When external Influencers start to censor!

How a powerful external influencer starts to censor?
As reported a couple months ago on this blog, one of the biggest external influencers which is OWNED BY TWITCH has been promoting twitch streams on their wiki network. The more popular a wiki is on their network, the more traffic and embedded viewership it generates for Twitch streamers.

Some of the most popular Wiki's on that network include but are not limited to the following;

• Minecraft
• Terraria
• Ark

The way they pick which streamer to promote depends on placement on the game directory. For instance, on the Terraria wiki, whatever stream is in the top spot (of the terraria directory on twitch) will get most of the traffic that is generated from this 3rd party embed on the Terraria wiki.

Now this sounds like great for getting additional exposure for your stream right? Yup it is and I wrote about that here - Free Channel Traffic / Free Views

And here is how the censorship starts due to complaints from streamers vs streamers.

My channel broadcasts 24/7 using the rerun feature that is provided by Twitch. I like to play sandbox games on my stream and sometimes do play through runs of games. I broadcasting each day for around 5 to 8 hours then run reruns until I stream again the next day. A month ago, I was streaming Terraria which is one of the games that is being VERY LARGELY influenced by this 3rd party. A majority of the streamers who regularly stream that game do not have the reach in views that my channel generates daily. So what happen was as soon as I took the top spot in the directory, a huge chuck of the 3rd party embedding traffic was being sent to my channel which made it very difficult for other channels to overtake the top slot on the directory. The "free channel traffic" was gone for them and they didnt like it at all.

Without the 3rd party embedding support for Terraria, its overall viewership is alot lower. Estimated additional concurrent viewers from 3rd party is 400 - 1500+ depending on time of day. Many people who stream this game only do it because of that additional embedding traffic, some use it to launchpad into other games. So once that was gone, they started to campaign against my channel. One of them talked negativity about my channel on their stream, which lead to trolling in my chat from their viewbase.

At some point they contacted the 3rd party to complain about my channel. The 3rd party agreed with the complaints and censored my channel from being listed + promoted on their wiki.

I messaged the 3rd party myself to see exactly what the reason was for not being listed anymore.

Here was the responses:

• That channel was banned from our wiki after it was brought to our attention that they were exploiting the system, as documented in a blog.
  
  • So I guess they didnt like how I told people about how they are influencing/sending tons of traffic to certain games on twitch.... Is this suppose to be TOP SECRET? Who knows ...I replied and asked for more clarification.
• The 24/7 streaming is the issue. Once you've grabbed the unit, you don't give it up because you fill up reruns. The point of the embedded unit is to promote LIVE content, not reruns.
  
  • They made up a rule that no one knows about, its not listed anywhere, how is anyone suppose to know? I replied, since doing reRuns until the next time I stream was the issue, I said I can stop doing that and asked to be unbanned.
• You will not be unbanned. The embed is for promoting the games and platform, not for streamers to game for revenue.
  • This is a interesting reply, note the "Streamers to game for revenue". I didnt know streaming on twitch was a hobby, this person's mindset is very poor.

So they censored my channel, what happened then?



This person "HLAquarius" was monitoring the situation and ran to whisper me, but then for some odd reason they delete their username a couple days later? Hmm?


What makes this censorship stupid is how the Twitch API gives details if channels are in ReRun mode or Live, if the 3rd party doesn't want to promote or list a streamer in rerun mode, they can easily code it to not do that instead of censoring due to complaints from streamers.

And now I recently started to stream No Man's Sky again, and guess what happened? Another complaint and tada censored on another wiki from this Twitch owned 3rd party.

Let me finish up with some words of advice, if you are a streamer do not become depended on any 3rd party traffic or embedding, one day it may help get more exposure and the next day it maybe gone. Build your own content, wikis, do your own embedding and promotions - be in control!

What is launch padding for streamers?

What is launch padding and how are streamers doing it?

Launch padding is basically using specific games with high 3rd party embedding traffic to gain higher directory placement in new or more popular games.

What are some games that are good for launch padding?

As of 8/30/2018 the day of this post, the following games in my opinion have the best launch padding potential.

• Terraria
• Ark
• Minecraft

Some of the ways I have seen streamers exploit launch padding is by streaming game #2 and then when they finish broadcasting for the day, they then do reruns streams of game #1 (usually one of the games listed). Because viewership levels tend to drop during certain time zones and the amount of streamers also goes down, they are able to grab the top slot in game #1 directory and once that occurs the traffic from the embedding 3rd party boosts them. This is not always perfect but in general its works pretty well for some.

Or they stream game #1 until they grab the embedding traffic spike, then switch to game #2. A good example would be some people streaming Terraria, grabbing the embedding traffic and then switching to other games that have 'Twitch Drop' enabled like Warframe which further boosts numbers depending on directory placement.

If you have a big enough community, you can leverage this to possibly help with getting more exposure on the platform. But always keep in mind, 3rd party traffic is not something you control, it can end at any given moment.

Viewers in common analytics

Which Channels Share Viewers With Yours on Twitch?

Ever wondered exactly who else your audience loves watching when they are not tuned into your stream? One simple glance inside your Creator Dashboard can hand you that answer on a silver platter. The Channels with Viewers in Common panel quietly ranks the top streamers whose audiences overlap most with yours. It has quietly become one of the most practical tools Twitch gives creators, and it is still right there in 2026, delivering fresh insights every time you check it.

You will find it by heading to your Creator Dashboard, clicking Analytics on the left sidebar, and then selecting the Channel section. The panel usually shows your top five overlaps, ranked by shared audience size. Twitch blurs the names in any public screenshots for privacy, but when you are logged in the real channels appear. It is simple, powerful, and surprisingly revealing once you start using it regularly.

How to Find It Yourself

Log in, go straight to Analytics, choose Channel, and scroll down. That is it. The data refreshes based on recent viewer activity, so checking it after bigger streams gives you the clearest picture. It is quick, and the insights start paying off the moment you begin acting on them.

Turning Overlap Into Real Collaboration Opportunities

Treat this list like your personal networking map. When your viewers already enjoy another streamer, you have a built in foundation for something great. Send a friendly message to those channels. Mention a specific stream you liked or a shared game you both play. Suggest a co stream, a raid swap, or even a simple joint game night. Many creators have turned these overlaps into regular collabs that boost everyone involved.

You can also add overlapping channels to your auto host list so your community keeps discovering similar content even when you are offline. In a crowded platform, these smart connections often create faster and more natural growth than chasing random shoutouts ever could.

Reading the Room and Spotting Trouble Early

There is another side to this data that many experienced streamers rely on quietly. If your chat suddenly fills with oddly coordinated comments or unexplained negativity, check the overlap list. It can point you straight to the source. In my own case, it clearly showed a competitive mindset streamer who was directing their audience toward my channel with negativity. Knowing that helped me respond calmly instead of wondering why certain chatter felt off.

This awareness lets you protect your community vibe. You can reinforce your own positive rules or simply focus on the fans who are there for the right reasons.

Unlocking Deeper Audience Insights

Beyond collabs and drama detection, the panel offers a window into your viewers tastes that you might not have considered. Take a look at the categories those overlapping channels stream. Are they heavy into the same games as you, or do they branch into something fresh? This can inspire new content ideas. Maybe your audience loves variety streams on certain days or enjoys watching a different genre entirely when they are not with you. Use that to plan themed nights or test new games your people are already watching elsewhere.

Smarter Raid and Promotion Strategies

Use the data to choose raid targets with confidence. Raiding a channel with high overlap means your viewers are more likely to stick around and enjoy the new stream. It creates smoother transitions and higher retention. On the flip side, you can see which bigger channels share your audience and start building relationships that might lead to them raiding you back. Small consistent raids to the right people can compound into real growth over time.

Building a Stronger Network and Community Events

Think bigger than one off collabs. Group several overlapping channels together for community events like watch parties, charity streams, or multiplayer tournaments. Reach out to a few at once and propose something fun that benefits everyone. You can also join or create Discord groups with these streamers to share tips and cross promote. Streamers who treat this data as a relationship builder end up with stronger support systems and more loyal combined audiences.

Refining Your Schedule and Content Calendar

Pay attention to when those overlapping audiences are most active. If you notice your viewers are watching certain channels at specific times, you can adjust your own schedule to avoid conflicts or fill gaps. Maybe stream right after a popular overlapping channel ends to catch the flow of viewers looking for more. Or test different days and see how the overlap list shifts. This kind of data driven scheduling often leads to steadier viewer numbers week after week.

Monitoring Trends and Staying Ahead

Watch how the list changes over months. If new channels start appearing because your audience is branching into fresh games or trends, you can jump on those early. It is like having a quiet heads up on what your community is interested in next. You can experiment with those titles or styles before they become mainstream in your niche and keep your content feeling current and exciting.

Practical Steps to Get Started Right Away

Make checking this panel a weekly habit after your bigger streams. Here are a few easy ways to turn the data into action:

• Watch a couple streams from your top overlaps first so any outreach feels genuine and personal.
• Start small with a raid or quick shoutout before suggesting full collabs.
• Keep messages warm and specific. Mention something you actually enjoy about their content.
• Track how your overlaps change after you try new things so you can see what is working.

At the end of the day, this one panel is not just about numbers. It is about understanding the people who choose to spend their time with you and finding smart ways to grow alongside them. Next time you open the dashboard, take that extra minute to review the list. You might discover your next great collaboration, spot a trend early, or finally understand exactly where certain chat energy is coming from. Either way, it is information you can put to good use immediately.

Huge amount of follower bots are copying your stream channel name

Huge numbers of fake follower accounts have been created using channel names.

So overnight some entity has created thousands of Twitch accounts using streamers channel's name. Here is a screenshot of what it looks for one of my channels on Twitch.

The format for the accounts appears to follow a pattern, its basically a streamers channel plus a random combination of one to three digits or letters. Some are also using pictures, avatars from established streamers in the profile.


Please be aware its not the channel owners doing it, if you get messages, alerts, /raids or whatever from channels that are following this format dont take it against the streamer.

Who exactly knows what the entity is planning on doing with all the fake accounts. Hopefully Twitch will investigate and remove these accounts from the system.

How to check if your channel was effected is by using the search function on the Twitch website.

Put in your stream name in the search bar and then click more on the channel section. Here is a screenshot to help you see where to click on to show more.

Again, be careful when clicking on things inside chat rooms, this entity maybe will try to post links with similar channel name to get viewers to click on them. It maybe a smart move to banned all accounts you find during search to prevent something like that from happening inside your chats.

Update - 8/19/2018

Checked to see if any of the new accounts have been removed for 'gamingwithdaopa' search and I still see a total of 30 or so fake accounts.  We are speculating the entity that is doing this account generation is trying to obtain 'free subs' from Twitch's new gifting option. I believe if they get a free sub, it may whitelist them inside that channel which will then allow them to post fishing links or other problematic links inside chat rooms.

It maybe time to prevent all URLs from being displayed in your chat unless its been reviewed by a moderator or channel owner. When reviewing links, pay attention to misspellings for domain names, and get a handle on URL shortener that will cloak links.

600,000+ Tune in for the start of Battle for Azeroth

At 6 PM Est time, the start of "World of Warcraft's - Battle for Azeroth" newest expansion launched and here are some screenshots of the numbers and top streamers on twitch!


Let start with overall viewers, it topped around 610,000 here is a screenshot from the Twitch directory.

Click to enlarge picture.

With any large AAA Title, tons of streamers who usually do not play or stream world of warcraft all jumped in for the expansion launch. Here is a look at the top most streamers:

Click to enlarge screenshot

Top  streamers for launch include the following:

• sodapoppin - 84,750 viewers
• Asmongold - 60,350 viewers
• LIRIK - 31,170 viewers
• ZeratoR - 29,728 viewers
• TimTheTatman - 26,652 viewers
• Reckful - 23,506 viewers
• shroud - 21,415 viewers
• AtheneLIVE - 16,513 viewers
• Towelliee - 14,535 viewers
• ungespielt - 7,612 vierwers

It is always amazing to see the viewership numbers for game launches like this Twitch. You can also view how much of a viewership hit some of these non wow streamers take by switching over to it for the launch window. As of 7:30 PM, overall viewership numbers have gone down to around 495,991 Viewers. I guess the core viewers are now busy playing the game and stopped watching streams.

Powerful Embedding Promotion

How embedding can be used to promote big events for your Twitch channel.

This past weekend Twitch had a major Overwatch League event and I noticed some of the various ways they used embedding advertising to promote the channel. For those of you who are not familiar with what embedding means its basically taking the channel video stream player and showing it externally outside of Twitch. A good example of embedding can be seen here on this blog, on the sidebar I embed my Twitch channel in the advertising section. You can also include chat as its own embed if you wanted to show that off.

So lets start with reddit, on numerous subreddits during the event they had a advertisement going which showed the stream as a embed. Here is a screenshot:


This would show up as a reddit promoted post and as users went to the subreddits that had this advert going, they would be able to watch the stream inside of reddit.

Next up and most likely one of the best embedding options Twitch has in their portfolio is gamepedia. Here is a screenshot of the OverwatchLeague channel being embedding across the majority of the gamepedia wiki network.


Even thou the event is over with that embed is still occurring which is extremely helpful when looking at how much channel views generation its generally doing. Lets take a quick look at some basic stats for this channel.


The event took place on the 27th and 28th of July, on the screenshot I've added 2 black dots. Now look at what happened on Sunday, over 2 million views on a offline stream. And continued on to Monday another 1.2 million views mostly generated by Twitch's embedding of the channel on gamepedia. How interesting to see a big bulk of the views coming from embedding promotions outside of Twitch.


One more place that I've seen in the past Twitch used to promote a special event was on imdb. IMDB is owned by Amazon, its a movie-actor type of a database lookup website. I forgot to check to see if they had any promotional embed for the Overwatchleague channel.  But here is how they used it during a Call of Duty Black Ops announcement event.



This was on the frontpage, top fold of the layout showing the channel as a embed.

Most likely they did additional promotion on facebook, twitter and other places but I didn't dig that deep. On facebook they do not allow 3rd party embedding, but on Twitter you can embed your stream.

Overall this shows how powerful embedding advertisement can be to promote your channel on Twitch. Check out my "How to get twitch viewers", guide for ways you can start taking advantage of embedding and other various tips that I have learned over the years of streaming.

Any questions or comments fill free to post below in the comment section.

Update 8/15/2018 - Noticed another embedded stream on r/twitch promoting Call of Duty, unlucky for them having a MATURE Filter enabled prevented the stream from autoplaying.

Here is a screenshot:

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Additional examples of embedding, date of screenshots taken on 4/27/2021.

Alienware Arena embedding

Gaming.Lenovo.com embedding

MSN Esports Hub embedding / aggrogator

Phishing scam streams

How to Avoid Getting Caught in a Phishing Scam on Twitch Live Streams

Picture this. You are scrolling through Twitch, spot a streamer playing your favorite game with a couple thousand viewers, and a quick glance at their profile promises free in game items just for checking a forum thread. You click, type in your login details, and within seconds your account is cleaned out. It sounds like a nightmare, but it is a real trap that catches gamers every single week.

Phishing scams on Twitch have been around for years, and they are not going away. Scammers create fake streams, compromised channels, or cleverly disguised links in profiles, chat, and panels to steal usernames, passwords, game accounts, and virtual goods. No platform is completely immune, but the good news is you can protect yourself with a few simple habits and a healthy dose of skepticism.

One of the most common examples still circulating involves Old School RuneScape fans. A viewer comes across a channel with around 2,000 viewers showing gameplay. The streamers profile panel mentions they are quitting the game and giving away items via a linked forum thread. The link looks identical to the official RuneScape forums. The viewer logs in to claim the free stuff and boom. Their account gets compromised. Gold, rare items, everything vanishes, often while the player is hit with a distraction like a DDoS attempt to buy the scammers more time.

That story is not ancient history. Similar tactics, fake giveaway streams, compromised channels, or cleverly disguised links continue to fool people in 2025 and 2026. Scammers love popular games like RuneScape, Fortnite, Valorant, and League of Legends because players have invested real money and time into their accounts.

Why These Scams Work So Well

Twitch moves fast. You are chatting, watching, and multitasking. Scammers exploit that excitement with urgency and familiarity. Pages that look exactly like the real thing make it easy to fall for. They also use short URLs, tiny spelling changes in web addresses, and even hijacked legitimate channels to make everything feel trustworthy.

Smart Ways to Stay Safe Every Time You Stream

• Never click random links not in chat, whispers, profile panels, banners, or about sections. Even if the streamer seems legit, pause and think.
• Hover first, click later. Mouse over every URL. If it is a shortened link, treat it as suspicious. Legitimate streamers rarely need them.
• Double check the destination. If you trust the streamer, open the official game website or Twitch page in a new tab yourself instead of following their link. Tiny changes like runescɑpe.com using a Cyrillic a or twltch.tv are classic tricks.
• Remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it is. Free rare items, double XP weekends that do not exist, or quit and giveaway offers that ask for your login details are almost always scams.
• Enable two factor authentication everywhere. Turn on 2FA for your Twitch account, your game accounts, email, and any linked services. It is the single biggest barrier against account takeovers.
• Watch for modern red flags. High viewer counts on low follower channels, pre recorded footage with no live interaction, urgent verify now messages, or requests for personal info are all warning signs.

Other Common Twitch Phishing Tactics You Will See in 2026

Beyond profile panel links, scammers love sending whispers and private messages with fake giveaway codes. They also impersonate Twitch staff with emails about account suspension or copyright strikes that lead to credential harvesting sites. Some create clone channels that rebroadcast popular streamers and slip phishing links into the chat. Even fake donation alerts and charity drives have been weaponized.

Twitch continues to improve its fraud detection tools, but the best defense is still you. Report suspicious channels and messages directly through the platform, and never hesitate to reach out to official support using bookmarks instead of emailed links.

What to Do If You Think You Have Been Scammed

Act fast. Change your password immediately from a different device. Enable 2FA if it is not already on. Check your game account for unauthorized activity and contact the games official support. Report the stream or message on Twitch. If money or items were stolen, document everything for potential recovery through the games customer service team.

Staying safe on Twitch does not mean you have to stop enjoying live streams. It just means staying one step ahead of the scammers. Take a breath before you click, verify everything yourself, and keep that too good to be true radar switched on.

Have you run into a phishing attempt on Twitch lately? Drop your experience or any new tricks you have spotted in the comments below. The more we share, the safer the community stays.