A multitude of chilling testimonies are shaking the world of French streamers, those video game players who share and comment on their games live on the Twitch platform. Several female figures denounce on the networks the sexist and sexual cyberviolence they have suffered for years.
Some face insulting messages, including photomontages of their faces on the bodies of porn actresses. It is in a long testimonial published Monday on the social network Twitter that Maghla, one of the most followed streamers in France with 700,000 subscribers on Twitch, sheds light on the daily hell of live content creators around video.
Maghla, known like all streamers by her pseudonym, denounces the incessant sexualization to which she is subjected, even forcing herself to pay attention to her style of dress so as not to expose herself to “comments”.
“There are hundreds of pages of people masturbating to my photos and posting them. Literally. Also montages over and over and the comments can range (from) ‘I’m raping her’ to ‘I’m going to penetrate that female.'” dog’ etc… The forum feeds every day,” she reveals again.
Lack of police support
A strong testimonial, enriched with numerous screenshots to support his shared point of more than 30,000 times, which has made freedom of expression possible by bringing several other French streamers and videographers in his wake.
As are the messages from Shironamie and AvaMind, who claim to have received “live” rape and murder threats, audio excerpt in support. Or that of Trixy, who laments the lack of support from the police: “When I went to see the police to file a specific complaint, despite the 300 ‘screenshots’ (screenshots, editor’s note) and death threats, it wasn’t enough.”
At the beginning of 2021, a specialized unit to combat online hate was created within the Paris prosecutor’s office, while the general public can report illegal behavior and content on the Pharos platform since 2009.
In all cases, the victim must file a complaint so that the police can act. These means have been reinforced periodically as the phenomenon has grown in recent years.
On YouTube as on Twitch and other platforms, this theme is not new and too recurrent, streamers lament while the “MeToo” wave is already five years old.
“Those who are shocked to hear about this when it’s been reported for years, you (don’t) really measure the scope of the problems that men cause us (I did say) on a daily basis,” laments Leaching.
“And there they see the tip of the iceberg, completes his colleague BagheraJones. Personally, I had to move due to harassment and ‘visits’ to my apartment, I developed enormous anxiety and my insomnia became fearsome”.
Mainly present on Twitch, owned by the giant Amazon, the main French-speaking streamers are male figures such as Squeezie and ZeratoR, whose channels have reached respective audience peaks of one million and 700,000 viewers.
Signatory in June of the European Union’s code of conduct against online hate, Twitch announced in December 2021 the establishment of a system to detect malicious users, after a wave of racist and homophobic harassment.
The EU code of conduct against online hate, launched in 2016, has around ten signatories, including Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Dailymotion, Jeuxvideo.com, TikTok and LinkedIn, as well as the app Viber messenger.
The signatories undertake to assess within 24 hours the majority of content reported by users as online hate speech, and to remove it if necessary, in accordance with national and European law.
Source: BFM TV
