Twitch ‘Clips’ Feature Is Used by Predators to Record and Share Child Abuse
New discovery feed for short videos — a response to TikTok — raises concerns for kids’ safety
The company launched a new phone-verification requirement and is developing technology to catch and terminate accounts belonging to kids under 13.
Photographer: Gabby Jones/BloombergIn the spring of 2023, a 12-year-old boy went live on Twitch, the popular livestreaming site owned by Amazon.com Inc., to eat a sandwich and play his French horn. Minutes later, about a dozen viewers joined him. Through Twitch’s chat, one asked him to do a somersault. Another requested that he show his muscles.
In response, the boy pulled his pants down. The whole thing ended in an instant, but one viewer, who was following over a hundred other Twitch accounts appearing to belong to children, used a feature called “clips” to capture the fleeting moment in a 20-second video. The resulting clip has since been viewed over 130 times.