We are shocked and saddened by the tragedy that took place in Germany today, and our deepest condolences go out to all those affected.
Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against hateful conduct, and any act of violence is taken extremely seriously. We worked with urgency to remove this content and will permanently suspend any accounts found to be posting or reposting content of this abhorrent act.
We’re continuing to investigate the Halle event and would like to share what we’ve uncovered. The account owner streamed this horrific act live on Twitch for 35 minutes, during which time it was viewed by approximately five people.
A recording of the stream, which was automatically generated based on the account’s settings, was viewed by approximately 2200 people in the 30 minutes before the video was flagged and removed from Twitch.
This account was created about two months prior to streaming the shooting and had attempted to stream only once before.
This video was not surfaced in any recommendations or directories; instead, our investigation suggests that people were coordinating and sharing the video via other online messaging services.
Once the video was removed, we shared the hash with an industry consortium to help prevent the proliferation of this content. We take this extremely seriously and are committed to working with industry peers, law enforcement, and any relevant parties to protect our community.
