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Reddit initially responded to user complaints by leaning in to its reputation as a bastion for free speech. (Reddit says /r/NoNewNormal, a large subreddit skeptical of scientifically proven Covid treatments, instigated about 80 of these brigades over 30 days.) These communities have also been known to brigade other subreddits, meaning members would hop into other subreddits and spam them with falsehoods about the anti-parasite drug ivermectin or the effectiveness of vaccines. Some demanded that Reddit remove communities dealing in phony information on Covid prevention and vaccination. They switched their subreddits to private and posted messages accusing Reddit of failing to enforce policies against misinformation. Over the past week, moderators on dozens of subreddits, some of them with millions of subscribers, coordinated a blackout to protest the platform’s admittance of Covid disinformation. On Reddit, users frustrated with the company’s policies are also getting what they asked for. Soon after, Twitch acknowledged the problem, tweeting on August 11 that “we know we need to do more to address these issues.” The company added that they were able to “identify a vulnerability” in its filter system and rolled out an update to more comprehensively identify hate speech. Last month Raven launched the hashtag #TwitchDoBetter to pressure Twitch to prevent the bot accounts from harassing them. While hate raids have been a perennial issue on Twitch, the problem has dramatically escalated over the past month.
Over the past month, trolls and their bots have regularly entered Raven’s Twitch channel and filled their chat with derogatory language, including messages like, “This channel now belongs to the KKK.” Harassers have targeted and published Black streamers’ addresses and personal information, too, leading to reported incidents of doxing. Raven, who goes by RekItRaven on Twitch, helped lead Wednesday’s #ADayOffTwitch initiative in response to an epidemic of harassment on the platform known as hate raids-a huge, often coordinated bot attack that floods streamers’ text chats with bigoted vitriol.