Hardy Pace

commentary on things.

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

Considering Yuen Ling would be a Chinese name the assumption is not entirely absurd.

But people say the name all sorts of ways I’ve learned and its because “Yingling” the apparently accepted pronunciation makes no fucking sense considering the spelling or the german origin.

[slimzim @jameszimmermann]

Can’t get over Very Smart Person Eric Weinstein (who has a Harvard PhD) repeatedly mispronouncing the beer “Yuengling” and calling it “Chinese-sounding.” Impossible to take anything he said in the interview seriously after this:

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

Very positive initiative.

[Socks Agency @SocksAgency]

We would like to begin to offer free seminars to the public hosted by a range of professionals in the field on things you should learn and be aware of, your first one will be with @deanelazab the date will be June 5th at 5pm EST!

The seminar will include:
Basic terms of contracts all content creators see, and the five biggest traps in there. It describes what to look for, what the red flags are, and how to adjust to your favor. It will also briefly cover the team the creator should build for themselves and what each role does between agent, manager, lawyer and accountant.

one hour of seminar with slides, with 20-30 minutes for free questions after.

These seminars will be hosted on our public discord

[Miann ❤️‍🩹💊 @MiannMusic]

‼️EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT‼️

I got to live one of my dreams of singing in an RPG OST !!! 🥺🎵 Thank you for having me, this was such a fun song to work on!

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

So the streamers can moderate your website for you?

[Zach Bussey 🇨🇦 @zachbussey]

Twitch will launch the ability for creators to self-enforce a view cap if they feel they are being viewbotted.

This would presumably allow the creator to avoid punishment issued by Twitch's detection by proactively self-capping.

[Obake PAM 📦 @obakepam]

I recreated Mustang's song from scratch on stream using only my voice and random shit on my desk ✨

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

these guys are going to grow up to be an absolute menace to the bug population and i can't wait 🪲

[Devin @DevinNash]

Tapping in on the Twitch viewbotting discussion as an actual agency brand advertising executive.

This Twitch post is unlikely to convince any advertisers or streamers that the issue is improving.

Here's how to actually address this problem -

Viewbotting is an engineering and incentives problem disguised as a cultural one. There is no solution to this problem that can ever be achieved via culture change or moderation. People are debating the efficacy of the solution in Twitch’s post when the entire implementation isn’t even relevant.

Given Twitch’s track record, no one should believe Twitch will enforce this “viewer cap” change appropriately even if they did have the proper backend data (and I think they don’t.) They won’t even enforce against popular streamers who have viewbotting programs visible on their screen, streamers who roleplay bringing slaves on their broadcasts and feed them treats, or broadcasters who advocate blatent political violence, and so on.

Many streamers are on their 8th or 9th temporary bans for various TOS-breaking content. No one believes Twitch's intervention via moderation will change anything.

So again it’s a matter of engineering and incentives. I’ll break down each one. But first a productive question to ask. Why does Youtube Live - which now eclipses Twitch’s live viewership by 40% - have nearly no problems with bots and viewbotting?

Well first the engineering problem. Viewbotting gets solved by better detection, pattern recognition, IVT analysis, device fingerprinting, IP patterns, watch-time anomalies, removing off-platform embedding, and other boring backend stuff. As Dan correctly noted, these are things you can’t be public about because they’ll quickly see counterplay from the viewbot services. You just have to lock in and fix it. Google has spent billions of dollars solving this because advertisers don’t like invalid traffic. Their IVT rate now sits at a healthy 11% or so, easily beating competing live services like Tiktok (24%) and Twitch (35%+.)

Twitch hasn’t taken this problem seriously. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Twitch, and no team member has ever communicated to me or any of the agencies I work with about their IVT rates accurately. On the contrary it often feels like they throw raw viewership numbers around in pitch decks and presentations as the REASON to go advertise there. That used to work, but money is getting smarter in digital. Brands correctly care about return on spend and engagement with real people rather than just the perception that there are viewers around.

You need both bravery and expertise in engineering to make massive changes. Twitch actually has phenomenal engineers, many who were brought on by the former CEO to develop the world’s most advanced CDN (content delivery network) from 2015-2022 before Youtube Live recently surpassed it. But I’m not sure the company has the bravery to make real, necessary changes that many commentators on this post have noted must happen. Successfully “fixing” this would represent a 30-35% global drop in viewership for a website already perceived as ailing against its competitors.

To solve the engineering side you just have to apply more of the above technical solutions and spend money and time. Communicate with advertisers, refund us in high IVT events, keep improving your CDN, etc. It’s not a moderation issue, it’s not a viewer cap issue, that’s crowd pandering and will fix nothing. Both advertisers and the community begged for years for attention on this topic, while viewbotters bled us all and collected millions of dollars. Twitch has eroded trust and should just stop making these posts to the public. Users have lost tolerance for the platform and just need to see the actual changes.

The second problem is the incentive problem. Every system to succeed on Twitch is set up based on the number of viewers you have. The entire Partnership/Affiliate pipeline is viewership based. The entire discovery funnel is viewership based. Sponsorships are calculated on CCV per $. And the entire culture of the website is “more viewers = better.” So of course everyone will do anything possible to get more viewers. This not only encourages viewerbotting but also toxic streamer culture (IRL nuisance streamers, etc) because, again, it’s all about the views.

On Youtube Live monetization rewards sustained engagement and overall channel performance. Ads, super chats, channel memberships, etc. Discovery is pushed by an interest-based recommendation algorithm. Viewers will find you because of interest alignment - not because you have the most viewers. Barely anyone viewbots there because there’s no point. Adding viewers won’t help your channel, and Google’s AI/ML will instantly and automatically suppress your channel and shut off your ads.

It is frustrating that the C-Level over at Twitch keep posting about viewbotting as if it’s going to get solved by human moderation. As if Twitch is going to magically have an amazing enforcement team with “the data” that goes after the serial offenders and returns everything to normalcy. This is all solvable, even from where Twitch is now. But you have to make the investments on the engineering/CDN side and just get to work. Everyone is waiting and hoping for these changes.

Twitch’s viewbotting epidemic is a downstream effect of what every major streamer and industry professional told them would happen for years. They didn’t implement discovery engines, they didn’t change the incentive systems, they didn’t invest aggressively against obvious botting cases, and they didn’t communicate. Now they have an existential advertising and creator crisis. You reap what you sow.

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

Exactly the way I read it. This is Twitch pulling up the ladder as a solution.

If you have botted for long enough, you’re good because the historical data is fucked.

[Evanit0 @Evanit0]

This prevents new people from view botting but not current abusers if I’m reading this correctly?

[Evanit0 @Evanit0]

This prevents new people from view botting but not current abusers if I’m reading this correctly?

[ryan 🤿 @scubaryan_]

iShowSpeed reveals that he spoke with YouTube and found out that someone view-botted his Dominican Republic stream, meaning he never actually had 1M+ concurrent viewers

- his real peak was around 300K, so Indonesia still holds his viewership record.

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

I have a theory that mods/superfans realised instead of a few hundred in donos they can make their streamer ‘happier’ by botting/embedding them to the top of the category.

I wouldn’t doubt a lot of it is done without the streamers knowledge but definitely not all of it.

[Mizkif @REALMizkif]

The issue isn't the bot problem Twitch faced in years past. What's actually happening is a far more sophisticated practice top streamers are embedding their streams into third-party websites, sometimes as small as a single pixel.

Every user who visits one of those sites automatically registers as a viewer, regardless of whether they ever intended to watch.

This announcement doesn't address that. It's optics. Twitch is giving the appearance of action while the actual mechanism inflating viewership goes completely untouched because the streamers doing it are too valuable to confront.

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

it is so embarrassingly easy to get me hyped for a 20 year old game

[N_Tys @N_Tys26]

𝐗𝐀𝐑𝐘𝐔 𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐂 𝐏𝐋𝐔𝐒 𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆?

On his latest stream, @Xaryu said he would be visiting Blizzard next week for something he was unable to reveal.

Much of his community suspects this is related to Classic+, with many believing he may be testing what Blizzard is cooking up.

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

goes in my pond, eats all my fish, then stares at me like thanks bro ✌️

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

“man Orwell had an interesting message and I know people love it but it was lacking something”

[Animal Farm: A Cautionary Tail @animalfarmfilm]

The sound (and smell) of freedom. 🤢
See Animal Farm: A Cautionary Tail, in theaters May 1st.
🎟️: https://t.co/I4ovJY0hS9

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

I quite like this. Or more accurately I like the response it created.

The flag being blank means the comments are filled with edits of flags people think it should represent.

However no matter the flag edit the idea of “blindly following a cause/idea” still remains intact.

[📎 @Iithosphere]

new banksy artwork, a man blinded by his flag

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

The DRM from PlayStation is a great example of continuously horrible communication from games companies.

They treat things like digital ownership as a backend tech change that doesn’t deserve patch notes.

You have to read 100s of posts from people forced to play internet detective to have any understanding of how any of this functions.

At some point it seems very intentional.

Have it take longer than the average online attention span to find all the information.

[Moahmed Adel @egycnq]

There’s a lot of confusion right now about the PlayStation 30-day DRM issue People are calling it a random bug or saying it only affects PS Plus games It’s not a bug and it's happening to regular purchases.

I investigated what happen under the hood to see exactly what Sony did Here is the technical breakdown:

First Sony didn't change anything on the console software side the expiration timer has always existed to protect subscription content what changed is how the server issues your .RIF (Rights Information) file the digital license your console uses to verify you own the game.

To test this, I compared the hex data of the .RIF files for the exact same game across two accounts: one bought before March and one bought recently

For the old purchase the End Timestamp offset is set to 7F FF FF FF FF FF FF FF this translates to no expiration date.

For the recent purchase that infinite value is gone the server now actively populates the End Timestamp to expire exactly 30 days out

bottom line sony is simply reusing an existing feature any new digital license you get from Sony's servers now comes with a 30-day check-in requirement baked directly into the license file

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

This isn’t a random guy. He is a freedom of speech and freedom of press giant who is a major source of support in pro-democracy campaigns in Hong Kong since the 1997 handover.

The national security law in 2020 is why I returned to the US from Hong Kong, a previously amazing place. We are seeing the results we’ve been expecting.

Pro-democracy movements in HK have no ability to exist with public support, and even less ability to be funded by like-minded businessmen like Jimmy Lai. A whole city and people blanketed by Chinese control. 23 years and a well timed pandemic is all it took.

Simply writing a tweet like this while I was there was never a brilliant idea. Realizing that was the future of the city made me rethink how great I felt about spending another decade there.

[#FreeJimmyLai @SupportJimmyLai]

After a prolonged trial under Hong Kong’s national security law, Jimmy Lai now faces 20 years in prison. Having already endured years in solitary confinement, he may never walk free again. Democracies worldwide are urging his immediate release. Learn more about his story.

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

Someone is bound to make the most amazing hologram tech out of spite now.

[Variety @Variety]

Charlize Theron says "in 10 years," AI will be able to do Timothée Chalamet’s job as an actor, but it will never be able to replace live performance like ballet:

“Oh, boy, I hope I run into him one day. That was a very reckless comment on an art form, two art forms, that we need to lift up constantly because, yes, they do have a hard time. But in 10 years, AI is going to be able to do Timothée’s job, but it will not be able to replace a person on a stage dancing live.”
https://t.co/gzhJJvlbZ2

[Hardy Pace @hardypace]

third time today ive had to rescue this black racer from drowning itself in my pool

boi just wants to swim

[Keigo @Eggclanker]

Pam is my favorite vtuber #PAMservice