Twitch finally shuts down down illegal cockfighting channels after protests online

Twitch has banned a number of channels hosting cockfighting streams on the platform after the broadcasts were mass-reported by concerned users.

For the unaware, cockfighting is literally exactly what you imagine: two roosters pitted against each other in a bloodsport, sometimes to the death but often just enough to do a lot of physical trauma. It’s a practice that dates back millennia and in many countries has been illegal for a long time. That said, people will always find their way around the rules, and these cockfighting rings in the Philippines had even started broadcasting on Twitch for viewers to watch.

Naturally, this is a very controversial topic and became even more so when Reddit user Hot_Kangaroo_2567 shared a post with links to certain cockfighting broadcasts.

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In the post, he urged people to head to the channels he hunted down and mass report them. Providing an insight into what was going on, Hot_Kangaroo said there were “Cockfighting streams from the Philippines that had been happening in Twitch’s unlisted section for multiple months with up to 12+ hour streams and up to 500+ viewers.”

Throughout the night, they were updating the Reddit post with new channels they had found, and crossing them off their list when the stream was shut down. At the time of writing and as of the latest update, at least 30 of these streams had been banned or shut down, despite efforts to keep them going.

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There may be more, but it appears many were being suspended as soon as they went live, with Twitch clearly looking to crack down on them. While Twitch has come under fire for who and how they ban certain channels in the past, it’s fair to say that they’re getting it right this time around.