Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - A Woman Streamer Was Assaulted, Is Twitch To Blame?

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON!!!!!! https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co   FREE SPEECH FRIDAY Last weekend, popular cosplay Twitch streamer Emiru was assaulted at a meet-and-greet during Twitchcon. A man cut across several meet and greet lines and attempted to grab her for a kiss. The incident was obviously a catastrophic failure when it comes to keeping women creators safe But, after the Emiru incident, tons of big content creators began piling on on Twitter, pushing out of context clips attempting to show lax security at the event and calling for Dan Clancy's resignation. They began weaponizing the attack on a woman creator to push their own reactionary agendas.  Kat Tenbarge has been covering gender-based violence for nearly a decade and she joined me this week to break down what exactly went down at Twitchcon, why more security doesn't exactly lead to more safety for women, and what the true issue at the heart of all of this is. These attacks on women creators silence women and prevent them from speaking and expressing themselves freely. If you like this video, please support me on Patreon!! https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz    https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0   https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

It's not just that there's no deterrent to this behavior, but it's actually rewarded by the platform and socially by other men. Last weekend, popular cosplay Twitch streamer Emmy Roo was assaulted at a meet and greet during TwitchCon. A man cut across several meet and greet lines and attempted to grab her for a kiss as she tried to push him away. Her security guard quickly intervened and pushed the man off. But the man exited the building and was never restrained. The incident was obviously a catastrophic failure when it comes to keeping women creators. The man should have never been allowed to walk away after what he did, and it's unclear why her security guard didn't restrain the man after pushing him off. It's also unclear why Twitchcon security or the police

on the scene didn't step in and attempt to halt the man from leaving. The man was eventually caught hours after the incident, and Emiru is currently pressing charges. She said, quote, he was allowed to walk away from my meet and greet, and I didn't hear he was caught until hours after he attacked me. It felt like this only happened because of my manager pressing. for it, not because TwitchCon staff present thought it was a big deal. All of this has raised tons of questions about security protocols at TwitchCon and what should be done going forward to make the convention more safe. Even before TwitchCon began this year, high profile streamers, including QD Cinderella,

Valkyrie and others declined to attend the event over safety concerns. After the Emiru incident, tons of big content creators began piling on on Twitter, pushing out of context clips attempting to show lack security at the event and calling for Twitch CEO Dan Clancy's resignation. Of course, most of these people actually don't give a shit about women's safety. They're just opportunists, and we're going to get into all that. But why am I talking about all of this on Free Speech Friday? I think it's a good example of how more surveillance and security theater doesn't inherently

keep people safe. And I think it shows the significant barriers women face as content creators and how relentless abuse and harassment silences women and prevents them from speaking out and expressing themselves. To discuss all of this, I have Kat Ten Barge here. Kat is one of the top journalists covering gender-based harassment and abuse. And today we're going to break down exactly what went down at TwitchCon, why you shouldn't listen to a lot of the loudest voices online,

and what can actually be done to keep women safe on the internet and off. Kat, welcome. Thanks so much for having me. So you weren't at TwitchCon. I wish you were there. But I feel like just to start off, I want to give people a sense of what TwitchCon was like. And then I kind of want to compare it to other conventions that you and I have both been X. I feel like we both cover these large events and conventions a lot and attend this stuff.

So I think a lot of people have seen a lot of misinformation going around. And I want to explain kind of the way things went down. So I would say this security at this convention was stricter than any other convention I've been to. And we'll get into why that doesn't make things safer. But it was very strict in the sense that like you had to have a risk span. You had to scan in to get to different areas. They were very strict about maintaining that. There was this video online that claimed to show someone bypassing the risk scanning system.

In fact, that's not. what that video shows. I reached out to the company about how those machines work. That video actually shows the person scanning and it turning orange, which meant that that person was a credentialed plus one. So it actually showed the system working. But it was really, it was pretty intense. I mean, I couldn't even get into the venue when I got there the first day initially because I hadn't passed a background check. And every single person that registered for the event had to go through this like background check security review essentially to make sure that they weren't on a known stalker list or had sort of criminal records, things like that. So I do think,

that it was very quote unquote secure, even more so than any other convention that I've been to, where I think journalists and a lot of people have a lot of like a lot more free roam. I was in the content creator space myself with Twitchcoms down there and like I saw people even getting stopped featured creators being stopped and asked questions and things like that. I'm curious like your perception from the outside. I'm sure you've seen a lot of the discourse online, but like how would you say it compared to other conventions from what you saw? I think just from like a technological perspective alone, there were more measures in place at this convention than any other convention that I've ever been to. And that includes conventions for YouTube. It includes

like VigCon and Playlist Live, as well as like anime and comic cons and other types of conventions. Even concerts and stuff, like you have seen sort of this industry of tech, of security technology grow. And this to me is sort of like looking at sort of what even what I was just seeing in viral videos. I'm like, they don't. usually have this type of stuff at these types of venues. Yeah, the whole energy was like very kind of tense around it. I mean, there were these big female streamers that chose not to go because of concerns around safety. It had the vibe to me of VidCon after the Christina Grimmie murder where this YouTuber was murdered by a fan.

And YouTube and VidCon really cracked down the next year where they sort of started to realize, like, we really need to protect talent. It was significantly more secure than certainly Playlist Live, which we were both had a while ago. And I'm just speaking purely from influencer events because I think that those are that sort of engender a certain type of fandom. It was the most secure, quote unquote, influencer event that I've been at. When I toured Twitch's Security Center the day after the Emiru incident, I was struck by the surveillance of it all. First of all, not only did they have police officers, plainclothes officers, like constantly, you know, throughout the venue and security officers all over. But they had just this huge surveillance infrastructure. So they had 92 cameras set up in addition to all this.

security cameras in every single corner of the convention hall. And then they had every single live streamer. If you went live from TwitchCon, they had your stream pulled up, basically like geo-fence the whole area and like pulled in every single stream on these massive like 1984 style monitors where they had, I literally think it was probably thousands of streams. Every single stream had like the person's name, whether they were partnered or not, like some information. And then just like the videos playing. And then they had dozens and dozens of analysts like sitting around analyzing, replaying footage, looking at people. I don't know if they were doing facial recognition or not, but it was certainly like they were zooming in on things, looking at social,

monitoring at all. What struck me is that like they'd essentially deputized these live streamers, IRL streamers, which are primarily men, to like go around and surveil the convention. And the argument was sort of, well, look, we have so much surveillance footage. This is how, like, this gives us extra monitoring. And it just, of course, showed to me, of course, surveillance does not mean safety. It just means more surveillance, especially when the people in, you know, doing the surveillance are these troll live streamers. I think that was a huge difference between this convention and other conventions that I've been at as well. Aside from maybe 2015 VidCon or maybe it was 2016, when Mirkat, remember like Mirkat and Periscope and everything came out, that was a year like

a lot of people were live streaming, not in the same way. This was like true 1984 style. Like every single person was live streaming and the convention was overrun with these IRL streamers, which is a category that has skyrocketed over the past. year. Yes. Like this culture of IRL streaming, I think it's so important to point out that it is not done with like women's safety as like an interest. In fact, it's oftentimes the exact opposite. So much of this type of streaming and what you see succeed on this platform and elsewhere is actually just like harassing women, which is a really interesting juxtaposition with like, we need more surveillance when so often surveillance in itself is to the detriment of like women and marginalized people.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I was struck when I was looking at this giant tile of like screens and streams is that they were on mute. You know, I'm sure that you could click in and hear what was being said if you wanted to zoom in on certain people. But to me, it seemed very up. The sort of surveillance was optimized for like physical security rather than the type of security that I would argue matters a lot as well, which is like it is related to physical security, but it is like, you know, the hate and harassment and abuse. And we'll get into that. So let's talk about the Emmy Roos situation because I think this was the most clear security breach. Like, I just want to be clear. I'll say it again. I think this was such a catastrophic failure.

It was horrible what happened to her. It was completely unacceptable. It's a nightmare. I've been assaulted on the job before. It's awful. I completely empathize with what the sort of the threats that people like her have to deal with. The fact that she was assaulted and it was her security guard that stepped in and not Twitch's security or the police that were around that Twitch's security and the police just let him walk out of the venue was absurd. I think talent probably should have been.

have been behind tables with security guards on each side. That's what they do for a lot of big celebrities at Comic-Con and other events. When I did my book tour, I had to be behind a table at public events because I had so many threats and people threatening to harm me. But it seemed like this was just like a massive lapse in keeping women safe at the convention.

100%. And I also think that that really goes to show. And this is reflective of just like policing and security in general. But this rhetoric that like men in the vicinity will protect women, this is a perfect example. of why that is not the case. It was her personal security guard who stepped in,

but you do have all of these men who are tasked with security standing around, who just did not intervene, and that is not irregular. Like, that is a reflection of what happens when women go to the police and report that they have been assaulted or that they are being harassed. Like, it is not taken seriously. And I think that this just really does go to show why putting people in these positions, like men protecting women, it doesn't play out in real life. play out in real life. If anything, putting more men, more security in the situation can become

more of a danger to women because you can't necessarily trust those specific individuals who have been tasked with, like, security. I was so appalled when I heard that Emmy Ruth said that they were, like, laughing or sort of laughing off the incident. Like, I can understand if she was laughing because she has been through trauma. And often the trauma response would be to kind of, like, laugh it off and downplay it. But the people around her should have recognized how egregious and terrifying that was. And there's a few things that happened to that I think show why more security does not mean more safety. First of all, this man who assaulted her was not a known entity. He wasn't on her like stalkers list. You know, this was just a bad actor who went through the security checks.

He didn't have, you know, seemingly any sort of record that would have been flagged. He was able to buy a ticket. He was able to, yeah, cut across some lines, but people cut across lines that doesn't inherently mean that they're going to, like, violate someone. I think the point is is that, like, he had a badge. He was a registered ticket holder. He had every right. Say he had waited in line to do that. You know, that would have been just as bad. I don't think you can know people's intention. And that's what's so scary, right, is that, like, somebody could just wait in line and have the intention to harass or attack a woman. And they could do that, right? Yes, and I even saw someone suggest that like as an increased measure of security,

they could have like a security guard walk each individual person up to do the meet and greet. But again, would that have stopped him from assaulting her? No. And I feel like this also sort of like reflects this kind of underlying desire to control other people and to be able to like predict when someone is going to become violent, like to be able to respond to things in advance of them happening, which at a very basic level just is not possible. And I think a lot of people's reaction of like, we need more security. We need like more people out there.

I understand where it comes from. It comes from like a primal fear of not being able to know when you're in danger and not being able to like keep yourself out of danger 100% of the time, which is also where security theater comes from. I mean, I just think like you said, it's so scary because I think there were tables available for the creators. Most creators stand in front. They want their, you know, they're, you know,

they're incentivized to give their fans hugs when I talk to other creators about like, hey, why weren't you behind a table with two security cards? They're like, well, my fans want to take selfies. Like influencers especially are encouraged. And both of us have written so much about this, like encouraged to develop these parasocial fandoms. If you seem inaccessible, I mean, look at the response to QD Cinderella and the other female streamers that decided not to go.

They were lambasted and dragged through the mud. Caroline Kwan had a security guard with her. And people were attacking her and criticizing her. Like, oh, who do you think you are? you need security. Like, yes, she does. I was even nervous myself. I had two men travel to TwitchCon specifically to confront me, you know, because of some beef that they have perceived, you know, with me and some streamer. I have no streamer beef, but like, you know, whatever, because I'm talked about on these people's channels. I have a very well-known stalker who constantly tries to

attend events that I'm at. Like, I had to be escorted out of a VidCon panel a couple years ago by four security guards. Right after the panel, I wasn't even allowed to, at the front of that year because I had a streamer fan actually threatening to assault me. And like I said, I have been assaulted on the job. So like, I just say all that to say that like, you and I both know what it's like, not to mention all the harassment that we receive online, like, we know what it's like to suffer this sort of gender-based violence. And I think that like, if we want to talk about what keeps women safe, it's not just like

more cops standing around doing nothing. Like that is not going to prevent this stuff. It's not more like face scanning or whatever. It is fundamentally changing the culture of what's permissible and acceptable. Because that man knew that he could walk up, do that, and walk out. And he was right. Look at some of the other appalling behavior that we saw at TwitchCon, where these men, these IRL streamers were raiding women, degrading women, harassing and abusing women.

We had featured creators like Neon, right, saying the most misogynistic stuff, harassing women. These are partnered content creators, right? These are people that Twitch has, like, given the seal of approval to. Yeah, these are people, like, I think. about how Neon has like a publicist and I've received PR pitches over the past week like, do you want to interview this guy? He was with Iggy Azalea. Exactly.

And it's like this to me echoes so many of the issues that people don't take seriously. People don't take gendered violence seriously in general. And there's this idea that like online harassment, which directly escalates and leads to these incidences is not taken seriously. And this idea that like police protect women, which is just so far. removed from reality, which is that actually, like, police endanger women. One Twitch streamer that I spoke to about this incident gave me a quote that I've been thinking about a lot. And he said, what happened at TwitchCon was to a very significant degree unavoidable, not because there weren't enough barriers to accessing VIPs, checkpoints or staff training, but because this is a Twitch culture issue.

Rape culture and hyper misogyny are rampant on the platform from top to bottom. Entire Discord and subredits are dedicated to stalking and harassing women, POC, LGBTQ streamers. There can't be safety for women at these events until the company takes their concerns seriously on the platform. I thought this was so true and accurate. You know, I interviewed Dan Clancy at TwitchCon. I asked him about the Emmy Rue incident. He gave, you know, kind of a PR bullshit answer. But I also asked him why there weren't more women streamers on the platform.

And he didn't have a good response. And to me, I don't cover Twitch as much as I do other platforms. but that is in part because it is such a male-dominated space. It is a culture issue to me where if you look at the biggest creators on the platform, a lot of them are deeply, deeply misogynistic and hateful. And this culture pervades Twitch in a way that I don't think it pervades other platforms. A hundred percent. And it doesn't surprise me that you would see then like a heightened sort of like safety concern

for women on Twitch. It also makes me think about how like when I look at instances at past conventions, conventions that I've been to, a lot of times it is featured creators who are being violent toward other featured creators, like oftentimes male creators, being violent toward women. And this occurs like in the privacy of people's hotel rooms. This occurs like in VIP creator spaces. This occurs at after parties where only like featured creators are allowed to be. And the reason for that is because safety does not have to do with like, who's allowed

in what area or who has what wristband. Safety involves like cultural misogyny and the ability for men to be violent toward women and face zero repercussions. And when women come forward about these things, they are not taken seriously and they are often punished more for speaking up than the men who actually assaulted them or harassed them are for doing these criminal acts. Yeah, I also just think about the stuff that happened around Twitchcon because of course you had the convention itself and then you have these parties. Now, previous Twitch cons, there have been people roofied at parties. Women have been assaulted. This year, we had people like Jack Doherty, this like kick streamers show up and start antagonizing, saying slurs, antagonizing people. There was all these other sort of like kick streamers and people on Rumble.

Rumble's a right-wing video platform kick is this sort of like content for moderation-free, like, you know, streaming competitor to Twitch. The creators on those platforms are some of the most toxic people on the internet. You also have people on pump.com fun live streaming, these crypto trolls that bought tickets that came in that even We're antagonizing Dan Clancy, et cetera. And not antagonizing Dan Clancy in a good way, right? Like, not antagonizing him to make things safer, but in a negative way. And so I think it's just so hard as well because streaming culture rewards outrage. And I think a lot of these people have made a name for themselves online by going up and harassing women, attacking people, like, being awful.

And they can just buy tickets to this convention and get their content. They know that there will be these prominent women here who they can harass. And so much of this stems from the objective. of women, which is a huge problem on Twitch because it reflects the broader trends of objectifying women in society. And so when I think about Twitch and its issues with women, I think also about things like community guidelines that patrol women's body parts, how that's been a really controversial issue on Twitch. And the way that the community often responds to these things is to further objectify women, to further sexualize women. And the problem is when men don't view women as equal to them, when they don't

view them as people when they do view them as these sexual objects, that is where this type of violence stems from. So you can't stop this type of violence until you attack the ideology behind it. And that can never be solved with like security measures. It has to be a broader cultural effort. Which is why all of these men online, a lot of them, don't give a fuck about women's safety. Like, you know, we have the loudest voices in the room claiming to, you know, protect Emiru and care about, you know, violence against women. or dada. It's people like Ethan Klein, who is simultaneously launching misogynistic hate campaigns

against countless women, including myself and you. I think of these like live stream fail or this like, you know, these weird like drama slop accounts that have been posting every single thing that I have said about this Twitch incident, right, and trying to make it seem like somehow like I don't care about women's safety, which is freaking crazy to the point that this female stream streamer Sina who's very well known who, you know, she was even saying like, oh, you know, Taylor Lorenz started repeating a bunch of libs of TikTok conspiracies about me, like no hate to Sina. I don't think she probably even knows my work. Like, you know, this woman is probably dealing with a lot herself.

But you see this content sort of repackage to further misogynistic hate campaigns, right? To further this misogynist hate campaign against me and you and others who actually report on gender-based violence. And I think that's what's so disturbing as well is the weaponization of violence against women to further violent campaigns against women. This is back to the basics of just. just like conservative rhetoric in general. And like spaces like live stream fails, they lean conservative, they use slurs, they make fun of marginalized people,

like they contribute to these very ideology that puts women in danger. It's also so ironic to me that Ethan Klein would act like he cares about women's safety and women on Twitch and misogyny on Twitch. When I think about famously, he like couldn't stop himself from laughing at QT Cinderella when she was talking about being deep faked and having her likeness, exploited. Like, he mocked her. And then when he tried to apologize for it, he, like, mocked her again. So it's like these individuals who are pushing these campaigns are so clearly coming at it from a bad faith perspective because they demonstrably, not only do they not care about women's safety, but they are part of the problem. Oh, great. I just opened Twitter in the top comment as Ethan Klein responds to Taylor Lorenz claiming he's leading a misogynistic harassment campaign.

I don't know what you're talking about, you lunatic psychopath. She's crazy. It keeps lecturing our community, which is majority female, about how I'm dangerous to women. Ethan Klein, women can also participate in misogynistic hate campaigns. They're actually often a core part of it. I keep seeing people say, like, wait until you find out that most misogynistic comments are made by women. And I'm like, wait until you find out, like, you guys know nothing about feminism. This has been a core feature of the feminist movement for the entire, for its entire existence.

Like, people who actually care about women's safety are fully aware that women perpetuate misogyny. It is like these misogynistic men who have no grasp of law. what they're even talking about. And they tokenize women, right? They tokenize the women in their community to say, like, oh, look, you know, all these women support me. And it is such like Republican politics as well.

I mean, you mentioned this is sort of this conservative ideology. You know, I posted this online, but it's like, let me direct a torrent of harassment and abuse towards a female journalist and repeat right wing smears about her to thousands of people to show how much I care about women's safety. Like, it's also like you see this a lot in the UK where they weaponize or or here, right, with immigrants, right? they're weaponized, you know, the rape of a woman by an undocumented person or violence against women to hate on trans women, to hate on marginalized groups. And women's, like, women's pain and

violence against women is so often weaponized to push right-wing reactionary causes. And this is no different. It reminds me of while campaigning, Donald Trump said that he would protect women, whether they like it or not. And then as soon as he was put back in office, his administration defunded pathways for women to report when they were sexually violated by federal agents. So it's like you see this cycle over and over again where the idea of protecting women and women's safety has been so thoroughly weaponized by the right that it's actually used as a cudgel as they take away protections from women as they objectify women and ultimately as they enact this violence toward women. Which is the ideology that a lot of these men support.

Like, they do not support actual accountability. They don't want Twitch to rid itself of this culture of misogyny. It's a culture that they benefit from a lot of these male Twitch streamers. They benefit from this culture of misogyny. They benefit, you know, by having women objectified. Like, they don't want to change the culture. They just want more security theater that doesn't keep women safe. And they don't actually care about women's safety.

100%. I think, like, when I was reading some of the commentary about this situation, I even saw people using it as like another excuse to bring up Amber Heard from the perspective of like not believing that Amber Heard is a victim. And people on Twitch were major contributors to the idea that like Amber Heard was an abuser and she wasn't a victim. And I'm like, how can you sit there and not believe Amber Heard and pretend that you care about women's safety?

If you don't believe Amber Heard, just like bar none, like you don't care about women's safety. And time and time again, like this platform and every other platform have contributed to like these mass gaslighting events where women's pain is exactly. under the guise of like caring about abuse. It's it's so ridiculous and it's so maddening. And these men don't like they choose not to see through it because they know that they will ultimately benefit from upholding these systems of misogyny. I also think that, you know, I wrote about this recently in relation to like the Hassan Piker dog collar incident.

But you see these out of context clips constantly used and weaponized in these campaigns. And I think that actually that video of that person scanning their wristband and how Mr. represented that was is like a perfect example of this. Like people coalesce around the narrative and it's a motivated narrative. Like in this case, a lot of these top streamers hate Dan Clancy. I have no allegiance to Dan Clancy. He could be a terrible CEO. Like I, you know, I've only reported the company like marginally, but like I'm not here to like cap for any tech CEO. So, you know, whatever. But they're sort of motivated to push him out and to show him as this failure. And they think that sort of like maybe leveraging this event will further that goal. And so they launched this like essentially a disinformation campaign where

They're sort of like taking all these out of context clips, mischaracterizing them and using them to push this narrative. And it's really frustrating to me because we both reported on this a lot. But like the way people get information now is from this like Auk 3,000 account or whatever, which is I guess some teenage, you know, streamer fan, like these sort of like these distributed news systems, these Reddit accounts, et cetera. People that aren't doing actual reporting, right? People that aren't calling up the company that, you know, makes those scanners or calling up whatever. Or they're just like emailing a customer service rep, right? Like in the son dog caller situation, like they don't actually do any reporting. They don't go to look at the actual caller, right?

They're just like doing slop content, basically, that mimics journalism. But they, even when presented with any sort of facts that counter their preconceived belief, they double down, they triple down. You cannot convince them that what they've seen is wrong because they keep saying, well, how can I, so you're saying, I can't trust my own eyes. It's so exhausting. And it is so reminiscent of like the rhetoric that we saw during Debt Beard, which has informed so much of like how these events are consumed on the internet and who is granting credibility

and who is taken seriously. I also think like another great ongoing example of why surveillance doesn't keep women safe. Is this ongoing viral discourse around the DoorDash TikTok incident? Yes. For people that don't know, this DoorDash woman, this delivery woman came up to a door delivery. This man ordered delivery. The door was wide open. This man had his pants down and, you know, was sort of appeared to be sleeping.

We don't know if he was actually asleep. Theoretically, he was probably not asleep because he did order the DoorDash order. and had exposed himself to this woman. She recorded that. She posted that online. She was promptly fired from DoorDash for violating privacy guidelines, I guess like filming a customer without his consent.

Okay, fine. But the point is that she recorded a sexual assault, as you mentioned. This led to this like days of discourse and abuse. And now we have this AI smear campaign happening right now where essentially she's being attacked and re-victimized and people claiming all sorts of things about her. 100%.

And it's like that to me is such a perfect example of why surveillance doesn't keep women safe. because these types of clips can always be weaponized against women. Like, it's so frustrating because at the end of the day, like, if the ideology blames women for violence that happens to them, then no amount of security or proof or evidence will ever be enough. And we see this time and time again. And in fact, having all of this material has only served to make this woman less safe.

But if she hadn't captured that video, nobody would believe her. And even with that video, people still don't believe her. So it's like, it really. is a lose-lose situation for women and girls, like, time and time again. Exactly. I mean, I am just so appalled because when you see that video of the man with his pants down, right? Like, and of course we can't know the motivations, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whether that was intentional or not, that is sexual abuse, right?

Like, that is appalling what happened. But people are litigating. Oh, well, why did she do this? Why did she do this? The video is so quickly weaponized against her. And that is what a lot of video evidence does, right? Like, I mean, the Amber Hurd thing is a perfect example, too, where, like, you saw even photographs of her own bruises were litigated. Like, there is no amount of evidence or surveillance or whatever.

They could possibly vindicate a woman because people have already decided that the woman is the villain and the woman is guilty and she is the aggressor and she is wrong in these situations. Also, like, it's worth noting that this stuff isn't new because even predating a lot of the technology we have now, like, studies about bias show and have shown historically that you can show that you can show. So two people, the exact same like audio recording, video clip, picture or like wall of text, and they can both walk away being like, oh, well, it's clear as day. Like my preconceived opinion is reflected in this evidence. So it's like there's never, there's not like a universal understanding of what footage reveals. And in fact, it can so easily be weaponized against like victims and it happens every single day. I want to get back to TwitchCon because I do think like, you know, we should talk about like kind of what should have been done.

and like what can be done to actually fix this. Like a couple things too, I'll say is like, I don't know why Twitch has TwitchCon. I guess it must be a moneymaker for them, but no other platform has like an entire convention dedicated to that platform as far as I know. Like, I mean, YouTube sponsors VidCon, but even VidCon is so diminished.

It seems perhaps counterproductive to even have this event. But if it does go forward, I do think that there are changes that need to be made and like it starts with confronting these systemic issues. Like I think the first thing that they should do is work aggressively to change the culture of the platform, crackdown on misogynistic hate speech, demonetize content creators that are attacking women,

brigading women, and start working to cultivate relationships with women content creators. This goes for a number of social media platforms, but among like the ranks of the most followed people, you will always have like these violent misogynists who directly harm and endanger women on the public platform women in their audience and nothing is done about that. And there is a trickle down effect where it's like if some of the most followed

people on Twitch face no repercussions and are actually like they gain things from misogyny, they gain popularity, they enrich themselves, like they gain status from being misogynistic. So as long as that is the case, it will trickle down into fan behavior and people going to these types of conventions will learn from the people who basically rule this platform, who are the most visible people on this platform, that this type of behavior is not just tolerated, but encouraged.

And then when those people aren't held accountable, it just perpetuates this cycle over and over and over again. When I speak to experts in gender-based violence, something that I hear time and time again is that we've never even tried to hold men accountable for violence against women. Like we've never even attempted to instill consequences, like widespread consequences for harming women.

And so as long as that is the case, of course it will continue, because it's not just that there's no deterrent to this behavior, but it's actually rewarded by the platform and socially by other men. Yeah, I mean, I think of this guy, Jake Lucky, who's this gamer who almost half a million followers, quote tweeted this tweet that I posted about security

and how actually Twitch was quite secure, and he quote tweeted this video of neon acting abhorrently, right, and taking advantage of the fact that he had basically carte blanche to do whatever he wanted at that convention because he had the highest level of access, given his status as a streamer, And he goes, Twitch's security was insanely strict. And he shows me on sitting behind DeShay Frost's meat and green table.

And as I said then, like, this man is a Twitch creator who is credentialed, who was invited. That's my whole point is that, like, you have the worst people at the top acting like this. That trickles down. And it's so disappointing because this bad faith guy, Jake, of course, gets almost a million views on his tweet, thousands and thousands of likes and retweets. And I'm like trying to respond. And I think I have, okay, 37 retweets. And just a torrent of misogynistic hate towards me, like, you know, in his replies.

So even after the bad behavior coming from the top at TwitchCon, the bad behavior is continuing online. And they're continuing to drive hate and harassment towards women using violence against women as this sort of pretense on the internet. I think we just need to call out this behavior and start listening to actual women. It's so clearly bad faith because it's like, okay, if you agree that this streamer is misogynistic, then surely you're going to like continue to call. this person out and surely like you'll consistently denounce this behavior in all forms. No, of course not. They're like, they're this kind of tweet like in itself is bad faith harassment of women.

Like as you just said, it's just under the guise of like, oh, you guys are in the wrong. And it is so exhausting because all of the people who are joining in on this bandwagon, they all know what they're doing. They all know that they don't care about women. But when you are arguing in bad faith, you have. no requirement to like be morally consistent. You have no requirement to actually believe the things you say. And everyone else joining in on this bandwagon comes from the exact same perspective. And so nothing will be done.

And if Twitchcon were to continue happening, then this behavior will continue happening because no one in the community actually cares about it. They just want to use it as an example to weaponize against their own political enemies. I think the fact that like Hassan has been brought up in regards to this so many times gives the entire game away. Because what on earth does that have to do with these incidents? Nothing. But this is political gaslighting, like, in its purest form. And all of these communities love engaging in it.

The Hassan stuff is so appalling because, like, the first thing you'll hear and people were literally saying this as well, like after I interviewed Dan Clancy. Again, I'm a mainstream technology reporter, right? Like, I also interviewed Twitch's head of product. I interview leaders of tech companies all the time. Not only did Dan Clancy speak to me, he spoke to Bloomberg, like, he speaks to other technology journalists. But on the internet, if you listen to these accounts, it's all just like, it's Taylor's relationship

with Hassan. And, you know, that's why he's talking to her because of some Hassan thing. She wants to fuck Hassan. She's obsessed with this. Like, it's disgusting. And it's this dismissal also of my own credentials as a journalist, like, you know, what reporters do. It's always sort of like reframing this woman and her accomplishments or her career in the context

of this man and this man streamer, right? I've also seen like viral posts taking Emory's response where she explains the situation and turning it into a meme and saying that like she's being blackpilled. So basically they are using this incident to say that like women who are victimized are becoming conservative and holding conservative ideology as a result. The sad thing about that is that there is truth to the idea that like when women experience systemic misogyny and sexism. It does sometimes, like, lead to people becoming more conservative because it's like

such a backwards ideology that is just so propagandistic in nature. It's the same thing where it's like when conservative far-right groups take examples of like white women being abused or even murdered by like men of color, they will take those incidences and they will weaponize it against entire immigrant communities in support of their far-right ideologies. And they regularly do this, like, despite the pleas of the families of these women and even of these women themselves to not weaponize these cases. But it just goes to show in itself this is a form of objectification of women. Like, they don't actually care that she was violated.

They don't actually care that she was assaulted. They just want to further objectify her and use her to push their own ideology. Exactly. And I think it's so funny that the same Jake Lucky guy who's, of course, like, dunking on me or whatever, is also boosting. this clip of this guy, American Dad Live, asking Dan Clancy, basically, like, why hasn't he banned us on? Like, that's the subtext.

He's saying, like, you know, would he properly enforce certain streamers? What certain streamers have said that America deserve 9-11. Veterans deserve PTSD? It's basically why haven't you de-platform the people that I don't like? And, you know, boosting this conservative,

bad faith American dad guy as if he's holding, like, Twitch accountable in some way. And like, the truth of the matter is, politically speaking, there is misophobic there is misogyny on like all sides of the aisle. Like there's not like one place politically where you can go where like women are actually taken seriously.

However, like generally speaking, most people who actually value women and who actually oppose misogyny are going to be progressives. So the fact that like all of this comes back to this like conservative agenda just goes to show like how bad faith it is. And it just like it blows my mind that people are still falling for this idea that like conservatives actually care about women, they don't. Like, they're just, like, objectifying and using violence against women as a way to further an agenda that is, again, objectifying and violent toward women.

I don't know. I mean, I think it's going to be so hard for Twitch, you know, to ban streaming. Like, this is a streaming convention. I highly doubt that they're going to ban live streaming at the live streaming convention. If only because on the actual floor of the convention, like, there are so many booths set up for live streaming and there are all these companies that want to demo their technology. And so they're showing off live streaming.

But I do think that there's just a cultural shift that can happen. I was at, I don't know if you've attended the National Association of Broadcasters' Conference in Vegas. It's this massive, there's tens of thousands of people that go. It's huge, huge, it takes over, like, the Vegas Convention Center. And it's all, it's for broadcasters. And there's a huge live streaming aspect. Like, they invite a lot of streamers. It's all basically like TV news people from around the country.

But anybody that sort of broadcast live footage, there are lots of content creators. They have an entire creator track. But you don't see this type of behavior because it's a professional event. And it's very focused on, like, professional. And, you know, you have people live streaming all day and demoing their technology, but there's not this sort of antagonistic energy to it. I don't know if there's a way for them to automatically ban Rumble creators. Obviously, I think certain people should be banned for the venue. I don't think Jack Doherty was allowed in the venue even in this year.

But I feel like culturally, they have to do something to change the behavior on Twitch because until then, I don't think the platform will be successful. I think it will continue to remain niche. And let's be real, I bought this in my interview to Dan Clancy. This is the fourth year that Twitch has seen declining user base. And yes, it's still up from 2016 or whatever. But when you look at the broader social landscape and ecosystem, Twitch is down here, right? We have YouTube, TikTok, meta. Then they're sort of like these like lower tier platforms.

And I just don't think that the platform will scale. And simultaneously, we do have a lot more women entering the live streaming space. I mentioned Amazon itself has live streaming now for shopping primarily. But you have women live streaming on the like to know it app, on Instagram live. You have a lot of lifestyle influencers going live all the time. Like TikTok Live, of course, is massive. And they're trying to get people to multi-stream on TikTok Live. Not that any of those spaces are safe for women.

They all have their own problems. But I think Twitch seems to be sort of further and further declining. And in that sense, I do think it's a failure, you know, of Dan Clancy to not change that culture. Yeah. And I think that it is like, it would be very difficult to change the culture of a platform that I think particularly grew around misogyny. Like it would take so much work. I don't think it's a project that could be accomplished within the span of a year. It's also like such a hard thing to do when it's ultimately reflective, like the culture on Twitch is reflective of the broader culture of

misogyny and the project of dismantling misogyny is one that will continue forever. It will never be finished. And so I think that like it's a really difficult job to do, but what they're doing now isn't they're not even really trying to like dismantle misogyny they're not even having the conversation so it would at least have to start there and i think like your question of like why there aren't more women on the platform is such a good one because it really gets to the heart of the issue of like if the culture doesn't even accept women to begin with then of course you will continue to have these issues and of course they're not going to do any of this when they're potentially about to be hauled in front of congress under a trump administration i asked dan clancy about this in my interview but you know there was this hearing it was postponed the government shutdown I think they will eventually have the hearing where they're pulling up the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Reddit and Twitch following the Charlie Kirk shooting, arguing that it's radical, whatever. Essentially, Twitch is the one platform where like Hassan Piker basically is. I think all of this is an effort to basically de-platform him and other sort of leftists on Twitch. Twitch is also the one platform that hasn't caved to government pressure yet to censor speech.

And I think that that's going to be harder and hard to do. So I highly doubt that they're going to like turn around and start, you know, banning misogynistic streamers. that would just so quickly be weaponized against them by the Trump administration and would be used to potentially try to get the platform shut down or to punish it in some way. 100%. And I think that like when I saw all of this unfolding on social media, that was my first thought is like to think about the political backdrop and the context under which all of this is happening, which is that Twitch is being subjected to like a very highly funded, like very specific like bad faith campaign around issues that they do intersect with women's safety.

but they are so far removed from like the topic of discussion around like this specific assault or this specific environment. But it's so hard to have a conversation about it without recognizing that like so much of this stems from that bad faith attempt to ultimately de-platform Hassan Piker and to punish Twitch for allowing like this type of progressive anti-Israel speech. Yeah, because Twitch is the one platform because it's live streaming, it doesn't have that sort of like real-time moderation. So of course, you can't criticize Israel on TikTok. You can't criticize Israel on meta. You can't criticize Israel on YouTube. Twitch is a place that one streamer, which is Hassan, and then a few other smaller ones, of course, like Twitch is overwhelmingly not a progressive space,

but have been able to speak out. We saw creators for Palestine happen with Twitch. I wrote about this actually a year ago about how Twitch had become this bastion for leftist sort of content. And I think that the government is very eager to eradicate that. And I do think that they will be successful, and that will only exacerbate the problem

of, you know, harassment and misogyny. Any conversation about like what's happening at that level, it's no coincidence that this rhetoric of like men need to protect women and like federal police and agents need to protect women. It coexists with exactly what the Trump administration is doing. It's literally the same ideology. I just want to reiterate again that I'm so disgusted by the response from these bad faith trolls saying that people like me or I'm sure they're going to say this about you don't care about gender-based violence. Don't care about women's safety. something that we both have dedicated a significant portion of our careers to you, especially even more. But, like, I mean, I wrote about GamerGate extensively.

I covered this in my book. Writing about the weaponization of the Internet against women is something that I have written about and experienced very publicly for years and years. And so to say, yes, Twitch was very secure. Yes, they actually had way more security than other conventions. That does not make it safe. That is not like simping for Twitch or whatever, which I'm very critical of. That is not defending a corporation.

Fuck all these corporations. Fuck Amazon especially. It is simply trying to redirect the conversation towards the root problem and the fact that this is a bad faith campaign actually aimed at distracting people from the real problem, which is misogynistic abuse and hate and harassment. And that underpins all of this. And you can never have safety for women until that. root problem is fixed because you can have all the security theater in the world.

It's not going to prevent the violence against women that we saw this year at Twitchcon. You're totally right. And I think that like if I could reiterate one message for people to take away, it's that security theater does not protect women. It is like it is a psychological sort of construct to make people feel safe that ignores all of these root issues. Increased policing does not protect women. Militarization does not protect women. And these sort of conservative ideologies around like protecting women with men at their root cause. It just endangers women more. So like if I could have people take one thing away from this, it would be that it is about dismantling misogyny. It is not about enacting more control and more surveillance

around women in their lives. Yeah, I saw one Twitch streamer who I love, but was even saying, and I'm sure maybe he was saying it in like a joking way, but like, oh, you know, too many of the security guards at Twitch were twinks. Like, they were small. We need like big, big. burly men to be security guards. And I'm sure he was joking, but it's like these little things that drive me crazy because, as you said, like, having big burly men around does not inherently make women safe. Having 24-7 IRL live streamers around does not inherently make women safe. You know, having all the kind of like wristband bullshit in the world, like, again, should

we have a baseline level of security? Yes. But all of that stuff will not prevent so much of the just disgusting stuff that women had to deal with at this year's convention and previous years convention. And I think that Twitch needs. a radical culture change. And I think the influencer world generally needs to confront its misogyny problem. Because although Twitch is the sort of the nexus of a lot of stuff, it's all over Reddit,

it's all over YouTube, it's all over Twitter. Like it is this like network of hate that spreads across the entire internet. Yeah. Hate will never make women safer. It will only put them in more danger. Well, Kat, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. That's it for this week's Free Speech Friday.

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