Featured Image Credit: Twitch
Topics: Twitch
Twitch has been forced to pull its latest new feature after the streaming service's front page was almost immediately hit with a deluge of porn.
In October 2021, Twitch started testing out a new feature, called Boost This Stream, that allowed viewers to pay to "boost" a streamer's channel to the front page. The idea was that fans could effectively lend their support to smaller streamers by getting them much greater visibility. And it might have worked, in another life.
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Because the internet will never change, some accounts quickly realised they could use the feature to boost banned and super NSFW content all the way to the front page - and straight into the eyes of innocent children who just wanted to watch a Minecraft stream.
The salacious content started worming its way onto Twitch's front page around March 30. Full-on videos of men and women having special cuddles started to crop up under the website's recommended category, prompting Twitch users to take to social media to ask what on Earth was going on.
While there was obviously nothing forcing anyone to click on the offending videos, the thumbnails alone were R-rated enough. Certainly not the kind of thing anyone expects or wants to see on Twitch's homepage - least of all Twitch.
Speaking to Kotaku, a spokesperson for the Amazon-owned streaming service confirmed that the boost feature has been suspended and that Twitch will be going back to the drawing board as it attempts to find a way to promote smaller streamers that doesn't end in a flood of genitalia.
“We’ve decided to pause Boost Train due to some safety considerations that came up through the experiment,” the spokesperson explained. “Our experiments help us learn and make even better tools for the community, and we’re using the feedback from this experiment to inform how we approach future launches. We’ll share additional updates with our community around new features to help improve discoverability, as available. Sexually explicit content—including pornography—is not allowed on Twitch, per our community guidelines.”