Twitch files lawsuit against two users responsible for targeting and harassing Black and LGBTQIA+ streamers 

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On Thursday, September 9th, Twitch filed a lawsuit in US District Court for the Northern District of California against two users for violations of terms of services. The users CruzzControl and Creatine Overdose are accused of spamming the chats and comments of black and LGBTQIA+ streamers with racist and homophobic hate speech. Thousands of streamers have been targeting in these ‘hate raids’.

The two accounts are believed to have used bot software to spam channels with hundreds of hate comments within minutes, forcing some users to suspend streaming. Twitch alleges the account CruzzControl operated nearly 3,000 bots in recent hate raids. The two accounts were initially suspended after complaints filed against them before permanently banning their accounts.

The lawsuit follows one week after Twitch users initiated a boycott on the streaming platform over hate speech, using the hashtags #ADayOffTwitch and #DoBetterTwitch. Thousands of users banded together for a one day boycott of Twitch to pressure the streaming platform to take action against recent hate raids. In response, Twitch banned thousands of accounts using hate speech and created new chat filters to block slurs and racist, homophobic and bigoted language from entering chats and comments.