Grandparents killed in wrong-way crash on Hwy. 401 identified
A 60-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman killed in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 earlier this week have been identified by the Consulate General of India in Toronto.
Twitch, the livestreaming giant popular among video gamers, has been thrust into the national spotlight after the suspect in the Buffalo grocery store mass shooting tried to broadcast the attack on the platform.
Twitch removed the livestream less than two minutes after the violence began on Saturday, a spokesperson for the company told CNN. Despite the quick action by Twitch to delete the content, clips and copies of the disturbing video of the shooting, which police says was a racially-motivated hate crime, quickly spread across other social media platforms over the weekend.
While Twitch may not be as much of a household name as some other large social platforms, the Amazon-owned service has gained immense popularity in recent years beyond gaming. Twitch has become a destination to watch others play video games, raise goats and other animals, and even just sleep.
But its core feature -- livestreaming -- poses a huge set of challenges. Live video and live audio have proven difficult for a number of social platforms to effectively moderate, given their real-time and ephemeral nature.
"The vast majority of the content that appears on Twitch is gone the moment it's created and seen," the company said in a 2021 transparency report. "That fact requires us to think about safety and community health in different ways than other services that are primarily based on pre-recorded and uploaded content."
To address this issue, Twitch relies on a mix of machine detection systems, human moderators and user reporting to identify content that violates its guidelines, not unlike other social platforms. But as the Buffalo mass shooting shows, even taking action a couple minutes after a broadcast begins may not be enough to stop the video's spread online.
Twitch has been in the news for videos featuring violent content before: A gunman who killed two people in a 2019 shooting near a synagogue in Germany livestreamed the attack on Twitch before it was eventually removed by the platform. Twitch said in a statement at the time that it was "shocked and saddened" by the incident in Germany and stressed the platform "has a zero-tolerance policy against hateful conduct."
A 180-page document that has been attributed to the Buffalo shooting suspect allegedly references how the 2019 attack in Germany was streamed on Twitch and remained online before being removed. (The Twitch video of the Germany attack was 35 minutes long.)
Here is what you should know about Twitch, as it again finds itself under scrutiny following the deadly attack in Buffalo.
Launched in 2011 and acquired by Amazon in 2014 for nearly $1 billion, Twitch initially gained immense popularity among the online video game community. The platform says it has an average viewership at any given moment of more than 2.5 million users and has more than 31 million average daily visitors.
The platform has pivoted beyond just gaming content, attracting a wider range of viewers and digital creators who livestream on topics ranging from pop culture to music. Users do not need an account to tune into a live broadcast.
A recent report from livestreaming software company Streamlabs found that Twitch represented more than 90% of the market share for hours streamed compared to competitors YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming during the first three months of 2022.
The same report said Twitch's most-watched category since late 2020 has been the wide-ranging "Just Chatting" category. The Just Chatting page features everything from clips on the Johnny Depp defamation trial to cooking tutorials.
Nearly 75% of Twitch users are between the ages of 16 and 34, the company has said. Politicians including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and former President Donald Trump have used Twitch in an apparent attempt to draw in younger voters. A Trump campaign account, however, was eventually suspended from Twitch in the wake of the Jan. 6 mob attack at the US Capitol.
Apart from the 2019 livestreamed attack in Germany, Twitch also had to address videos of a mass shooting that year at two mosques in New Zealand that left 51 people dead. The gunman first livestreamed the attack on Facebook, but it was subsequently shared on Twitch. Twitch took legal action in 2019 against users who posted the mass shooting video and other content on the platform, Bloomberg reported at the time.
Like other big platforms, Twitch has been forced to grapple with the spread of online harassment. In particular, it attracted headlines last year when a group of streamers campaigned to boycott Twitch for a day amid the rise of "hate raids." Hate raids, which found outsized popularity on Twitch, usually involve users ambushing a Twitch streamer's chat with an onslaught of similarly hateful messages -- typically consisting of racist, transphobic or other comments targeting marginalized groups. Twitch has attempted to crack down on this behavior, including by updating the tools it uses to respond to them.
Twitch said the video from the Buffalo suspect was removed from the platform less than two minutes after the violence started. While this is markedly quicker than the 17 minutes it allegedly took Facebook to remove the New Zealand shooting video in 2019, critics including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul decried that it wasn't deleted by platforms "within seconds."
In a statement sent to CNN confirming the shooting was streamed on its platform, Twitch said the user "has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content." The company did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.
Spokespeople for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit all told CNN that they had banned the sharing of the video on their sites and are working to identify and remove copies of it.
A 60-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman killed in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 earlier this week have been identified by the Consulate General of India in Toronto.
Three people have been arrested and charged in the killing of B.C. Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar – as authorities continue investigating potential connections to the Indian government.
Pius Suter scored with 1:39 left and the Vancouver Canucks advanced to the second round of the NHL playoffs with a 1-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Friday night in Game 6.
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.
A Quebec man who pleaded guilty to threatening Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier François Legault has been sentenced to 20 months in jail.
RCMP say human remains found in a rural area in central Saskatchewan may have been there for a decade or more.
A source close to singer Britney Spears tells CNN that the pop star is 'home and safe' after she had a 'major fight' with her boyfriend on Wednesday night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.
As Wegovy becomes available to Canadians starting Monday, a medical expert is cautioning patients wanting to use the drug to lose weight that no medication is a ''magic bullet,' and the new medication is meant particularly for people who meet certain criteria related to obesity and weight.
Drew Carey took over as host of 'The Price Is Right' and hopes he’s there for life. 'I'm not going anywhere,' he told 'Entertainment Tonight' of the job he took over from longtime host Bob Barker in 2007.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.