On September 1, 2021, hundreds of streamers refused to make their usual broadcasts on Twitch in protest against the "hate raids.” As a result, Twitch lost over a million concurrent viewers from its daily peak. Streams Charts tried to find out what the objection was about and how it affected other platform metrics.
What is #ADayOffTwitch?
The hashtag #ADayOffTwitch urged streamers to give up streaming for one day (on September 1) to draw the attention of Twitch representatives to the problem of "hate raids.” These raids are mostly conducted on the channels of black people or LGBTQ+ streamers. The raid organizers use spam bots to take over broadcast chats with racist, homophobic, and other hateful messages. Moderators don't have time to effectively deal with this kind of spam, since hundreds of accounts need to be blocked at once.
What happened to Twitch numbers on September 1?
They went down. If you compare the Peak Viewers from September 1 with the number a week ago (August 25), it fell by a million — from 4.5M to 3.5M. At the same time, the peak number of concurrent channels also fell by 10% — from 134.8K to 120.9K. The next day, the channel count had stabilized, and the difference in viewers was down to 350K.
At the same time, not all Twitch languages saw a drop in numbers. For example, the number of concurrent viewers of French- and German-speaking broadcasts from September 1 remained almost unchanged compared to August 25. The Hispanic viewers dropped by nearly 200K (↓29%): the peak of concurrent viewers was 462K on September 1, and 654K the week before.
The concurrent viewers peak for English-language broadcasts went down by 320K (↓16%), concurrent viewers peak for Portuguese-language broadcasts dropped by 120K (↓6%), and concurrent viewers peak for Russian-language broadcasts dropped by 64K (↓20%).
This factor also affected the Hours Watched for popular Twitch languages (we’ve compared September 1 with August 25):
- English (↓11.7%)
- Spanish (↓34.4%)
- Portuguese (↓15.9%)
- German (↑13.2%)
- French (↑ 0)
- Russian (↓15%)
And all this is because of #ADayOffTwitch?
It’s wrong to say that it's all because of the #ADayOffTwitch. In addition to this boycott, there are other factors that could have affected Twitch's numbers on the first day of Fall 2021. For example, the beginning of the school year in many countries.
Some have argued that the numbers were also affected by the fact that DrLupo and TimTheTatman are not streaming. Both announced this week that they were leaving for YouTube. Preliminarily, we can say that their switching to YouTube didn't have much effect on the Twitch numbers. We will tell you more about this in a near future.
The combination of these factors caused Twitch's concurrent viewers to drop by 12-15% and the number of simultaneous channels to drop by 4-6%.
Did popular streamers support #ADayOffTwitch?
Some of them, yes. For example, American streamer and political speaker Hasan "HasanAbi" Piker (1.5M followers on Twitch). Another American streamer, Asmongold, explained that no one cares about the problem, but he would be happy to participate in the movement if other major streamers would also join.
Several content makers have also suggested that the goal of the “hate raids” organizers is to try to drive black people and LGBTQ+ streamers off the platform, and this #ADayOffTwitch action only contributes to that.
We took all the unique channels that were streaming on September 1 and August 25, and divided them into groups based on Average Viewers. The total number of unique channels from September 1 was 3.6% lower than on August 25 (632.5K vs 656.1K).
|
Group of channels
|
Number of Unique Channels in group
1st September | 25th August
|
% change
|
|
| 0-10 AVG Viewers
|
546 990
|
562 410
|
↓2,74%
|
| 10-100 AVG Viewers
|
73 681
|
81 149
|
↓9,20%
|
| 100-1K AVG Viewers
|
10 275
|
10 926
|
↓5,96%
|
| 1K-5K AVG Viewers
|
1 274
|
1 334
|
↓4,50%
|
| 5K-10K AVG Viewers
|
134
|
145
|
↓7,59%
|
| 10K-100K AVG Viewers
|
90
|
114
|
↓21,05%
|
| 100K+ AVG Viewers
|
1
|
1
|
0%
|
Other streamers who forced the hashtag demanded that Twitch need to hold a roundtable discussion with affected creators to assist with the creation and implementation of more proactive and comprehensive toolsets to combat abuse on their streaming platform. Also they asked Twitch to remove the ability to attach more than three Twitch accounts to an email address.
How has Twitch responded?
The platform acknowledged the problem back in August. Twitch representatives said that their team has been working on various solutions for months, but “hate raids” organizers are coming up with new ways to avoid them.
Already after the boycott, Twitch released recommendations on how to strengthen moderation with "hate raids," while the company is developing new tools to fight with these raids.
Are you a streamer and interested in personal channel stats? Or want to see favorite streamer data? Especially for you, we've released a new subscription type that will provide you with detailed channel analytics, including unique viewers and minutes when viewers left your broadcasts. Read more in this blog.
