Twitch ‘Clips’ feature is used by predators to record and share child abuse

An analysis by Bloomberg News of nearly 1,100 clips on Twitch found that at least 83 of the short videos contain sexualised content involving children. — AFP

In the spring of 2023, a 12-year-old boy went live on Twitch, the popular livestreaming site owned by Amazon.com Inc, to eat a sandwich and play his French horn. Minutes later, about a dozen viewers joined him. Through Twitch’s chat, one asked him to do a somersault. Another requested that he show his muscles.

In response, the boy pulled his pants down. The whole thing ended in an instant, but one viewer, who was following over a hundred other Twitch accounts appearing to belong to children, used a feature called “clips” to capture the fleeting moment in a 20-second video. The resulting clip has since been viewed over 130 times.