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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
China Blocks Twitch Game-Streaming Service
Video game-streaming service Twitch has been blocked in China.
Since 20 September, Twitch's website has been unreachable from the country and its app has been removed from the local Apple App Store.
Twitch has confirmed that it is being blocked but it has not said why the authorities have imposed the restriction.
The service was cut off shortly after enjoying a significant bump in popularity among Chinese gamers. The streaming service has been gaining a larger following in China over the last few months. Many keen gamers flocked to it in late August to watch eSports matches being played at the Asian Games in Jakarta.
Not a fan of Twitch myself, but I'm even less of a fan of censorship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @12:42AM (3 children)
when you watch most live streams, you're thrown into IRC. It doesn't say anywhere on the screen that you're actually in IRC, instead it appears like you're just in a nice little web chat.
WRONG.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 22 2018, @03:01AM (1 child)
Uh, it's not bad because it's IRC, it's bad because on popular Twitch channels thousands of people are trying to say dumb stuff or spam emojis all at the same time. So you are looking at 10+ messages per second, and that might be with Twitch slowing it down or removing duplicate messages.
The Twitch chat can be interesting under rare circumstances. Like with things like Twitch Plays Pokemon, or the chat accompanying footage of the recent Jacksonville game tournament shooting.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @04:11AM
Uh, yes it is. Especially bad when you are not clearly informed on the stream page that you are really in IRC!
There are massive privacy/security implications here IMO and it's just overlooked or waved away as benign.
The average Joe probably has no ad blockers on, all kinds of scripts are running, so they are not only, IMO,
targeted in the browser but also through IRC. The immediate combination of the two for Joe User is cause
to shudder. But these are the same people who use proprietary applications like Discord and just don't
care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @01:48PM
Actually, no, you aren't in IRC. You're in their custom-built chat system dubbed TMI [twitch.tv], which happens to have a very slim compatibility with actual IRC (that is to say, an IRC client can happily connect, but most commands don't work because they're not implemented, and even the nick list doesn't work.)