Daniel Clancy

Twitch CEO
Wednesday 7:00 to 10: 00pm Pacific time

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

There has been a lot of discussion and questions from the Twitch community recently — about viewbotting, discovery, and more. I will be going live on Thursday at 4pm PDT from my channel https://t.co/RvFw7iMABT to talk about some of these issues and answer questions.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

A number of streamers have suggested that embeds are the primary viewbot vector. While this is an attack vector we monitor, embeds only account for 0.37% of total hours watched on Twitch and are not the primary source of the problem today. We have policies around embed usage and actively detect and take action against sites that violate them and will continue looking at ways to address this attack vector.

[Pirate Software @PirateSoftware]

The more I see the public discourse on this the less it all makes sense.

If Twitch can identify viewbots through historical data then why can't they strip only viewbots instead of just apply an arbitrary cap on views overall?

It's because they can't.

The viewbots people use today are primarily done through embedded traffic on third party sites. Distributed over many different areas and routed back to the channel. That means it's real people, real traffic, and real websites but the stream is in the corner as an ad or hidden as a single pixel. This still counts as a viewer and inflates the channels numbers.

The view capping they are planning doesn't actually fix the issue and it will likely paint targets on streamers backs. If someone gets capped it will be seen as "proof" of view botting even if it was someone else trying to hit that streamer. We already see tons of people using third party browser plugins and starting witch hunts over flimsy data thinking viewers are bots. This just makes it "official".

The real issue here is embeds over anything else. If you want to do actual damage to view botting then kill off embeds and shift everything back to user traffic in-site. From there you can actually fight this behavior instead of using blanket methods like this.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

@LegionTree_YT @SuperSweetLucas Not the case. Ad block does create some messiness when the ad is running but we try to adjust for this to handle it but it is not always perfect

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

Sorry the comment was misunderstood. I completely agree that lurkers a critical and important part of Twitch and said that during the stream and many other times. I lurk all the time. I said I did not love the term because outsid of the twitch and online context some people view the term negatively and that is why I prefer people who don't chat. Sounds like we are in agreement.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

Just to clarify I did not say anything negative about lurkers. In fact I said they were a valuable and critical part of Twitch. I said I sometimes I don't love the term because some outside of Twitch and the Internet the term can have a negative meaning to some people. I said I prefer the term people who don't chat. Sorry about the misunderstanding. Keep on lurking:)

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

@KyleCoroneos @WGTD_Tracer I heard the title song and at first I thought this was an unreleased Tyler Childers track that I was hearing for the first time

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

@bradluttrell It is such a great album by Emily Scott Robinson. I'm glad you highlighted it. There are some great songs on there and many are particularly timely

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

Twitch failed in our response to the assault of Emiru at 2025 TwitchCon San Diego, and in particular, I failed to communicate clearly in talking about the incident afterwards during an interview. I do not believe, and in no way intended to suggest that Emiru had any responsibility whatsoever for the incident at TwitchCon.

I have a great deal of empathy for what creators such as Emiru have to deal with every day; I was trying to express that, and I did that poorly. I am sorry I let you down, Emiru, and I am sorry Twitch let you down.

We appreciate all that you have done over the years on Twitch and we are committed to continuing to improve our TwitchCon security, processes and communications so that we can show up better for you (and all of our creators) moving forward.

[Twitch @Twitch]

We wanted to follow up on the post we recently made about a security incident at TwitchCon San Diego. As many of you know, at the 2025 TwitchCon San Diego event, one of our valued creators, Emiru, was assaulted by an attendee during a meet-and-greet event.

Although Twitch works very hard to try to keep TwitchCon attendees safe and to prevent incidents like this from happening, we failed to do both things in this case - to keep Emiru safe and to prevent the assault from happening. We deeply regret the distress we caused for Emiru, our other creators, and the entire community.

In recognition of Emiru’s advocacy, Twitch will be making a donation to support non-profit organizations working to prevent sexual violence. More details on that to follow soon.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

Big congrats to @plaqueboymax along with @Skepta and @fredagainagain1 Well deserved

[Twitch @Twitch]

Get Max his Grammy 🗣️🏆

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

@alyssajeanaf Congrats

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

@maduhlinnn Congrats

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

@NekoUnix Neko Unix. Just wanted to respond quickly. Don't know who you talked to but this is simply not true. We do not flag lurkers as bots and the statement about subscriptions is also emphatically not true. Again not sure where you heard this but this is not how the system works.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

We’ve seen a couple of comments about how our systems detect inauthentic views that aren’t accurate, and so I want to clarify a few things.

As I said in my original post, it is important to understand that the technology that we use to detect invalid traffic for ads is separate from what we use for computing ACCV. Viewbots are just one form of invalid traffic. Advertisers are not charged for invalid impressions and creators do not get paid out for any of these impressions.

Now you may ask, "why are there two systems"? The reason is that it is harder to detect viewbots in real time. There are a number of different signals that we can use after the fact to detect invalid traffic for advertising that are harder to use for real time detection. As we filter out bots in real time, we need to be sure we are not filtering out real viewers. In fact, the viewbot detection tools we just rolled out went through a lot of edits. In an earlier version, as we dug deeper, we found that the tool was being overly aggressive and not counting valid traffic from various sources. So, we worked to narrow the scope of the change. As we have said, we are rolling out the update gradually right now so that we can monitor it and make sure there are not any issues or mistakes.

The second point I want to make is around enforcement actions. Taking enforcement action against viewbots is complicated, as it can be difficult to conclusively determine if an individual streamer is responsible for the viewbots on their channel. Now, I do expect that most of the viewbotting that we see on channels is being driven by the channel owner. However if we were to suspend someone for viewbotting, then the easiest way to attack someone on Twitch and get them suspended would be to send viewbots their way. What we can do – with a lot more precision – is identify the viewbots themselves. That is what we work hard to detect and remove from Twitch.

Viewbotting is not unique to Twitch and in fact is a problem across social media. While historically, we've been able to address this problem for advertisers on Twitch, viewbotting was still a challenge for direct sponsorships. We rolled out these updates, in part, to address the direct sponsorships issue.

We’re talking openly about the changes we’re making because we think it is an important conversation. I have seen some numbers shared on social media about the number of top creators that are viewbotting and I can tell you that those numbers are just flat out wrong. I don’t know when or how they did their study, but the numbers they shared do not reflect what we see on the service.

This is an ongoing challenge for the broader social media industry, and we are focused on building solutions and improving our detection tools, as we did this week.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

As highlighted in this recent Twitch Support tweet, we just updated some of the code that we use to detect and eliminate viewbots. I wanted to quickly follow up on a few key points regarding the recent update to our viewbot detection.

First, I want to be very clear that we always try to detect and eliminate viewbots. However, doing this in a manner that does not eliminate real viewers can be tricky. While I know for some of you it has been frustrating, we wanted to take our time to make sure we were not inadvertently filtering out real users.

Second, I wanted to highlight that bots come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes streamers may be actively working with third parties to inflate their numbers. In other cases, the bots may be used to harass streamers. We don’t want either type, because Average Concurrent Viewers (ACCV) is intended to be a measure of the people that are watching the streamer at any given point in time.

As is always the case, detecting viewbots is a bit of a cat and mouse game as third parties work to avoid our detection. We will continue monitoring and make updates over time to improve our viewbot detection system.

[Twitch Support @TwitchSupport]

A quick update on viewcounts. We have teams and tech dedicated to ensuring that the views that show up on channels reflect actual viewership, and aren’t artificially inflated in any way. Ultimately, metrics on Twitch should represent the real and growing communities that show up and participate on channels, so we regularly update detection tools and methods.

We recently made changes that meaningfully improved our ability to identify viewbots, inauthentic viewership, and other potentially fake engagement. These changes will roll out over the next few weeks.

So, if your channel was viewbotted, or if some of your viewers are artificial or inflated, you will see an impact to your channel’s viewcount. This also means that third party sites that publish unverified Twitch viewcounts are going to see changes to that data over time.

We recognize that viewbotting can be out of the streamer’s control. In making these changes, our goal is to improve the experiences for both streamers and viewers.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

Wanted to quickly respond to your post. First, advertisers on Twitch are not being duped into paying for fake impressions and fake traffic. It is important to understand that the technology that we use to detect invalid traffic for ads is separate from what we use for computing ACCV. Viewbots are one form of invalid traffic. Advertisers are not charged for invalid impressions and creators do not get paid out for these impressions. This is one of the reasons why there’s a delay between when a streamer accrues ad revenue, and when it shows up in the dashboard – we do several checks to ensure the traffic was legitimate.

Now you may ask, "why are there two systems"? The reason is that it is harder to detect viewbots in real time. There are a number of different signals that we can use after the fact to detect invalid traffic for advertising that are harder to use for real time detection. As we filter out bots in real time, we need to be sure we are not filtering out real viewers. In fact, the viewbot detection tools we just rolled out went through a lot of edits. In an earlier version, as we dug deeper, we found that the tool was being overly aggressive and not counting valid traffic from various sources. So, we worked to narrow the scope of the change. As we have said, we are rolling out the update gradually right now so that we can monitor it and make sure there are not any issues or mistakes.

Viewbotting is not unique to Twitch and in fact is a problem across social media. While historically, we've been able to address this problem for advertisers on Twitch, viewbotting was still a challenge for direct sponsorships. We rolled out these updates, in part, to address the direct sponsorships issue.

We’re talking openly about the changes we’re making because we think it is an important conversation. I have seen some numbers shared on social media about the number of top creators that are viewbotting and I can tell you that those numbers are just flat out wrong. I don’t know whenor how they did their study, but the numbers they shared do not reflect what we see on the service.

This is an ongoing challenge for the broader social media industry, and we are focused on building solutions and improving our detection tools, as we did this week.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

Couldn't agree more. Well said A great story teller and songwriter

[Brad Luttrell 🎵 @bradluttrell]

This guy is one of the best professional storytellers I'm aware of right now.

It's Joe Stamm.

He's got both a band (@JoeStammBand ) and some solo work out there. His solo album "Memoirs" was absolutely one of my favorite albums last year. And he just dropped another great one with "Little Crosses" (that one's Joe Stamm Band, if you try to find it).

Songs like "Grandma's Bible," "Learning Lettin' Go" "Forward," "Christmas Spirits" are just elite level songwriting.

If you slow down and think about it, you can learn a lot from songwriters like Joe.

Songs are not just what they decide to put in, it's often what they leave out. Telling a 30 minute story is easy.

Try doing it in 3 minutes. Or sometimes, less ("Learning Lettin' Go").

I'm slowly building up a playlist of great stories in songs. I'll share eventually. Joe's got a place on this playlist, which is much more curated than my mega playlists.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

Excited to be doing my first full on charity stream. I am participating in the @GCXevent Charity Marathon in support of @StJudePlayLIVE and the incredible work being done at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Streaming tonight (Friday July 18th) from 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. PST. Please join me on my Twitch channel https://t.co/3ZMYZOCTEA for an evening of music, conversation, and community — all for a great cause. We'll be joined by some special guests as we come together to raise funds and awareness for children and families who need it most.

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

Excited to be @StJudePLAYLIVE Truly amazing event and partnership

[Daniel Clancy @djclancy999]

Just arriving in Austin for South by Southwest and then will be staying until early April. Should hear lots of great music this week Looking forward to connecting with a lot of the streamers in Austin. Feel free to reach out