If you are a streamer on Twitch, then you probably take your channel growth seriously. And a serious threat to your broadcasting career is what is commonly called view bots.

We’ll discuss the ways to spot view bots on your channel. Then provide you with the steps on how to get rid of them.

And when your done check out our other Twitch guides:

What Is Fake Engagement?

Since channels on Twitch rely heavily on the number of their viewers and engagements, it can really be tempting to increase these stats in any manner possible.

An unsavory method that Twitch frowns upon is procuring fake engagements. This is the artificial inflation of a channel’s views or follows. The channel statistics are manipulated to increase the number of viewers and followers, not by people’s genuine interaction.

These services that offer fake engagement rent out a certain number of bots to add to concurrent channel viewers. In short, the engagement that a channel gets is fake and certainly not organic.

What Is View-Botting?

When a channel tries to artificially increase viewership, this is called view-botting. Third-party tools, services, and/or scripts are usually utilized to manipulate the number of concurrent viewers, making it look like a channel has more viewers than they really have. These Twitch bot viewers add to the stats without anyone noticing any anomalies.

In addition to that, some bot scripts are also programmed to join the chat. This action will make it look like the bots are legitimate users that also add to the interaction on the channel.

It is not easy to spot these bots, as they were programmed to act like real users. But once Twitch discovers that a channel is guilty of employing them, the broadcaster could get banned on the platform.

What Is Follow-Botting?

Another way to manipulate a channel’s stats is through follow-botting. As the name suggests, the number of followers is increased in this unscrupulous scheme.

How this happens is a computer or a script creates and controls fake accounts on the site. These Twitch follow bot accounts are then made to follow a channel in huge numbers. This will cause a spike in the number of followers of a broadcaster.

Bot accounts are generally not a sustainable way of gaining followers. These fake accounts are usually removed in batches, which will cause a big drop in the channel’s follower count.

How to Know If You Are Being View-Botted?

Twitch metes out heavy punishment to violators of their site rules and policies. The platform highly values its community and takes the job of keeping it safe and healthy very seriously. And the use of bots to falsify stats is a direct violation. You can get suspended indefinitely or, even worse, banned from Twitch.

Being botted can be scary. But, if you’re not the one who perpetrated the botting, then you have nothing to worry about. You will not get punished for someone else’s actions.

The presence of bots on the platform is still unhealthy. It can impede a channel’s natural growth opportunities.

So, if you want to make sure that you don’t become a victim of botting, then here are the signs that you should look out for:

  • While you are streaming, you may notice that the number of viewers and/or followers on your broadcast has soared to hundreds or even thousands in number. If you are not doing a special event or no one is raiding or hosting you, then this is most likely bots boosting your audience count.
  • Though you have tons of viewers currently watching, there aren’t a lot of messages sent in the chat. The viewer count is then suspicious and might just be filled with bots.
  • You get generic messages in chat like “great stream!” And when you try to interact with them, they don’t respond accordingly. This would definitely feel off, and you should already know that they are just bot accounts.
  • As you will also notice, the usernames of fake accounts are not exactly creative, so to speak. If you find users in your chat with names followed by numbers like susan001 or joe01, then these are most likely bot accounts.
  • If you have suspect accounts, you can check out those accounts to see who else they are following. If those accounts follow the same small channel, then your guess is probably correct. These are fake accounts that are used to populate live broadcasts and pad channel numbers. 

How to Get Rid of View Bots on Twitch?

Now that you know how to detect if you are being view-botted, here are the next steps that you can take to protect your channel. Once you are positive of the presence of bots on your stream, follow these steps:

  • An important thing to remember is to stay calm and don’t panic. You may be botted, but you won’t have to suffer the consequences. Keep the stream pleasant for your audience.
  • Inform your viewers about the situation. Assure them that you will take care of the matter and, more importantly, that you’ll be back. Their viewing experience will be interrupted for a while, but people are understanding and will be supportive of you.
  • You will have to stop your stream and set your status to “Not Playing.” This will signal the bots to drop from your stream and find another streamer. You may resume your broadcast after a few minutes.
  • You can also stop the bot accounts that are spamming your chat by banning the words that they constantly use. Since these chatbots are pre-programmed, they can’t just change their messages to spam you again. The controller will probably give up trolling you and find another victim.
  • Report people who are offering you bot services. Screenshot any damning information to send as proof.

In Summary

Keep your channel safe and clean of bots. Follow the simple guidelines we’ve discussed to maintain a healthy channel for your community.

Legitimate broadcasters get real channel growth by getting organic Twitch followers.

Comments are closed.