As reported a couple months ago on this blog, one of the biggest external influencers which is OWNED BY TWITCH has been promoting twitch streams on their wiki network. The more popular a wiki is on their network, the more traffic and embedded viewership it generates for Twitch streamers.
Some of the most popular Wiki's on that network include but are not limited to the following;
- Minecraft
- Terraria
- Ark
Now this sounds like great for getting additional exposure for your stream right? Yup it is and I wrote about that here - Free Channel Traffic / Free Views
And here is how the censorship starts due to complaints from streamers vs streamers.
My channel broadcasts 24/7 using the rerun feature that is provided by Twitch. I like to play sandbox games on my stream and sometimes do play through runs of games. I broadcasting each day for around 5 to 8 hours then run reruns until I stream again the next day. A month ago, I was streaming Terraria which is one of the games that is being VERY LARGELY influenced by this 3rd party. A majority of the streamers who regularly stream that game do not have the reach in views that my channel generates daily. So what happen was as soon as I took the top spot in the directory, a huge chuck of the 3rd party embedding traffic was being sent to my channel which made it very difficult for other channels to overtake the top slot on the directory. The "free channel traffic" was gone for them and they didnt like it at all.
Without the 3rd party embedding support for Terraria, its overall viewership is alot lower. Estimated additional concurrent viewers from 3rd party is 400 - 1500+ depending on time of day. Many people who stream this game only do it because of that additional embedding traffic, some use it to launchpad into other games. So once that was gone, they started to campaign against my channel. One of them talked negativity about my channel on their stream, which lead to trolling in my chat from their viewbase.
At some point they contacted the 3rd party to complain about my channel. The 3rd party agreed with the complaints and censored my channel from being listed + promoted on their wiki.
I messaged the 3rd party myself to see exactly what the reason was for not being listed anymore.
Here was the responses:
- That channel was banned from our wiki after it was brought to our
attention that they were exploiting the system, as documented in a blog.
- So I guess they didnt like how I told people about how they are influencing/sending tons of traffic to certain games on twitch.... Is this suppose to be TOP SECRET? Who knows ...I replied and asked for more clarification.
- The 24/7 streaming is the issue. Once you've grabbed the unit, you don't give it up because you fill up reruns. The point of the embedded unit is to promote LIVE content, not reruns.
- They made up a rule that no one knows about, its not listed anywhere, how is anyone suppose to know? I replied, since doing reRuns until the next time I stream was the issue, I said I can stop doing that and asked to be unbanned.
- You will not be unbanned. The embed is for promoting the games and platform, not for streamers to game for revenue.
- This is a interesting reply, note the "Streamers to game for revenue". I didnt know streaming on twitch was a hobby, this person's mindset is very poor.
This person "HLAquarius" was monitoring the situation and ran to whisper me, but then for some odd reason they delete their username a couple days later? Hmm?
What makes this censorship stupid is how the Twitch API gives details if channels are in ReRun mode or Live, if the 3rd party doesn't want to promote or list a streamer in rerun mode, they can easily code it to not do that instead of censoring due to complaints from streamers.
And now I recently started to stream No Man's Sky again, and guess what happened? Another complaint and tada censored on another wiki from this Twitch owned 3rd party.
Let me finish up with some words of advice, if you are a streamer do not become depended on any 3rd party traffic or embedding, one day it may help get more exposure and the next day it maybe gone. Build your own content, wikis, do your own embedding and promotions - be in control!
