Twitch, and no team member has ever communicated to me or any of the agencies I work with about their IVT rates accurately. On the contrary it often feels like they throw raw viewership numbers around in pitch decks and presentations as the REASON to go advertise there. That used to work, but money is getting smarter in digital. Brands correctly care about return on spend and engagement with real people rather than just the perception that there are viewers around. You need both bravery and expertise in engineering to make massive changes. Twitch actually has phenomenal engineers, many who were brought on by the former CEO to develop the world’s most advanced CDN (content delivery network) from 2015-2022 before Youtube Live recently surpassed it. But I’m not sure the company has the bravery to make real, necessary changes that many commentators on this post have noted must happen. Successfully “fixing” this would represent a 30-35% global drop in viewership for a website already perceived as ailing against its competitors. To solve the engineering side you just have to apply more of the above technical solutions and spend money and time. Communicate with advertisers, refund us in high IVT events, keep improving your CDN, etc. It’s not a moderation issue, it’s not a viewer cap issue, that’s crowd pandering and will fix nothing. Both advertisers and the community begged for years for attention on this topic, while viewbotters bled us all and collected millions of dollars. Twitch has eroded trust and should just stop making these posts to the public. Users have lost tolerance for the platform and just need to see the actual changes. The second problem is the incentive problem. Every system to succeed on Twitch is set up based on the number of viewers you have. The entire Partnership/Affiliate pipeline is viewership based. The entire discovery funnel is viewership based. Sponsorships are calculated on CCV per $. And the entire culture of the website is “more viewers = better.” So of course everyone will do anything possible to get more viewers. This not only encourages viewerbotting but also toxic streamer culture (IRL nuisance streamers, etc) because, again, it’s all about the views. On Youtube Live monetization rewards sustained engagement and overall channel performance. Ads, super chats, channel memberships, etc. Discovery is pushed by an interest-based recommendation algorithm. Viewers will find you because of interest alignment - not because you have the most viewers. Barely anyone viewbots there because there’s no point. Adding viewers won’t help your channel, and Google’s AI/ML will instantly and automatically suppress your channel and shut off your ads. It is frustrating that the C-Level over at Twitch keep posting about viewbotting as if it’s going to get solved by human moderation. As if Twitch is going to magically have an amazing enforcement team with “the data” that goes after the serial offenders and returns everything to normalcy. This is all solvable, even from where Twitch is now. But you have to make the investments on the engineering/CDN side and just get to work. Everyone is waiting and hoping for these changes. Twitch’s viewbotting epidemic is a downstream effect of what every major streamer and industry professional told them would happen for years. They didn’t implement discovery engines, they didn’t change the incentive systems, they didn’t invest aggressively against obvious botting cases, and they didn’t communicate. Now they have an existential advertising and creator crisis. You reap what you sow.