Twitch apologises to Ninja for pornography promotion on old channel
Streaming site Twitch has apologised to gaming star Ninja after it emerged that his dormant channel page was used to recommend pornography.
The American Fortnite gamer, whose real name is Tyler Blevins, recently jumped ship from Amazon-owned streaming giant Twitch, to Microsoft’s Mixer platform.
Since leaving at the beginning of August, Ninja’s former streaming space was replaced with recommendations for other channels, a move which he says has only been applied to his channel and not to other people who have decided to leave the platform.
Ninja took to Twitter saying he was “disgusted” to find pornography among the channels being promoted on his former page through the new feature, which Twitch has now suspended.
Disgusted and so sorry. pic.twitter.com/gnUY5Kp52E
— Ninja (@Ninja) August 11, 2019
“There was a porn account that was number one being recommended on my channel and I have no say in any of this stuff,” he said.
“For those who don’t know, if you go to twitch.tv/ninja, they advertise other channels – they don’t do this for anyone else that’s offline by the way, just me.”
Twitch chief executive Emmett Shear has now apologised to the streamer, saying that it is investigating how the “lewd content” came to be promoted.
“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,” Mr Shear said.
“This helps all streamers as it creates new 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.”
Welcome @Ninja to the Mixer Community! We’re hyped to have you!💙 https://t.co/sPeQ6bGdIl
— Mixer (@WatchMixer) August 1, 2019
Since Twitch suspended the recommendation feature, Ninja said: “Twitch has now reverted my channel back to how an offline page should look. Thank you.”
Ninja rose to fame among the gaming community for online broadcasts while playing Fortnite and other video games on Twitch and YouTube, as well as hosting games alongside the likes of rappers Drake and Travis Scott.
Ninja was brought onto Mixer in a bid to take a bigger slice of the ever-growing video game streaming business, which is largely led by Twitch.
Last year, Microsoft reported that it had 10 million monthly users, while Twitch had more than 100 million.
