After the removal of the original PogChamp emote, the rapid rollout of Twitch’s PogChamp emote rotation was supposed to be a maneuver to turn a bad situation into an inclusive event for Twitch users. It quickly went downhill due to racists harassing Omega ‘Critical Bard’ Jones, the content creator behind one of the first new PogChamp emotes. This leaves the question that marginalized groups continuously have to ask Twitch: what are you doing to protect your content creators from harassment?

After learning about the pro-Capitol violence Twitter comments by Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, Twitch removed the popular PogChamp emote based on the Street Fighter player. They replaced his PogChamp emote with a rotating system that highlights one content creator’s PogChamp emote every 24 hours. It started off well enough, with Reversal’s PogChamp emote rollout on January 10 being a relatively positive experience. But on January 11, it was a completely different story for Critical Bard.

Critical Bard has been killing it in content creation, tabletop RPGs, and vocals while speaking out against racial and gender injustice. His image being selected to represent PogChamp should have been a joyous occasion. Instead, Twitch’s announcement was immediately bombarded by racists demanding to bring back the original PogChamp image.

From littering his and Twitch’s Twitter feed with out of context statements responding to racists about White Lives Matter to trolls using his business email to sign him up of various forms of spam—the hatred he’s received has been downright disgusting. They’ve messaged him on his personal Facebook account, one White, trans woman going so far as to say she hates all Black people because of him (she knows damn well that hate was in her heart before him. She just needed an excuse). Unfortunately for him, “expected the racism” but “not the chaos that followed.” It’s something many, if not most, Black content creators know first hand.

Following Critical Bard’s PogChamp emote debut was the amazing and incomparable queen, Deere. While her PogChamp emote was also met with vitriol, she, too, knew what she was in for. The hate both Critical Bard and Deere received are not the first instances and certainly won’t be the last. But Twitch has a serious problem with white users feeling as if content creators of marginalized groups are taking something from them.

Twitch Issues the Same “Diversity and Stuff” Statement on Harassment

Twitch’s response was to rollout the same “Twitch is home to creators and fans of all backgrounds…we believe in diversity…we’ll continue to take action…” statement.

Twitch is the number one live streaming platform, home to a diverse array of people. And somehow, they still have not worked out a way to protect or at least minimize harassment on their platform. They are reactionary, not proactive. While they will listen to content creators in removing a person who is toxic, they are still deaf when it comes to listening to the ideas of marginalized groups in implementing real changes to protect their most vulnerable users.

While espousing they welcome diversity and repeatedly having to make statements telling their users that hatred has no place on Twitch, their actions are still limited because they do not want to alienate their biggest demographic, white males, who also happen to make up the majority of harassers on the streaming platform. Their inaction continues to make marginalized users feel less safe on their platform.

Suggestions for Protecting Content Creators on Twitch

Twitch users have been giving suggestions to Twitch that would better protect their content creators and users. If Twitch is serious about taking action and being proactive, they can actually listen to content creators who are on the receiving end of harassment about how to make Twitch a more secure platform for all their users. Here are a few suggestions that definitely need to be looked at:

• Adopt a “Zero tolerance” policy for racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and harassment. IP ban for people who have been banned multiple times and reported for making various accounts to harass people.

• Have a better name vetting process at account creation and name-change. There’s no reason that, in 2021 1h8n1g3rz should be getting through to mine or anyone else’s channel to harass folk.

• Twitch should coordinate with the person behind the ‘PogChamp of the Day’ emote and have Twitch moderators in their chat for the day that their emote is active.

• Have a better understanding of what racism, sexism, and homophobia, are so that they can better explain why a user’s behavior is unacceptable. Because honestly, some of these people are really ignorant.

• Get rid of the “appeal your ban” function. It actually gives people another avenue to harass content creators.

There are a lot more suggestions out there that could really benefit Twitch users. It just takes Twitch to listen. There will be a Creator Camp on January 21 to talk about the upcoming changes. Hopefully, users will be able ask questions and offer suggestions on improving the platform to make it safer for all.