Viewbots on twitch

On June 03 2014 05:44 AlternativeEgo wrote:
That "detector" thingy claimed that only 160 of the 13k viewers were legit with when Snute and MC duked it out in the IEM qualifier produced by ESL and casted by Apollo and Kaelaris. I call bullshit

On June 03 2014 05:47 Nighttiger wrote:
Viewbots do not add to ad revenue. So that is not the problem.

The main issue is just that viewbots can trick people into watching a stream and those real viewers DO contribute to ad revenue. Those real viewers might also sub/donate to a subpar stream.

It's also seen as an unfair advantage to be able to attract viewers easily because viewbots make a stream look popular. It bypasses the slow buildup of viewers new streamers experience (assuming they ever get any viewers at all!) For someone just switching between random streams, seeing a stream with lots of viewers naturally causes the viewer to have a higher chance of switching to it.

On June 03 2014 06:02 bosshd wrote:
I see alot noobs viewbot, even subs i think this is more wide spread and then people might actualy think. its a shame. If someone viewbots u should go offline. I try get featured. and a noob botted me so i went offline. i just be myself and get viewers auto when i do funny stuff. wintersc dunno about that guy, but would be suprezid here alot about this i do not name & shame so i'm not going to respond on this. Hope they add securiry in future.

On June 03 2014 05:41 looknohands119 wrote:





Okay, let’s get a few things straight.

First of all, view-botting is done by a number of external services and it is explicitly against Twitch.TV’s Terms of Service.

Second, just because a channel has viewbots on it does NOT mean that the broadcaster is intentionally botting. There are two other common things that may be the cause instead. Sometimes, other random watchers pay to have their favorite streamer botted or they do it to troll streamers they do not like. It is also common practice for botting companies to bot random streams in order to obscure who is and isn’t paying for their services. In either case, the streamer being botted is the victim rather than the perpetrator.

Third, Winter has neither been intentionally botting nor are a large percentage of his viewers bots. Like every stream, he does from time to time end up with a small number of bots in his audience. However, the percentage of his viewership that is the result of bots is HIGHLY likely to be low given chat speed and username percentage comparisons to other big streamers (eg. its relatively easy to prove that he doesn’t have any larger percentage of bots as viewers than Stephano, iNcontroL, or Demuslim, on average). Winter also did not get his viewers overnight. He built them relatively slowly and although his growth accelerated around 6 months ago, its taken him that long just to gain ~2,000 average viewers (which relative to the rest of Twitch isn’t even that big of a leap). This stuff isn’t hard to understand or observe.

TLDR; Get yo facts straight before posting next time!

On June 03 2014 06:06 Thorakh wrote:
Yeah but you have to realise that some broadcaster get viewbotted instead of viewbotting themselves. It isn't as clear cut as simply banning every channel that has viewbotting going on. Don't like a streamer? Viewbot him and he'll be banned!

On June 03 2014 05:44 AlternativeEgo wrote:
That "detector" thingy claimed that only 160 of the 13k viewers were legit with when Snute and MC duked it out in the IEM qualifier produced by ESL and casted by Apollo and Kaelaris. I call bullshit

On June 03 2014 05:47 Nighttiger wrote:
Those real viewers might also sub/donate to a subpar stream.

On June 03 2014 08:08 warthog wrote:
hm, LoL wasnt that popular after all then

On June 03 2014 08:51 magicmUnky wrote:
I suspect that watching an embedded twitch stream will appear as a viewbot might to that viewbot detector (the detector just compares the advertised stream viewer count with the stream chat population). That'd explain things like the ESL viewer number discrepancy.

On June 03 2014 10:26 LaNague wrote:
well, if viewbots dont mess with the money side, then the obvious solution is to sort the streams differently if they become a permanent problem.

You can make the default sort "by subscriptions" for example, or twitch sorts with whatever algorithm they come up with.


then the bots become useless.



And at some point someone needs to start claning up the internet from all those infected hardware that is used for spam bots, social media bots and those ddos attacks.

On July 16 2014 22:51 eightym wrote:
The reason people think WinterSC viewbots is because the people who post in the forums are generally higher level players (at least plat). Most of us are not impressed with the content that Winter provides. He's zerg so watching him play offrace is quite painful. People think, "there's no way anyone finds this crap educational." But I think the fact of the matter is, there's more bronze scrubs out there than we realize. You'll never find someone good watching his stream, though. Anyone masters or above would consider his stream garbage.

On July 16 2014 22:51 eightym wrote:
The reason people think WinterSC viewbots is because the people who post in the forums are generally higher level players (at least plat). Most of us are not impressed with the content that Winter provides. He's zerg so watching him play offrace is quite painful. People think, "there's no way anyone finds this crap educational." But I think the fact of the matter is, there's more bronze scrubs out there than we realize. You'll never find someone good watching his stream, though. Anyone masters or above would consider his stream garbage.

On July 17 2014 01:46 eightym wrote:
The argument that someone else is botting winter is nonsense. If that were so, he wouldn't start out at 2000+ every time he streams. There's no reason someone would be motivated enough to assume that responsibility 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Especially when viewbots help him.

Unless they want to get him removed - They would have plenty of motive.

The only two valid possibilities are that he is viewbotting himself, or the viewers are valid. If the viewers are valid, he's literally the only streamer I have ever seen that immediately jumps to 2,000+ viewers the moment he streams. Even Stephano, Demuslim, TLO, Destiny, etc (i.e. actual popular streamers) start out at a hundred or so, and gradually work their way up to 2,000+

Winter played the system and he played it well. Props to him. I hope Twitch.tv creates some sort of algorithm like Google's PageRank to eliminate these cheaters. Just something to eliminate how easy it is to game the system.

Winter plays it very well, and can say "It was not me" and others are doing such out of spite.

People automatically watch the person who has the most views. Viewbots steal viewers from the streamers who deserve to be on top.

There's no way to prove that he is viewbotting until twitch makes their viewcount algorithm more strict and we can see him drop to, at most, 800 viewers/day.

On July 29 2014 23:39 scott31337 wrote:
WinterStarcraft 3365

"chatter_count": 889

http://tmi.twitch.tv/group/user/zlfreebird/

MarineKing 741

"chatter_count": 457

http://tmi.twitch.tv/group/user/marinekingprime

Mmm hmmm...

On July 30 2014 01:24 Socup wrote:
I find the moaning and reasoning behind the anti-viewbot stance suspect. I think it amounts to nothing in the end. For starters, you can't "trick" people into watching a sub par stream (do they have no free will?), unless those people are bandwagoners who don't know anything about the stream and dont actually care.

If a stream sucks for one reason or another, people WILL leave to find a different one, whether bots are giving it extra viewers or not. Bots might be incentive to go to check out if its any good, but people only STAY if it's actually good. Therefore, bots really have minimal, if any, impact on retaining viewers beyond a single day.

I'm actually chuckling a bit at the thought of people actually paying for this service. Talk about fleecing fools.

Case in point, I have watched plenty of twitch streams from TL and for GSLs and have NEVER heard about this Winter character. Noone talks about him. I wasn't even aware of this person's existence until this thread. Clearly the botting didn't draw me in when i use twitch regularly.

On July 31 2014 17:10 Foreverkul wrote:
Big red flag when it comes to Winter in my opinion is how his viewership is unaffected by major events and other streams on top of his relatively dead chat and absurd donations and its always 3000k viewers. Seems highly suspect to me but I obviously can't say if hes viewbotting or not.

On September 15 2014 21:46 dizzy101 wrote:
Why do almost all posters in this thread have 0 or 1 posts? Does TL have POST BOTTERS?!?!

On September 15 2014 21:46 dizzy101 wrote:
Why do almost all posters in this thread have 0 or 1 posts? Does TL have POST BOTTERS?!?!

On September 15 2014 22:36 Yorbon wrote:
When winter's stream wasnt featured yet, i was curious about his stream, as he got 2k viewers without being featured. After watching it for a bit, i found myself tuning in more often, as i quite enjoyed it. While it certainly does seem a lot, i can also understand why people tune in.

Winter can't defend himself against most of these accusations, regardless of him being innocent or not. Statistics on viewer activity in chat or viewer amount/tournament activity correlations are suggestive at best. Given he did not viewbot, how would he be able to prove his viewers are real? How could you explain people tuning in quickly? Answering those questions will lead to kafkaesque situations very quickly.
Some accusations are irrelevant. Some people, according to winter himself, donate quite a bit. He could be lying about it to make people donate. I can certainly see that. However, does that relate to viewbotting? Not necessarily of course. Suppose he does lie about it, does this necessarily say he's viewbotting? No, of course not. It does say he's being dishonest on some points. There might even be a correlation between people lying about donation and people viewbotting, i don't know. But even if that were true, because we're looking at a single case, we still wouldn't be able to say he was based on this argument, making the issue if he's lying or not about his donations irrelevant.

Also, doyougmailbro has quite the case of myopia. "I wouldn't give him money, so nobody would". I wouldn't, you wouldn't, but that doesnt mean nobody would. Using thát as an argument seems immature at best.

I don't know if he's viewbotting or not. It seems suspicious indeed, but i haven't read anything worth debating yet; at least not in this thread.

On June 03 2014 05:27 Vandrad wrote:
So Winter used Viewbots?

Now it makes sense. I'm following the sc2 scene since 2011 and this guy appeared out of nowhere with 2k viewers.

On September 16 2014 07:23 Yorbon wrote:
Like i said, what's happening is indeed suspicious. You can call it shady business, but that alone doesnt amount to anything. What one needs besides that is relevant arguments.

The reason i called you immature, was because you were projecting your own views on the quality of winter's stream unto others. Quoting your post "I doubt anyone is actually donating that much money to his stream. He can fake it by stating any amount he wants since none of it is verified and he likes to keep it that way. Who in the right mind would donate 600 dollars just to watch him stream?" Like i said in my original post, that you think no one would, doesnt actually mean no one would. That's all i referred to regarding you specifically.

Secondly, i never mentioned anything about being ontopic. I actively tried to get the discussion to debating relevant arguments, meaning that they have anything to do with accusations. To make this clearer, let's quote you again:

"I doubt anyone is actually donating that much money to his stream. He can fake it by stating any amount he wants since none of it is verified and he likes to keep it that way. Who in the right mind would donate 600 dollars just to watch him stream? His chat is always dead but the mod is always around to ban people who states specific facts about his channel that he doesn't want people to realize his use with viewbots and donation scams. That's right scams, why does he keep asking people to "give him" money, really he's not that important. Compare his chat with someone who really has 3k viewers, use Hutch for example. Now Hutch is genuine and you can tell by how active his chat is suggesting that he actually has 3k viewers. "

Notice how doubts about the truth on his donations fluently go over to comparing winter to someone named Hutch, who ' actually has 3k viewers'. This at least suggests one thinks there is a relation between the two (just in case: the two being faking donations and viewbotting). I have elaborated on why I think the truth on donations is irrelevant to winter viewbotting. If you agree, then everythings fine. I that case i fell into some suggestive writing. Both of us have some blame in this miscommunication.

I don't care about your experiences in the winter chat. As the thread is on viewbotting, i restricted myself to accusations of viewbotting. I feel your experiences are completely irrelevant to anything i said. If it looks that way, i apologise. And me being a troll or not has nothing to do with anything.
Lastly, I don't really understand how i attacked the op? I was merely reacting to people having an opinion on the legitimacy of winter's stream numbers.

On September 16 2014 06:18 FFGenerations wrote:
a common explanation would be that he has had a lot of people causing trouble talking about viewbots in his channel in the past and a result of that conflict was that he started banning troublemakers and you got lumped with that crowd. like if you make a joke about rape to a rape victim without realising they just got raped you're gonna get in trouble