A multitude of chilling testimonies are shaking the world of French instavideasts, these video game players who share and comment on their games live, several female figures denouncing the sexist and sexual cyberviolence they have suffered for years on the networks.
Insulting messages, photomontages on the bodies of porn actresses, sexual scenarios around his person on forums, etc. : Many are the forms that this cyberviolence takes.
It was in a long testimony published Monday on the social network Twitter that Maghla, one of the most followed instavideasts in France with 700,000 subscribers on the Twitch broadcasting platform, shed light on the daily hell of content creators. live around the video game.
I’m tired and it’s time for me to explain.
I’ve been streaming for years and open my mouth about 10% max of the problem, because apparently you have to ignore it for it to pass.⬇️⬇️⬇️
— Maghlarnaque (@Maghla) October 24, 2022
Maghla, known like all “streamers” by her pseudonym, denounces the incessant sexualization to which she is subjected, even forcing herself to pay attention to her style of dress so as not to expose herself to “comments”.
“There are hundreds of pages of people jerking off to my photos and posting them. Literally. Also montages again and again and comments can go [à] from “I’m raping her” to “I’m going to penetrate this female dog”, etc. The forum is fed every day, ”she reveals again.
A strong testimony, enriched with numerous screenshots to support his point shared more than 30,000 times, which has made it possible to free speech by bringing in its wake several other French videographers and instavideographers.
A few steps against cyberviolence
At the beginning of 2021, a specialized unit to combat online hate was created within the Paris public prosecutor’s office, while the general public in France can report illegal behavior and content on the Pharos platform since 2009.
On YouTube as on Twitch and other platforms, this subject is not new and far too recurrent, deplore the “streamers” while the #MeToo wave has already been in existence for five years.
Present mainly on Twitch, owned by the giant Amazon, the main French-speaking instavideographers are male figures such as Squeezie and ZeratoR, whose channels have experienced respective peak audiences of one million and 700,000 viewers.
Signatory in June of the European Union’s code of conduct against online hate, Twitch announced in December 2021 the establishment of a system to detect malicious users, after a wave of racist and homophobic harassment.
The European Union’s Code of Conduct against Online Hate, launched in 2016, has around ten signatories, including Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Dailymotion, Jeuxvideo.com, TikTok, and LinkedIn, or again the Viber messaging app.
The signatories undertake to assess within 24 hours the majority of content reported by users as hate speech online, and to remove it if necessary, in accordance with national and European legislation.