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Twitch CEO apologises to Ninja for pornography recommendation on his old channel

The platform was using the Ninja landing page to push other streams

Twitch CEO apologises to Ninja for pornography recommendation on his old channel

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear has spoken out after pornographic content was promoted via the channel URL previously belonging to Tyler 'Ninja' Blevins.

Last week, Blevins moved from Twitch over to Microsoft-owned platform Mixer, where he'll be streaming exclusively from now on.

Following this, Twitch removed Blevins' channel and old videos from the Twitch.tv/Ninja URL, and instead used it to promote a number of other streamers on the platform. This is a move exclusive to Blevins, not something Twitch does to any other offline channels.

One of the recommended streams that appeared under the URL contained pornographic content. Blevins apologised for the incident on Twitter in a video, stating that he has no say in what Twitch recommends via his channel.

Blevins' wife and manager Jessica also tweeted about the situation, stating that "Tyler has worked so hard to have a brand that’s suitable for all audiences. We have no control of what they’re doing to his Twitch channel which is directly affecting his brand in a bad way."

Ninja's Twitch page is shown promoting other broadcasts

"We've been experimenting"

In response to the incident, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear took to Twitter to apologise for the recommendation.

"We’ve been experimenting with showing recommended content across Twitch, including on streamer’s pages that are offline," Shear wrote.

"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."

Additionally, Twitch has rolled back this experiment and restored Blevins' channel to how it was prior to his departure, leaving all of his vods and past streams available to watch. 

This story was originally published on InfluencerUpdate.biz.

Editor

Danielle Partis is editor of PocketGamer.biz and former editor of InfluencerUpdate.biz. She was named Journalist of the Year at the MCV Women in Games Awards 2019, as well as in the MCV 30 under 30 2020. Prior to Steel Media, she wrote about music and games at Team Rock.