Less than two weeks after gaming star Ninja left Twitch to start a new channel at Mixer, his old platform has been playing dirty. And Ninja ripped Twitch for the NSFW recommendation.
On Sunday, Ninja tweeted a video to his 4.7 million followers in which he laid out his frustration that Twitch had allowed his old page to link out to porn.
In his tweet, Ninja, whose real name is Tyler Blevins, wrote he was “disgusted and so sorry.” He explained on the video that the transition from Twitch to Mixer had been smooth and that he previously had no reason to bash the platform where he had become a streaming superstar.
But he said he had been annoyed that Twitch used his old page to promote other channels, something Ninja said he had never seen before with an inactive channel. Previously if you had gone to Ninja’s page, it read, “The streamer you’re looking for is in another castle,” with links to other streamers’ channels on Twitch. Still, Ninja—who had nearly 15 million followers on Twitch—said he was “going to let that slide” even though he said it felt like Twitch was hitting him with “little jabs” because the platform was upset that Ninja had left.
Yet, the porn link crossed the line with him.
“I’ve been streaming for eight years to build my brand and build that channel,” Ninja said. “They were still using my channel to promote other streams. But now, there’s a porn account that was No. 1 in the recommended on my channel. I have no say in any of this stuff. This is the line. This is the straw. … For anyone who saw that or anyone whose kids … obviously didn’t want to see that, I apologize. I’m sorry.”
Disgusted and so sorry. pic.twitter.com/gnUY5Kp52E
— Ninja (@Ninja) August 11, 2019
Here’s what Ninja’s Twitch page looked like if you clicked on it this weekend.
https://twitter.com/JoshPescatore/status/1160621557603033088
Twitch CEO Emmett Shear apologized for the snafu—which was the least he could do considering a child who happened upon Ninja’s page could have seen that NSFW content.
“Our community comes to Twitch looking for live content,” Shear wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “To help ensure they find great, live channels we’ve been experimenting with showing recommended content across Twitch, including on streamer’s pages that are offline. This helps all streamers as it creates news community connections. However, the lewd content that appeared on the @ninja offline channel page grossly violates our terms of service, and we’ve permanently suspended the account in question.
“We have also suspended these recommendations while we investigate how this content came to be promoted. On a more personal note, I … want to apologize directly to @ninja that this happened. It wasn’t our intent, but it should not have happened. No excuses.”
Since Ninja called out the site, his old channel has reverted to looking like any other Twitch page that shows Ninja’s old videos on demand, clips, and chatbox. As of this writing, there were no links to any porn channels.
READ MORE
- Ninja is leaving Twitch for Mixer, Microsoft’s streaming platform
- How the women of Twitch put up with the bullsh*t
- Twitch says breastfeeding is allowed on its streams
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