That’s the claim made by The Verge, whose sources suggest this week’s data breach “seemed inevitable” based on their time working at Twitch, alleging a company culture “where employees were very concerned about safety but management less so.” “There would be constant questions and discontent about the regular moderation failures,” a source told the publication, noting the company would respond to issues raised “very slowly.” As The Verge puts it, “If [a feature] wasn’t generating revenue, then it wasn’t valued as highly.” One safety concern flagged by staff related to Twitch’s controversial raid feature, which has been in headlines recently after malicious users began setting up dummy accounts and bots to flood the chats of often marginalised streamers, subjecting them to doxing, harassment, and attack in a practice known as “hate raiding”. Employees are said to have highlighted potential safety issues and opportunities for abuse relating to raids prior to launch “just by virtue of their name alone”, but management reportedly prioritised releasing the feature quickly over addressing concerns. Twitch has at least acknowledged its most recent security breach, blaming the incident on “an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party”. Although the company’s investigation is ongoing, it says that while “some data” was exposed, it has found “no indication” user login details have been leaked.
