Twitch made a new page for Ninja, accidentally suggested porn - The UpStream

At the beginning of the month, popular Twitch streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins announced that he would be leaving his home of 8 years on Twitch to exclusively stream on Microsoft's Mixer platform. He was streaming the next day on Mixer, leaving his Twitch channel offline for the first time in a while. Ninja did a great job of keeping the transition smooth and professional, never saying anything bad about his former home because he had nothing negative to say. He had been happy on Twitch, but Microsoft made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

Twitch, on the other hand, did not treat the situation with the same level of professionalism. Unlike other channels, whose page shows previous streams and the ongoing chat for the user, Twitch changed Ninja's offline profile to promote other channels. The page showed the most popular active streams under the "Fortnite" category, which is the game that made Ninja a household name.

While that is already disrespectful to Ninja and his fans, what came next was worse. The top suggested stream listed on Ninja's page at one point was pron. It is important to remember that many of Ninja's biggest fans are children, making this even more disturbing. In response, Ninja tweeted out a video apology for a situation that he did not create, saying,

We haven't said anything bad or negative about Twitch, obviously, because there really hadn't been any reason to. Over the past couple of days there have been some things that have been going on that, you know, we let slide. They were kind of annoying. Little jabs, we felt like, but it didn't matter. We wanted to stay professional. But now, 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. And there are also other streamers who have signed with other platforms whose stream and channel still remains the same. You can see their VODs, they don't promote other streams, they don't promote other popular channels. But they do on mine. I've been streaming for eight years to build my brand and build that channel: 14.5 million followers. And they were still using my channel to promote other streamers.

He goes on to discuss the porn incident, apologizing for the incident, and showing his frustration because he has no say in what is being shown attached to his name. Shortly after, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear sent his own series of tweets discussing the incident, stating,

Our community comes to Twitch looking for live content. 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 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.

We have also suspended these recommendations while we investigate how this content came to be promoted.

On a more personal note, I apologize want to apologize directly to @ninja that this happened. It wasn't our intent, but it should not have happened. No excuses.

Since the incident, Twitch has reverted Ninja's channel to a standard offline page, but it has brought up a long-standing issue with Twitch regarding their inconsistent rules enforcement. While there is an explicit content policy, it tends to apply less to popular female channels than it does to others. But, as Ninja points out,

his wouldn't even have been an issue if they didn't use my channel to promote others in the first place...