The streaming site allowed certain channels to appear on the front page for money. Twitch has now paused boost trains indefinitely.
Since March 30, some Twitch users have noticed that streams of a particular genre are ending up on the site’s homepage. On several occasions, visitors have noticed that in the part ” Live channels you might like Twitch was advising them … streams showing pornographic content.
Streamer Noosh22 called out Twitch for this reason on March 30. ” Hey Twitch… The “pay for promo” option you set up just offered me this she tweeted after seeing a recommended porn stream on her homepage. And she’s not the only one.
Trolls have hijacked the feature
The phenomenon repeated itself over at least two days: Zach Bussey, a journalist specializing in the coverage of streamers, noticed the same thing the next day, March 31. “ It seems that trolls are paying accounts to get access to the boost train and put porn on the front page “, he explains on Twitter.
The “boost train” function (boost train in English) is new to Twitch: it was only made available at the end of March 2022, and only for a “ group of little streamers “, choose ” randomly for test », Explains the streaming platform.
the boost train is a different version of train hype, because to get it, viewers have to pay. They can ” gift subscriptions, buy recurring subscriptions or use Bits “says Twitch. Once the goal is reached, the boost train highlights the creator’s channel on the front page of Twitch, in the category ” Live channels you might like — one of the top positions on the homepage.
This new feature, presented by Twitch as an opportunity to make itself known to more people, was mainly criticized by some videographers, who said it would only benefit the wealthiest streamers and viewers. Now that the boost train has been hijacked to put porn on the front page, history proves them right.
Kotaku, which wrote an article on April 1 about the appearance of porn streams, contacted Twitch. The platform said it had decided ” to pause the boost train feature for security reasons “. The company spokesperson added that teams would use this ” experience ” for ” improve their tool “, and also reminded that pornographic content is prohibited on Twitch.
For now, no one knows when the boost train could return to Twitch, or in what form. In any case, the accident has so far proved the community of streamers right. ” The boost train should never have been launched “, explained to Kotaku the journalist Zach Bussey, “ monetizing the homepage of a site that already struggles to showcase diversity was a foregone disaster “.
