It would be difficult to argue that Twitch could do with some good old-fashioned competition as they infuriate fans and streamers alike with oppressive policies, ban bizarre words that hurt their feelings, and mete punishments with double-standards that would make Two-Face proud.
Multiple have tried valiantly; Mixer, headed by Microsoft, closed its doors after trying to entice large streamers towards their platforms with multimillion-dollar contracts that failed to consistently generate views as there was no support beneath those large stars.
China has been trying to get into the streaming business as well; it’s lucrative if you can offer a strong service with an ideal environment for people to flock to, then you’re on maintenance to let the service speak for itself while others offer the content.
White supremacist and Trump apologist Nick Fuentes encourages his viewers to kill legislators in his stream last night on DLive, earning $2800 for his effort. Dlive should be held to account for promoting and monetizing this violent rhetoric. pic.twitter.com/Efbq9ly1Bo
— Megan Squire (@MeganSquire0) January 5, 2021
When you’re crafting the platform, you need to be strategic in what you’re offering and whom you are attracting: Voat came about as Reddit was arguably crumbling to outlandish schemes yet eventually began crumbling as Voat was flooded with bad-actors that encouraged bullying and more than a few instances of white supremacy.
Now, this all ties together with the January 6 riots at the United States capitol as many of the rioters are revealed to have been streaming the felonious acts on a relatively new streaming platform (launched in 2017) called DLive; at least nine channels were live-streaming the absolute carnage and destruction of icons of US democracy on the platform while viewers tipped them in ‘Lemons’ which is the bit-like currency of the streaming platform.
https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1347661093598941184
Currently, the front page of DLive features viewers of almost one hundred people – it’s a very small user base, even when compared to less successful platforms such as Facebook Live, but now it has the added flavor of being known as a right-wing hub of despots and insurgents keen to undermine the founding laws of the United States to force the nation to follow their beliefs.
This is coming as Twitter is consistently being disparaged as an ‘un-American platform’ as it bans those encouraging violence, leaving right-wing extremists to shift over to a new app called Parler which is facing removal from all mobile platforms unless they manage to begin moderating their communities to involve fewer death threats.
Steaming platform DLive has banned streamers connected to the Capitol riot, including Nick Fuentes, Baked Alaska (who streamed himself breaking into Congress), and Proud Boy rioter Nick Ochs. DLive was key to some far-right income streams, since they could make money on the site. pic.twitter.com/zXWy9ZFuLd
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) January 9, 2021
While Parler seems to be encouraging the extremism, however, DLive is attempting to take a few steps to mitigate the arguably unsavory demographic, as they announce that they’ve frozen all earnings made by streamers that were vandalizing the offices of Congresspeople until further analysis.
Still, others that have been on the platform are now beginning to leave DLive as they state that DLive appears to readily cater to white-supremacists; DLive has their work cut out for them if they’re looking to cater to more than far-right-wing insurgents.
