Hey all,
I'm going to try and shed some light on this situation as an insider to the space.
1st i'd like the opportunity to clear my name of this post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kahntrutahn
I'm sure some of you will ask, who cares? Good point. Is it abnormal for Twitch stars to use bots, or is that just what it takes to get to the top and stay there? It appears that even Jamie Staples used some sort of bot package to help his stream grow initially, according to another streamer BTCBlade.
BTC Blade is a Twitch/2+2/life Troll that has been banned from Twitch three times. He accused me of viewbotting almost a year ago today in here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...88/index2.html
You can see my responses:
Here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=191
and Here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=200
You can see BTC Blade was the actual one using Viewbots:
http://i.imgur.com/44jKRIv.png . Feb 16th, 2015. (he did all the time when he used to stream back when 500 would get you top spot in the listing without JCarver and Myself.) He also is this guy:
http://www.pocketfives.com/articles/...ud-use-591752/
So hopefully that clears that up. If you have any other questions see these graphs of viewers here:
https://socialblade.com/twitch/user/...taples/monthly
As you can see my followers:
and my Views:
are both very linear. The few bumps in the graph on views are 1st a reporting error (3 days data reported in one day), 2nd Front page time, 3rd SCOOP 2015
Also you can compare Myself and Jason Somerville if you would like and see the linear nature of my graph
Viewers:
Followers:
Last of all use this resource here to check individual broadcasts and/or the last 437 days of average viewer numbers. The one fairly large increase there is again 10 hour streams 15 days in a row during SCOOP:
http://www.twinge.tv/pokerstaples/growth/#/437
This is a very very serious accusation! I have had sponsors in the past where payment was correlated with amount of time watched. Using a viewbot is blatantly stealing not just from those companies but also from other streamers who have put in the work. I have never, and will never do that.
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On to Gripsed channel:
Why is this serious?
I have suspected a viewbot on Gripsed since he got back on to twitch after the Bahamas. This is the absolute worst thing a streamer can do to a community. Being listed 2-4th behind Somerville, Myself and/or Tonka when 15/20 other streamers have been busting their ass every week for months is so unfair and brutal. I know the work that goes into getting a viewership.
Both my roomates Kevin Martin and Matt Staples are putting in 80+ hour work weeks every week to try and keep growing and make streaming a viable career for them. This is not just on camera time, but off camera time as well.
How do we know it's a view-bot?
The graphs make it very clear.
Take for example my stream today:
See how the beginning of the broadcast is fairly slowly linear and there is no unexplained stop offs in growth or unexplained jump ups (these can happen more on that later.) Their are little blips for tournament breaks where I play ads, A blip where I eat lunch, and a clear drop off after I bust the million.
Here is one of Gripsed graphs from this week:
There is a sudden surge of viewers where it sky rockets to 1500 within an hour and then the rate of growth immediately slows to around 80 people an hour.
The thing that doesn't make this possible barring few exceptions (again get to that later) is that this is the very beginning of the broadcast. This is pre ante, early stage, no deep run poker. There is no reason why this amount of viewers should be showing up immediately. Fan bases aren't that polarized for anyone. 25/50 blinds with 150BB in a homegame on 888 is not going to bring in 1000 viewers in an hour!
The most damning graph is this one showing average viewers throughout the life of Gripsed channel:
That graph is the span of 437 days of his channel. See the end where there is a flat line? That is 29 days off in a row. Following taking a whole month off where a community will generally lose lots of strength (speaking from experience) his average viewership has risen in the last 6 days by 180 people without any deep runs! This is simply impossible. Especially when you compare those numbers to someone like Kevin Martin who has more followers then Gripsed, a bigger social audience then gripsed, and interacts more in the greater twitch community then gripsed and never gets those numbers while streaming peak time while the current biggest three are active. I know 2+2 correlates success on Twitch to strength as a poker player. That plays a small part but not this big of one this fast.
It is definitely definitely a viewbot!
A quick note on graphs and chatters:
- Graphs can have weird spikes in them when there is a logical reason for it. Example would be front page promotion from Twitch where you are on the front page of the whole website. Second is from another streamer hosting or raiding you. This will cause some irregular things. That is not whats happening with the last 8 days graphs however just a general note.
- Chatters can depend a lot on the nature of the streamer. Fo example, my chat can get reeeallly dead sometimes (especially during peak MTT poker time). I have wondered why that is but I think I have an answer. Most of the players that are watching my stream are already poker players. I have maybe 20% of my audience that is brand new to poker and actually not playing a bunch of tables while listening in on the side. This could cause some big irregularities in the amount of chat activity. You take a guy like Jason Somerville and you will see his chat is always popping. Why? He is engaging of course (the best at this) but also the majority of his viewers are very new poker players. I dont think the chat activity argument is the best for detecting a viewbot just a note.
So what happens now?
Well not a whole lot. There are some big issues.
There is no proof who is putting on the viewbot. Twitch can't ban a channel because a wealthy troll decides to pay some money to ruin a guys career. There is no proof of who is doing it so there is nothing that Twitch can do to stop this. There is a possibility that Gripsed has no control of this and it is just happening.
My question is why has he not talked to anyone in the Twitch poker Skype group, or mentioned it to Twitch employees, or shown any signs of being concerned about him having 1000 additional unexplained viewers daily?
What IS happening is it is coming to light within the community of streamers and viewers which will do damage on Twitch.
I have to say personally I think he is guilty of putting on a viewbot. I have no proof other then the graphs and logic of why would anyone target this guy by spending money to viewbot him? Also there is a history of him coming in my chat in the past and marketing himself in scummy ways (e.g. "hey guys I'm streaming live now too! Come check it out: twitch.tv/gripsed") Donating while we are both streaming to get his name out there, try and get a host, etc.
I have spent maybe 40 face to face hours with Gripsed. I hung out with him in Vegas a few nights, spent a few hours with him at Twitch con, and several hours talking on Skype. I want to think this is all a mistake or troll but I'm having a hard time getting to that point. It doesn't add up.
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Open to any/all questions about Twitch, viewbots, the community, Twitch's responses in these situations, etc.
Jaime
"pokerstaples"