[00:02] think in the world of live streaming, the viewbot problem is the most interesting issue. This is going to be a definitive video on this topic and how prevailent it is and I think how
[00:16] underestimated it is across live streaming platforms. We're going to do a lot of work to kind of explain this so that this is the singular definitive video that you need on view botting. Kind of starting with just like what it
[00:28] don't think that it matters that much. It's like, oh, like, well, you're just cares? And we'll find out why it's so affects the industry that people do this. Uh, and and might cause some
[00:40] serious problems for the industry if it doesn't stop. And I also present a solution to the topic that I think um, nobody has ever really talked about. Uh, that is an actual solution. All right. So, what is viewing? And well, viewing
[00:54] is pretty simple, right? um either through a process of uh IP different browsers and you're you're hiding um the IPs. You basically take list of streams here, a bunch of people that are broadcasting. And you'll see a
[01:10] streams. And this view your account is really important because although websites like Twitch and Kick and live streaming websites like YouTube, although they they they say that like
[01:22] things are recommended for you, you can also sort by viewers or high to low. You'll end up seeing that depending on the settings that you have and the these websites, the viewer count actually matters a huge amount. And the
[01:36] only way to actually get discovered on this in this in any kind of category is when you you click on something, you'll see that the vast majority of these um streams that that show up are even when sorted by recommended are are large
[01:52] viewer broadcasters. And so the smaller broadcasters is is way way harder to get discovered through the uh if um some people are viewing. Uh but more importantly um there's an advertiser problem. So view botting is just simply
[02:06] the process of adding people to a stream. You've, you know, you've got this number and this number says like two is 2,000. Okay? And then you just add um via the process of rotating IPs or different servers.
[02:19] don't know how to view bot, like actually using the technology. They just buy it off of a website uh for for quite a bit of money. And they decide, okay, 4K instead or instead of five viewers, you know, I want 5,000. Okay, so that's
[02:33] basically what Vbuting is. Um, there's another aspect of viewing which a lot of people really don't understand and that's embedding. And embedding is embedding works uh on a website like this is so if you have a live stream
[02:47] like right now um at the time of this filming where we're where uh Kaisenad is doing his mafiaon and it's very popular. It has 140,000 viewers and you can kind of see that it has 140,000 viewers because um it of the chat. the chat is
[03:02] like going so unbearably fast and a lot of people that are viewing they'll have this number will say like 60,000 50,000 and they'll have uh they'll have a chat key way to see um how people are viewing. Now you can game that system.
[03:15] We'll learn about that later but for now um you can see Kaisen's stream. Uh you can see that he probably doesn't need to view bot, but um if somebody else was on website. It could be CNN.com, whatever. And they embed one pixel that is this
[03:31] stream that's that's playing right now. Okay, then oh yeah, he's like in the mock the phone is crazy. Okay, it's crazy content. Well, that single embed for every person that visits that website. Okay. um for every person that
[03:47] website. Okay. um for every person that visits that website of of which is insane. So So like what that basically means is that if you could if
[04:02] you have a popular website you can um essentially view bot infinitely and essentially view bot infinitely and there are notorious people like this. Uh million followers uh that basically constantly view bots is um F Extra Life.
[04:17] And a lot of people in in the community will know this. And the reason why FX is able to view bot is because if you go to uh F Extra Life uh F Extra Life uh on you can see that when the um
[04:32] channels are active, they will be uh they they they they're like a guide try to find information. um about the games they're trying to play and uh whenever the whenever they're streaming. So it appears that they have like 15,000
[04:48] are real cuz they're not actually watching the the stream via the website. view bot that a lot of people don't talk about. Now, in terms of like how easy it is to detect viewbotting, it's very easy to detect. is very easy to detect both
[05:05] from a uh technical standpoint, which we'll see in like a minute, uh but also just like a casual viewer experience type of thing. So, um from like a casual viewer experience, you can you can pull all these sites up and you can see the
[05:21] well, is the chat moving like crazy? Like, what's going on here? Okay, if that if I just can't get over what Kai does on a daily basis, crazy streamer. Okay. Like, are are these chats moving? Is there really does it really look like
[05:35] Is there really does it really look like there's 14,000 um people here? Another really key indicator of this is if you watch the streamer on any regular basis and they decide to switch games, are they people that are fluctuating their
[05:48] viewer count a lot? Because some people will watch a broadcaster and uh and playing. Like say like Shroud for example is known for FPS games. And so you'll see Shroud's view count when he's playing Borderlands 4 is going to climb
[06:03] to about 10 to 10.6K. He'll probably go up to 12K to 14K in the next couple of hours. But if you watch him then stream another game, like lately he's playing playing a lot of Path of Exile 2. His viewership goes to 4 to 6,000 viewers,
[06:17] indicating that he's fluctuating healthfully. A viewbotted streamer, um, they're often too stupid to fluctuate themselves. Viewbot streamers are notoriously dumb. There's there's but there's a couple of smart people that
[06:29] about in a little while. Um that that are part of bigger organizations. But um a legit person like Shroud, you can see his his chat is moving. It's it's very being typed here. So it doesn't look like botted stuff, although it's getting
[06:43] more difficult to tell with LLM and stuff. Um but Shroud is a person I'm extremely confident is not viewing. Um and uh you can look at his chat. You can see it's it's fine. He's doing quite well. He's already up to 13K like I said
[06:56] started playing Borderlands uh Borderlands 4 but was at 4 to 6K all day indicates a pretty healthy person. So you as a viewer can also tell uh if you about it and and you want to have some fun. Um, I had a pretty long form thread
[07:13] uh that I wrote where I uh showed the the methodology that my agency used to be able to detect um viewbotting. And we actually put a bot ourselves uh just one in uh 15,000 of the top Twitch streams and we crawled the uh the the the
[07:28] chatters and we cross compared them AC uh to a bunch of other different uh people and uh we saw that there were the same accounts that were very obviously bonded accounts. like a a aa1 aa a a aaa 2 and all that stuff uh in in these in
[07:44] that to like the the amount of chats that were going there all kinds of different methodology. Um and it was actually hilariously easy to conclude that there are a huge amount of bots on these channels. So you can do everything
[07:56] from uh looking at logged in to logged out users. You can do you can you can uh names that are uh part of bot networks and cross reference them. Um, you can broadcaster tricks. There's all kinds of
[08:10] it actually ends up being pretty easy to detect both on uh like Twitch or Kick's side uh but also on the agency side. Pretty much all of the brand agencies like know who's doing this and why. But who cares what like why does it matter,
[08:23] right? Um like okay, great. Like I've seen a lot of different people respond seen a lot of different people respond on uh on on Twitter. Who cares? like, "All right, so they're increasing their uh their their count. Like, why is this
[08:37] Okay. And and and the first thing to understand is that it it costs money to to run a website like this obviously, right? And it costs money because all these streams are being encoded uh through servers to be sent through to
[08:52] all the viewers so that that you can watch these streams. And the only way to watch these streams. And the only way to support this um at scale really for any Twitch, for Kick is advertisers. Okay? So advertisers have a really important
[09:07] uh number that we look at. I'm an advertiser myself. I I've spent millions of dollars of of brand money uh to to try to either get exposure or to sell on behalf of brands. And we have a rate called IVT. So IVT is called invalid
[09:23] traffic rate. Okay. So, um IVT for uh a kind of a YouTube advertising, let's say you want to advertise on YouTube, your IVT rate is uh 3.5%. On an average. Now, uh if
[09:36] you run like a like an ad on Google or you want an ad on like meta, okay, the Google ads or um uh IVT rate is quite a bit higher and that's at uh 11% on some bit higher and that's at uh 11% on some keywords up to 22% on the worst
[09:51] remember those numbers. as we'll get to them in a second because it gets it gets it gets quite a bit worse. Okay, so IBT is really important and when you have an is really important and when you have an entire industry run on ads, if your IBT
[10:05] rates are too high, um aka the people you're advertising to um aka the people you're advertising to are not real, right? Um then you can't sell product, you can't sell service, can't sell anything.
[10:20] And that means uh advertisers are wasting money. So they leave. And if you followed any of the news about websites like Twitch, lately advertisers have millions and millions of dollars is leaving the industry. Now, some of that
[10:36] is because of Twitch's unwillingness to deal with things like political commentary and some of the problems around that. Um some of the broadcasters political content and stuff like that. Some of that's the issue and some
[10:48] But a lot of advertisers are just leaving for really simple reason which sense. It just doesn't make sense to advertise on the platform. That's why we left. I I was spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars through
[11:00] Twitch with Twitch uh directly running ads also via sponsorships directly sponsoring streamers without Twitch involved just as a middleman. It was pointless after 2023 or fourish to run most non-game brands
[11:14] sense. you advertise, it's a bunch of fake viewers, it costs you a ton of money and nothing happens. So, like we're not stupid. We realize that and we happening. People are just leaving they're leaving live stream advertising
[11:27] like crazy. So, there first of all, it hurts all creators, right? Um it doesn't we we talked about this directory problem that when you go to a directory here and you you you look for uh these
[11:41] these these you look for a stream. Okay. Um, there are a lot of streamers, right? And if you're sorting by high to by by high to low, what you'll find is like, okay, so the top person playing this new game, Kronos, here is 1.6K viewers. And
[11:55] all these broadcasters down here. Now we're down to like seven. How are these people ever going to get discovered? Perfectly great streamers like trying to make it can't get discovered. So for every person that's viewbotting, they're
[12:08] people that are trying to do it legit. and and and if the IVT rates are bad a situation like what's happening on Kick where Kick is a competitor website to Twitch and what's happening on Kick right now as you'll when I start to show
[12:21] you the numbers on this, it it's going to blow your mind. Basically, everybody knows that there's a huge amount of view bonding. So like I I click a single bonding. So like I I click a single broadcast and I see people that have
[12:33] supposedly tens of thousands of viewers and it's like okay why don't I just view bot as well so that I can get to the top of this category because then people will discover me and I'll get some legit viewers on top of my fake ones and that
[12:45] justification becomes systemic. There's no reason to be legitimate because everybody is illegitimate and so you just end up with a totally useless nonsense circus. It's a it's a complete uh kangaroo court, I would say. Okay.
[13:01] So, you're robbing individual creators. Um and you're breaking the system, but it also destroys the industry, right? For the affformentioned reasons, if nobody decides to advertise because why would you advertise with these crazy
[13:16] the industry and that is what is happening. and it makes the websites unprofitable, makes live stream basically unable to happen because like basically unable to happen because like if you uh you you just you just can't
[13:28] justify the expense. Um and then third, and this is the one that like I never see talked about is it's just actually ethically wrong, right? Like so so it's stolen millions of dollars because what happens is a lot of these viewboded
[13:43] broadcasters they have this is this is just like the the craziest part of this and I've written about this if you want to read this on my uh on x.com/devash I've done these really long form threads on this what has happened is agencies
[13:56] that are fully aware that these streamers are viewbotted will sell sponsorships on behalf of those streamers and they'll say, "Yeah, this streamer has 20,000 viewers." And the brand who is just new
[14:10] to the space, like this, think about an old brand like a somebody that sells don't know anything about Twitch, but they want to get out there and they want kind of advertising. And the agency says, "Yeah, sure, man. We got a guy
[14:22] shout out your product, and you're going to get tons of results." The brand comes in, they're like, "Yeah, I I'll pay a huge CPM fit. I'll pay $30,000 for that they spend the money, they get zero results, they get no traction, and
[14:37] they're like, "What? I'm never going to advertise in live streaming again." And so what has happened is a few agencies and a and a few live streamers have essentially over the course of the last 5 to 6 years of doing this pulled
[14:53] millions and millions of dollars out of the ecosystem that would have otherwise been there because you like live streaming is a legit form of right now. The the CPMs are too high. The the cost to um to to to to pay uh to
[15:08] get a,000 views on your thing is like literally five to 10 times higher than advertising on YouTube. And and and by the way, the the the results are worse. So there's no what happens is the these if
[15:23] it was priced correctly and the views were real, you could go and you could instead of $20,000. Get your results. Be happy with it." And then over time, the more and more money would be coming in. There'd be more legitimate sponsorships
[15:36] and everybody like these creators would be um healthier and make more money. It'd be more viable to be a full-time broadcaster than it is now. So, there broadcaster than it is now. So, there has been no action from Twitch on this.
[15:49] Um, and Twitch has an ongoing policy. Uh, they're the main live stream website, right? So, we're mostly going to be concerned with them. They have an ongoing policy to uh unless you have definitively shown like I I literally
[16:02] pull up the program that I embody my own stream with uh on stream on accident. There's no ban for viewing even when a lot of people, as we're going to see, I'm going to show you some examples have
[16:16] admitted to it and Twitch hasn't punished them. So, it has created this there's no chance you're going to get banned. And um viewbonding has become so prevalent uh and I'm going to show you in the next section how bad it really is
[16:30] that there is uh basically nothing to do. I mean it's just like the sponsors are leaving in droves and mo most of the top broadcasters are viewing unfortunately. So uh we've kind of reached a a standpoint where there
[16:44] really is not going to be a solution unless there is something uh that is an which we're going to talk about next because like basically what has caused understand like why this matters. This really is an industry defining industry
[16:59] destroying thing. So what has happened up until now? Well, in July, Twitch announced that they were going to um make some changes and they said uh through through through the CEO, it's this guy. Um he's uh on
[17:15] the CEO, it's this guy. Um he's uh on Twitter talking about stuff. He says, "We're going to address Viewbot problems." Now, I didn't see anybody really talk about why they did this. Um why they did this was because they have
[17:27] end, advertisers like me saying, "Hey, your IVT rates are too high. you everybody on your website is fake. So we can't figure out if we go to this directory here like which one of these people is real and which one of them is
[17:41] fake as brands. And so we're spending money on stuff that we're not sure is real. And so um do you know this this lyric guy um do I do I invest in him? Do I invest in Kais? What's going on? Right? And so Twitch responds Twitch
[17:56] they're usually responding to an advertiser. They never talk say that but that's what's actually happening. If anybody is watching this and you are remember a time when there was like hot tub streamers. There was a category
[18:09] called hot tubs. Girls found out that they could wear very revealing clothing and not get banned for it um by just sitting in a pool in their a hot tub like a inflatable pool in their living room and they could stream that and they
[18:22] would get lots of viewers. So, so, so Twitch was like, uh, so, so Twitch didn't do anything about it. A, and then they did this widescale ban of it and okay or whatever." And that happened because advertisers called them up and
[18:34] doing?" I was I was on a bunch of those phone calls when that happened. So, this viewing thing, this is an advertiser push. And so, so they so so Twitch made some sweeping changes. They said, "Okay, cool. Um, we're going to change this and
[18:48] cool. Um, we're going to change this and there's going to be a lot of people that um are are are going to be revealed to be not real. Okay. And that happened. So, if we look at the Twitch analytics
[19:01] for the past 30 days as of the time of this recording, um that you can see the viewership and that the average viewers have gone down by 10% and that the peak viewers have gone down by 72% which is very notable because that means that
[19:14] this because large streams are the ones that view a lot. So, that makes sense. So, everything is going down really bad. And um there have been some debates that that the like they couldn't deal with the fallout. So you can kind of see over
[19:27] like the last um few days like if you if you if you sort by 14 weeks sorry it takes a little bit of time for this data to load um that uh like over the last that was when they really made the change. So like like upwards of like 13%
[19:42] viewers gone and then you can see like it's kind of correcting a little bit. So made a sweeping change to reverse these decisions yet and I don't think they can because of advertisers. Um, but they have had a a bunch of drama about this
[19:57] and a bunch of people saying, "Hey, I'm not like really viewbot." A bunch of top streamers mysteriously disappearing for 30 days as soon as as soon as these sudden, people are like, "Yeah, I got to take a break. I'm burnt out." Many of
[20:11] the the top viewing broadcasters doing this. So Dan, uh, the CEO of Twitch, um, responds a little bit later and and and and says, um, I see the top top comment.
[20:23] Um, my guy throwing shade red at Devon Nash. Yeah. So So he um uh says, "We've systems detect inauthentic views that aren't accurate. So I want to clarify a few things." Um, I think I believe I responded directly to his post um and
[20:38] asked him what those systems are, but I don't have the link to that right now. Anyway, he um says some stuff about how uh they can detect on the back end uh for advertisers what views are real and what ones are not. I prompted him to uh
[20:54] show me that because I have spent literally millions of dollars of brand money with Twitch and I have never seen such a system. I I I mean I I I told him Like get an engineer to call me, anything, right? uh to to to show me
[21:10] that you can tell um advertisers uh the IVT rates apart. That would be really great to know for all the brands that are pulling out because we can't do this. So Dan makes this long um uh long post and again I I mean I they may have
[21:25] evidence of it and I'm still waiting for that evidence. I mean I directly replied to his uh to his tweet. I wonder if I can find the um this wasn't part of the video, but I I'll see if I can actually find the uh the the wink real quick. Um
[21:42] what is his name? DJ Clancy. He doesn't tweet that much, I think, especially tweet that much, I think, especially right now. So So, so yeah, he um right now. So So, so yeah, he um he posted a bunch of updates about this
[21:56] and there's my reply right there. um which where he says that hey like our you just clarify how your systems detect these like we've run hundreds of platform and over the years I've asked several sales reps if the system like
[22:09] this is in place like can you actually tell that these are fake viewers answers this is what happens is like a rep will be like oh yeah yeah I can get that to you and then they'll they'll like so I got to talk to my manager I got to talk
[22:21] the director whatever and then that person never calls right so I kind of of be more public about what your system is to be able to do this um without like that viewers can't counter it but just like make some videos for advertisers
[22:36] about this like if that is really true. So, so anyway, um a lot of drama coming out about this and um later on, like pretty recently, this is just as of a pretty recently, this is just as of a couple of days ago, like um the uh and I
[22:50] didn't see anybody kind of covering this, but um actually might have been a little bit too harsh." And you can see like the aggressive and not counting valid traffic from various sources. So that
[23:03] led a lot of streamers to say, "Oh, actually what's happening is uh we lost viewers. We lost legitimate viewers that that that were real viewers that should have counted as fake viewers." Um but you're about to see that and I'm about
[23:17] to blow the the lid off this whole thing that that that none of that is true. Um that that that none of that is true. Um and in fact the that wait, let's just it really? Okay. Well, they corrected over
[23:32] really? Okay. Well, they corrected over the course of 14 days. Let's say 13%. Okay, so that they're telling you that that is overly aggressive. All right, but the real botted numbers for the entire website based on the methodology
[23:46] entire website based on the methodology that we ran. Okay, so we analyzed 15,000 streams. We put a bot into actually fun story about this. Originally, we were building a bot because we wanted to uh kind of detect like hype moments for
[24:00] brands. So, when brands advertise on live streams, um sometimes people like talk about the brand. So, we had a little bot that would um capture the brand is being talked about in proportion to what's happening on the
[24:12] we would like log the the results and then we would send them to the brand then we would send them to the brand like a cool little PDF. And uh uh we just repurposed that to go into the top 15,000 streams and figure out if um to
[24:25] mentioned in the beginning of the video to figure out how many uh people were to figure out how many uh people were fake. And we figured out that a full 40% fake. And we figured out that a full 40% of the websites total viewership is at
[24:40] least by our data is not real people. That's bots. Okay. So 40% IVT rates. Now go back to those numbers where YouTube advertising is 3.5 and Google at worst is 22%. Twitch is double and five times more
[24:54] expensive. So why would I ever advertise there, right? Crazy. So their IT rate is there, right? Crazy. So their IT rate is about 40%. With about 400 of the top 500 streamers viewbonding in some capacity. Now not
[25:07] Other people might be viewing them. They might have impeded. But they are that's that's the IBT rate. Okay. And uh I I talked about my tech here uh somewhere like on this thread like I responded myself with the methodology that we used
[25:22] and a bunch of people were like that methodology is bad like you know I I hate it and I also hate you because you talk about things and I don't like that. Okay, I respect that. So you know what? In the time that I posted this and I
[25:35] went out and got a um I I I got this done and I'm making this video. I also got the numbers independently collaborated by a phenomenal group um collaborated by a phenomenal group um that is called Vadra. Vadra is another
[25:49] sponsoring anything of course. I just worked with these guys at an agency level um to to to do these this Viewbot test. And uh these dudes are for creators and also for brands. And they um they they try to bring legitimate
[26:03] traffic to people. Um so they're they're good. They they they work great. And their CEO reached out to me and we talked and they've been fantastic. They've been super good. Well, they ran a really cool study that I can't I'm not
[26:16] want Vodra to uh actually just release like boil it off of it here, but I will show you some of the really interesting results of it. um and and and how they reach those conclusions. So they
[26:29] unique streamers and they had a very different methodology of doing it um than we did. Um they looked at it and they found out completely independently and you'll see that uh when I made this tweet, you see right here, this is
[26:44] August uh 26 that I that that he shared this study with me. When I made this tweet, it was uh a month before uh July 30th. So um a month later they had ran this study on completely on their own and reached a conclusion exactly the
[26:58] same as mine within 1% of a difference. They they said nearly 40% of bots 34.9 to 44.3% which is the exact same conclusion our our study came um independently with. Interestingly enough, they also determined, now I was
[27:14] um I have a YouTube video uh called Confronting the CEO of of Kick, which is uh exactly what I did. It's the it's the video that's before this video on this channel. And we talked for like two and a half hours
[27:27] It's a great video. And and I really do appreciate Eddie for coming out and talking to me because it's difficult to do. I I've I've never been able to have appearance of me. I suspect he never will. Um, so for Ready to do this was
[27:40] that came up in this was like, "Okay, well, you've been talking about Twitch's viewbotted. How much do you think that kick is viewboded?" And I pulled out a crazy number. I just said, "I think it's like probably 70%." And the founders of
[27:54] the company rightfully later on Twitter came to me and said, "Yeah, I I 70% was the number I said it was." And then I I I then corrected myself, which is true, that the data that we ran through our agency was via Twitch. It wasn't through
[28:06] Kick. Okay. So, I don't have that data. I just I just didn't know it was 70%. I lot of the industry kind of anecdotal knowledge I know. Well, it turns out that Vodra did run those numbers and Vadra did determine it was 70%. So, so
[28:20] they so it's exact. So, independently two brand agencies that are that are super pro agencies, super legit above the board concluded the exact same numbers a month apart um on this number. So, it's pretty safe to say that we are
[28:34] actually dealing with a 40% viewbot rate, which is practically one in two people you see on Twitch are not real. And and then on kick, it's it's it's literally seven out of 10 people that you see are not real. So, the it's it's
[28:48] a crazy number. So, if anything, once you understand that and you look at this and you see, okay, these numbers of 13% which Dan Quansy is saying are overly you haven't even gotten rid of like most of the major view boughters and mo and
[29:03] and and most of the the major people. Um it's it's bad. It's it's it's way worse than people think and it's still happening. So there is like in my happening. So there is like in my opinion like you can solve the problem
[29:17] of viewing from a couple different angles. Okay. And you can solve it from a tech standpoint. A and I think if you have billions of dollars and you're kind of like the mother brain like Google is, you can you can sort of maybe address
[29:29] that from a tech standpoint. I don't think the solution to viewing is going to be through tech. And that's what I want to talk about next because um this is probably the most important part of this talk which is like the I have never
[29:43] seen anybody really be able to step back and say here's how we actually solve controversial. Not everyone's going to like it, but I'm going to suggest how we kind of present my case for that. Okay. Um, but before we do that, it's that's
[29:57] right. It's time for the secret call out. The secret call out is 2959. Devon Nasho, this is these are very tactical videos. Uh, so thank you for being here. 2959, post a comment saying, "Hey, you're still here in the video
[30:10] below. Uh, video comments below. I would really appreciate it." And, uh, by the way, I'm basically just doing this now. So, I've departed from my agency, sold lot of the kind of deals, and I really do only two things. I make videos, and I
[30:25] patreon.com/devan Nash, which is uh it is it is my Patreon is crazy. So, for the last two or three years that I haven't been making YouTube I've been teaching business and marketing on my Patreon. It's $5 and you
[30:39] can get over 200 videos. That is not like that sounds like a scam. I know it patreon.com/devanash. The link is in the description down below. And I I I swear to you it's true. Um if you don't believe me, I will
[30:51] refund your $5. It's $5 for 200 videos. Most of them are 30 minutes long just the observations that I've had as an agency owner. Um I I've built two team. And so it's just all my observations about that. There's even a
[31:03] tier. I think it's like 25 bucks a month. Um where you can come in every business and what you're doing and we'll uh we'll we'll go back and forth with awesome. So I I I run that Patreon. I love that Patreon. And since this is all
[31:15] support that. Even if you don't even want the videos, like just throw $5 at because it helps me do what I do. Secondly, I also do consulting. Uh, that you can go there should be a link for the consulting. Uh, it's it's it's um,
[31:29] pretty high level. If you already have a business and you want some help, uh, caveat, I just opened this up back again now that I I'm I'm uh, it's it's right here. Now that I'm not doing work again, man, I'm slammed. I've got like so many
[31:43] I want to do like a maximum of like two a week just so that I can like really focus on those people because you get a it's not just like an hour call. You get um as long as you need with me or as long as we can like stay on the phone
[31:55] realistically and and it's just a it's just a flat rate. So um if you're right now it might take a little bit of time. Uh so yeah, Patreon and and you guys. It's been really positive the comments. I just wanted to thank you all
[32:10] and thank you for that. the 2959 call out. Okay, so how to deal with this that was really long. Sorry. Uh how to deal with viewing a solution. All right. Um couple of controversial
[32:25] little bit of naming and shaming here. Okay. Within reason. I I I know everyone you release the release the files, right? Like first of all I actually so
[32:37] the macro data that I know um the we analyzed top streams and then pulled macro data from that. So I actually individually don't know everybody view ones. Okay. And these are ones that everybody is talking about like lots of
[32:51] streamers right? Okay. These are no secrets like it's not a bunch of big like the big drama of me to like release the listers. I'm not going to do that. Um I'm an industry professional. My job is to bring uh highlight these issues
[33:04] them and and and um beyond providing examples for educational purposes. Not don't even have a big list. If I did, I would not release it. Okay. Um I don't out over these issues and discussing them. Okay. Um but first of all, the
[33:19] first thing you can do is just ban everybody that admits it. Okay. Um, so, uh, there are just quite literally people that, uh, and let's talk about
[33:32] bans, okay? Um, because when I'm going to say ban, I don't mean, uh, Twitch to say ban, I don't mean, uh, Twitch vacation for 3 days. I mean at a minimum it's a six-month ban, complete ban with no appeal and
[33:49] uh, ideally perma. But the second offense is certainly a a But the second offense is certainly a a permanent ban.
[34:01] referring to like a minimum six-month ban, which is probably not enough. Ideally, a promo ban. Okay. So ban the people that are admitting it. It's like five 10 major streamers right there. And then um next thing you can do is um I
[34:15] think what we need to do as controversial as it is and it has some problems. I'll kind of highlight those. Okay. So build a tribunal. The tribunal has to be an odd number of people. So start at like five, you could do seven,
[34:28] you could do nine. Probably like between five and seven people. Okay? Get an five and seven people. Okay? Get an independent agency that is a third party. Okay? This has to be a brand agency, not a talent agency.
[34:42] that represents talent. That makes no sense. Okay? Has to be a brand agency. someone like Vadra, whoever. They're fine. They don't they don't have any incentive whatsoever to um protect creators uh like from from a viewing
[34:56] standpoint. So they're not going to do it. Okay. So get an agency independent get a tribunal. All right. For a ban to occur, the majority of the tribunal and the agency
[35:09] agency must present evidence publicly and then they vote. Not the community of course, but the tribunal and the agency votes. And it's very similar if anybody follows esports to a riot competitive ruling,
[35:22] things. When somebody is maybe found cheating or somebody is found to be level, there is something that Twitch just never does. They they don't publicly discuss what they are trying to do with their bands. Um they they never
[35:37] someone or not. You get, let's say it's a a group of five. So you get the two people they don't need to be named but like their evidence and the three people that agreed. The majority wins and then the agency confirmed it and the agency
[35:52] presents their results and the tribunal presents their results and they determine uh the ban. Okay? And the ban happens. Um the next thing you do after you have the
[36:04] people that admit it is go after lowhanging fruit. Right? So, there are lowhanging fruit. Right? So, there are plenty of broadcasters who um are just several clips alluding to them viewbotting. Uh you could you can see
[36:17] some of these streamers like Neon uh where they have 70,000 viewers usually suddenly drop off to 70,000 viewers. Um there is tons and tons of evidence of broadcasters like this across Faze or OTK or um or or or or these individuals
[36:31] who are viewing. They know what they're doing. Um they've been viewing for years be very easy to put this in front of an independent agency or a tribunal and viewing." And get them permanently banned, which is absolutely what they
[36:43] should do. Now, there is um, a couple of caveats to this. I think you only need to target greater than 5,000 viewer streamers,
[36:55] streamers, but you don't tell people that. Okay? And what ends up happening is um, a couple of things. So, there's a force couple of things. So, there's a force multiplier effect here. Okay?
[37:07] Right now, everybody is viewing because they feel like they can get away with it. If you publicly ban two or three of these people, I like I promise you you like the vast majority of people will stop botting because the possibility of
[37:21] getting caught will be there, right? It's like tax evasion, okay? like the IR It's like tax evasion, okay? like the IR like the IRS audits and nails a very few like the IRS audits and nails a very few select people who target uh who who who
[37:35] fake their taxes, but when they get you, they get you real bad and you always know they're out there. So, don't ever cheat on your taxes. I am I am scared of because they have a force multiplier effect. And if you don't believe me that
[37:50] you an example of it already happening. Look at the DMCA stuff. If people remember that, you can go to Devon Nashdmca uh on YouTube. You'll see all the videos that I've made on the DMCA problem on Twitch
[38:02] and you'll see that um you know, I've done I've done a bunch of work on this even up to like 5 years ago and um you'll see that what they did was they basically banned not even perma ban, they just banned a couple of streamers
[38:15] for uh DMC for for streaming illegal music and for like 6 to 12 months on the stopped banning people. So everybody kind of forgot about it. Everybody stopped playing music like like this. So like there was all these services that
[38:30] copyright free music. So it's already happened, right? Like it's it's already happened on the website. If you just ban a couple of these big offenders and you make a big public deal about it, pretty much everybody will stop. And there will
[38:44] still be uh people that are doing it, but the point is the IVT rates will go down to like a reasonable level and then advertisers will start coming back. And do. You've got to do these these public bands to to do this. Okay. Um couple of
[38:58] bands to to do this. Okay. Um couple of things other things. Shorter bands are a joke. I just don't I I I I personally hate there are so many people Twitch is like kind of perma bands people uh when they when they want to. uh but they're
[39:12] very kind of bad about doing that. But like when Twitch is concerned um and and they try to ban somebody um I've seen broadcasters make quite literal uh
[39:24] threats that I can't even say on YouTube like like global international threats that's ridiculous. Like nobody is taking that seriously. They this is a buff for
[39:36] to the controversy. So there, if we're going to do any bands that come to view botting, we can't do under six months. Shorter bands are a total joke. Okay. And then some people are going to say, "Okay, Devin, your system sounds good,
[39:49] positive?" Okay. What about a false positive? Because what happens if I, an evildoer, decide to view bot, let's take an innocuous good human being? Here's my boy Lyric. He's been streaming for a
[40:04] boy Lyric. He's been streaming for a long time. A long time. He's very old doesn't stream with a webcam. Okay. And what if my old man starts getting 20,000 viewers and he doesn't know what's going on and then he gets banned
[40:18] and that would be really bad, right? We love Lyric. I watch him every day. Such a good streamer. Okay. Um well, it turns out this probably won't happen. Why is that? Well, a couple reasons. So, number one, it actually costs a lot of money to
[40:33] one, it actually costs a lot of money to view bbot someone for a long time. Okay, thousands and thousands of dollars. Like there is no like I think a lot of people have this vision of a sort of casual evildoer, some uh troll or uh evil
[40:49] I'm going to push the viewbot button and give this guy 20,000 views. No, it's all these different IPs. you're most likely going to be using different uh cloud like a cloud service. You're going to be like throwing thousands and
[41:04] bandwidth. It's going to cost you everything. Um and it's going to be a the range of most people to do especially over a long period of time. tens of thousands of dollars. So, nobody is viewing people as like a lull oh lol
[41:17] like joke. Maybe like once or something like that. Okay. But a long ongoing like that. Okay. But a long ongoing viewbotting problem lasting months, okay, it's not going to happen. And let's say that it does. Well, then you
[41:30] have the independent agency, you have the tribunal, you have the like multiple different people to to to collaborate it, to talk to people. Like it is I I know like people don't want to give this the benefit of the doubt, but they're
[41:43] really like you can at some point just go look at these people, okay? like go look at these people, okay? like these Faze people where they are crypto rug pulling people over and over again. They're they're scamming their audience.
[41:57] They're um they're they're literally doing scam sponsorships. They're they're they're flaming brands. They're doing predatory contracts. And this stuff just these people. And then you like see that they're also clearly being viewbotted by
[42:11] they're also clearly being viewbotted by 30,000 to 50,000 broad uh views every day for the past like 2 years. I don't know. I I just I just think like you can kind of conclude that they're not above board. Hey, can we do that? Like like at
[42:25] what point do we as a society just decide that that that we don't want this this kind of thing going on? I don't know. I don't know. Okay. So So it would and and that's all I'm kind of saying about it. All right. So, um, yeah, you
[42:40] view bot, you can I think you could ban a lot of these people on Vibes like once you really collect the evidence and you present it, um, I I think with like um, mentioned, there are there are harder ones, right? And and maybe those people
[42:55] don't need to be banned cuz I think you only need to ban a few, right? and to get this result. But with these very obvious broadcasters with 40 or thousand sitting there with 40 to 50,000 uh viewers at this point with no chat
[43:11] viewers at this point with no chat messages and having been doing this for years while they talk about crypto pulling the the crypto rug pulling the only legitimate viewers that they actually have. Yeah, we can we can go
[43:24] guys, right? So, um, that's just kind of how I feel is the best solution. Like, like, um, and and look, there are false positives in the in the criminal system as well. A, and that's not good. I don't I don't
[43:39] A, and that's not good. I don't I don't like innocent people, um, having bad things happen to them. But I also don't like the entire uh, society being literally happening in a live streaming sense. The the entirety of what we would
[43:54] society is being destroyed by this problem. So if something is not done going to be at a platform level. Uh advertisers will continue to pull out and it will be continually continuously harder for live streaming platforms to
[44:09] make money. Now a lot of people um ask me all the time like because I I might seem like a doomer things like live streaming and things like that. Um well creation? No. No, it's not. Not. Okay, stop telling me that I say that. It
[44:23] isn't the end of content creation. It's fine. Actually, in 2025, it is the best Live streaming has always been a little bit difficult because of the way the discovery works, but you can do it if you if you have the tools. Uh, some of
[44:36] future video, but um it's still a great time to be a content creator, but are cheating the system are the worst sort of scum, and they are they are opportunities to build full-time careers. Uh, so, so I I've seen some
[44:49] people, the reason I'm I'm putting this section in here, I've seen some people be a little bit discouraged and and and and you're like, "Hey, well, okay, with to be a legit legit creator. Um, I can't even make it happen. Huh, it's useless.
[45:02] videos." Don't do that. Don't don't to post some stuff up. I'm make a cool video about that uh coming up here. uh industry need to address these problems and that is why I have made this uh huge
[45:18] encompassing video uh discussing it and hopefully now you are at a standpoint as anybody else and you can kind of actually tell people about how bad it is the rates are and how to detect these viewers so that we can talk more about
[45:31] big special thanks to Vadra again. I'll actually put a link to their website in cool with sharing the studies and information with me and maybe it won't something data driven. So that'll be fun. All right, that's it for me and I
[45:44] am done. I will see you all again for the next video. Thank you and until the next video. Thank you and until then.