In April 2021, the official Twitch Support Twitter account tweeted, "We have been monitoring the rise of fake engagement on Twitch and have identified 7.5MM+ accounts that break our TOS by follow-botting and view-botting. Twitch has been proactive in monitoring fake engagement. They will never make an audience, never chat in a channel, never subscribe, and indeed rarely, if ever, view the streams. They simply lend their name in return for money. The main difference between a human fake follower and a genuine one is that the fake follower takes no interest in your streams. Often, they will work with companies specializing in selling fake followers who usually follow hundreds or even thousands of streams. Sometimes the fake followers are real people who have willingly agreed to follow streams in return for payment. They attempt to look as 'real' as possible while following the target account en masse. With follow-botting, a channel is followed by multiple fake accounts, usually controlled by a computer or script. If you report a channel for view-botting, make sure you have evidence. Twitch stresses that just because a channel has its view count artificially inflated, it does not necessarily mean the channel owner is behind it. It is sometimes accompanied by chat activity bots, which attempt to imitate streamer/viewer interaction. Scammers use illegitimate scripts or tools to make the channel appear to have more concurrent viewers than it actually does. View-botting involves artificially inflating a live view count. Fake followers don't contribute to a healthy, highly engaged community. The problem with artificial engagement and botting is that they limit growth opportunities for legitimate broadcasters and damage the community as a whole. Twitch has identified several types of fake engagement, often from fake followers. Twitch looks at multiple factors when it determines stream order on the screen, and artificially inflated follower numbers have little positive impact. However, things are more complex than this, and merely increasing your follower numbers will not necessarily boost you up the page on Twitch, increasing your visibility. Ironically, many believe that Twitch's algorithm encourages people to buy fake followers, as it rewards those streamers with higher follower numbers. This can be particularly so for those who play the most popular games and find the sheer numbers offering competing streams overwhelming. People buy fake Twitch followers because they perceive it as being too challenging to build their Twitch following naturally. These "followers" can be either real humans prepared to take money for their follower status or bots, completely artificial computer-based followers.Īs with other networks, many of the companies selling these "followers" rely on Twitch streamers not knowing the implications of making a purchase. You will find companies offering to sell Twitch followers if you do a Google search. Many Channels Suffer From Fake Twitch Engagement Join the Largest Community of Influencers