Twitch’s Botched “Experiment” Advertises Porn on Ninja’s Channel

The Twitch and Ninja situation continues to escalate after pornographic content is promoted on Ninja’s channel.

After Tyler “Ninja” Blevins announced his exclusive streaming partnership with Microsoft’s Mixer, his old channel was to remain on Twitch, no longer active, but still accessible. Originally, offline streamer pages operate similarly to YouTube as viewers can watch old videos and clips on the site, as well as view any streamer that is being hosted on that channel. After Ninja’s grand rise and departure, Twitch was left wondering what to do with the audience that was left.

Twitch was quick to respond to the move by quickly removing his partner checkmark. And, in an unprecedented “experiment,” changing his now-defunct page into a page that recommends other Fortnite streamers on the platform.

1/ 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.

— Emmett Shear (@eshear) August 11, 2019

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear has supported this move initially saying the move was 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.

Ninja’s Twitch channel was prime real estate for the waning audience that was to remain on Twitch. By doing this, Twitch is able to further incentivize Ninja’s fanbase to seek out other content on the platform, rather than fully jumping ship to support Ninja.

Disgusted and so sorry. pic.twitter.com/gnUY5Kp52E

— Ninja (@Ninja) August 11, 2019

“They don’t do this for anyone else that’s offline by the way, just me,” Ninja said. “And there are also other streamers who have signed with other platforms who stream and [their] channels still remain 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.”

someone streamed porn including Minecraft and Fortnite porn to close to 20,000 viewers as the number one stream on Twitch for over two hours this morning without getting banned and all i have to say is

nice pic.twitter.com/IXRUx9yQu0

— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) August 11, 2019

Unfortunately, a pornagraphic channel was also able to get to the top of recommended channels, thereby inexplicably linking Ninja to this NSFW content. Ninja has said that he and his team have been getting the channel taken down or not having his brand diminished any further than Twitch has already done, inadvertent or not.

Twitch has since reverted the experiment entirely, changing the offline channel back to its original format. They also apologized to Ninja and anyone that viewed the pornographic content via Twitch’s automated recommendations.

4/ 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.

— Emmett Shear (@eshear) August 11, 2019

Credit: Rudolf Baldovino