Twitch users were surprised to find porn showing up on their frontpages this week which has since resulted in a newish feature being disabled for the time being. This type of content made its way to viewers frontpages on Twitch via a “Boost Train” feature meant to give viewers a chance to promote their favorite content creators and increase the visibility of those streams. Twitch has since paused its testing of this feature but did not specify a reason for its stoppage nor did it say when the feature would be brought back.
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Over on Twitter, Twitch streamer Zach Bussey who frequently covers Twitch-related news and content creators shared a few posts people put on Reddit and Twitter that showed the porn showing up on their landing pages. Naturally, those posts are NSFW ones, so visit them with that in mind if you need proof of Twitch’s latest kerfuffle.
It’s not too surprising then that Twitch has not disabled this feature even if a specific reason wasn’t given. Twitch confirmed to PC Gamer that the Boost Train tests had been paused due to “safety-related issues.”
This Boost Train feature functions similarly to Twitch’s controversial Paid Boost feature introduced last year. In the previous iteration, viewers were able to pay to promote their favorite content creators to push those streams to the front page so that the streamers could in theory gain even more viewers. Boost Train works a bit differently by still allowing people to promote streamers, but it’s done so via purchased subscriptions and Twitch Bits as opposed to just throwing money at Twitch. It’s still a paid option but is one that benefits the streamers a bit more since the previous version didn’t see any of the money spent going to the streamers at all.
Twitch’s Boost Train tests just began in March, so that didn’t take long at all for people to figure out a way to manipulate the feature. Over on the help page detailing Boost Train and how it works, Twitch said the feature is “still experimental” and that it was only given to a “random group of smaller streamers” for the initial tests. The same post also said Twitch would be communicating about “any broader launches or changes to the current experience,” so perhaps we’ll see a solution for this situation detailed in the future if and when the Boost Train tests resume.
