So there has been a ongoing narrative of how embeds on 3rd party websites are and I quote "Legit Viewbots" or "Legal Viewbots" by some so called streaming industry experts.
First off, these blanket statements of this channel has real viewership vs others is always wrong. They do not know and are just assuming things.
If you want to keep going down this rabbit hole, then all of these are also considered legit viewbots.
- Frontpage of Twitch's carousal
- Auto Hosts / Hosting
- Raids
- Drops
Here is 100% undisputed truth that if you follow the logic line of what these people say, some of the biggest channels on twitch all have huge chunks of "Legit Viewbots" just as anyone else who has been on twitch for a very long time.
Check this screenshot of when Asmongold shared his dashboard stats during one of his biggest streaming sessions on Twitch.
If you know how the stats section works on twitch, you will notice that a big portion of the views came from external aka as these people say "legit viewbots".
Next, they keep mixing together what view bots are with what embedding is which is totally different!
- Viewbot is typically any method that sends automated connections to the Twitch video player which then Twitch thinks is a person viewing the channel thus being counted as a view.
- A embed twitch video player on a webpage is typically viewed by a real person which isn't automated and also gets counted as a view.
These two things are very different yet they always like to mix them together as if they are similar.
After that comes the whole narrative of chat lists, follower numbers and how one chat is very active while the other isn't active.
Typically when someone embeds the twitch video player to a website as a form of advertisement they do not included the chat which makes any possibility of interaction not available. But that does not mean the embed is not being viewed and consumed by the website visitor.
- You can not put a 1x1 pixel twitch embed on a webpage, that's against the rules. The embed player has to be 400x300 pixels in size minimum.
- Also you can not buy embed placement or sell embeds on websites, as shown in the rules screenshot above. The whole idea of hey lets put my twitch channel embed on thousands of high traffic website is against the rules unless you own and operate these entities.
You can have a billion webpages with your twitch embed on it and have it generate zero views because of the lack of content. Just as any content creator should know, content is king in both the streaming world and for websites.
If there is one thing Twitch needs, it needs more people to created external content and to embed twitch on it. Just like how billions of content pages showcase youtube embeds which then feeds people back into youtube, the same needs to happen with twitch.