Category: Miscellaneous

Would the world be better without Twitch.tv?

A streamer. I don’t know who.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot recently; since I basically gave up on mainstream media of all kinds and dove into Twitch streaming for something more human to watch (even if it is owned by Amazon).

Twitch is an interesting platform. It was definitely a pioneer in live-streaming as we know it today. And that’s generally a good thing. Live-streaming is a useful thing to be able to do. Anyone can use it for citizen journalism at a moment’s notice for example. And it’s an easy way to get into producing content online. It’s certainly easier than (scripting?), filming and uploading a YouTube video.

But aside from popularising and perfecting the technology of streaming itself, I can’t think of anything else positive Twitch is responsible for. It’s good at promoting conservative, individualistic thinking through its system of monetisation where it brings out the worst in so many people. Everything has a price. Streamers sell their dignity to the highest bidder all the time it feels like. It’s also good at creating either extremely right wing or anti-political discourse. It rewards stupidity in a way no other social media platform does. At least in my experience. And that’s despite other apps undoubtedly providing stiff completion. Its community on the whole practically celebrates anti-intellectualism. And that’s barely exaggeration, if at all.

And then you get into the gaming roots of the Twitch service itself. The original Justin.tv website which preceded Twitch was not gaming related. It was a more generic streaming service that came out of a sort of stunt; streaming the life of one of the founders 24/7 for a significant period of time. They chose to focus its successor service on gaming rather than IRL (in real life). And that was a mistake in my view. Presumably they chose to do that because they saw game streaming as the next big market they could aim it at to differentiate Twitch from YouTube. I guess it could also have come down to technical limitations of outdoor streaming at the time. Which would have been fair enough, even if it has seemingly not paid off in the long run. Shoehorning outdoor streaming into a platform designed for gaming was always going to be awkward and sub-optimal. Under social democracy, they might have felt empowered to take a punt on IRL / general variety streaming in the early stages.

The gaming world does have plenty of good people involved; but I don’t think anyone would dispute the fact that it was and is far more toxic and unpleasant than it is welcoming and open minded. Had they chosen to (or been able to) focus on life streaming at the beginning, Twitch (or whatever they might have called it instead) could have been a genuine YouTube competitor by now. Rather than a relatively niche community of often angry / depressed gamer misfits (and that’s speaking as an anxious, occasionally angry and depressed gamer misfit). Had YouTube been put under pressure over the years, they’d likely not be as awful as they are now too because of their monopolistic position in online video.

Another interesting element to me, is just how easily the Twitch model has been copied by newcomers like Kick, which is even more right wing and problematic. Kick demonstrated how little of a unique selling point Twitch actually has, and maybe exposed their hubris. YouTube has that gargantuan back catalogue of videos stretching back 20 years. This is genuinely useful and makes them practically untouchable in video, as I said. What does Twitch have content wise? Yes, they have contracts with popular streamers. But we’ve seen big names abandon the platform for guaranteed cash payouts elsewhere already, and this trend will surely accelerate. In terms of archived streams, they now limit even paid accounts to just a few months of archives. And even when streamers choose to make full VODs highlighted permanently; watching 10 hour streams back is a very niche pursuit. I like to do it, because I find that very often, the best parts of streams don’t make the highlights (on YouTube of course). But I will readily admit I’m far from normal in that regard, and it’s surely not a money spinner for Twitch either. And even in this scenario, a lot of Twitch streamers actually just upload their full VODs to secondary YouTube accounts anyway. So Twitch loses out here too.

When you add everything together: the toxic, idiotic, extremely capitalistic culture; the gaming theme that has almost certainly limited the platform’s mainstream appeal; and the fact that almost the entire service can easily be replicated; it doesn’t look good.

If Amazon decided tomorrow to shut the whole thing down; everyone would just move over to Kick or another similar service, and barely anyone would shed a tear. You could even rebrand Kick with the Twitch name and logo, and turn the green accents to purple, and how many people would even be able to tell the difference?

To be absolutely clear; what we need now is definitely not Kick to replace Twitch. What we need is a non-gaming themed, socialist run live-streaming service that keeps the streaming tech but cuts out all the capitalist bullshit. Get rid of text-to-speech (TTS) donations; which hand a megaphone to rich arseholes who can promote fascist politics and climate denial as much as their fat wallets allow (Aka endlessly). Maybe allow one TTS message per viewer per stream. Free of charge of course (or very cheap if absolutely necessary). You’d still be able to be heard above the crowd when you feel like you have something really important to say. But you’d have to be very careful to make the most of it. To time it right, and really be profound. You wouldn’t have stupid spam messages all the time; and you’d allow socialists a voice too. Not just the cashed up, climate denying MAGA supporters. You’d also get rid of these sycophantic sugar daddy types that are way too common on the platform right now. And even that is hardly surprising given the rampant inequality in society. The rich are hoarding all the money!

You often get situations where female streamers are extremely reliant on (probably) older, (probably) rich (probably) men to pay their bills. Some of them are harmless, nice guys who maybe just really like the person and genuinely want to help them out. Albeit sometimes stretching their own finances to the limit to do so. But other times it’s more insidious. You can quite easily have situations where some men perhaps enjoy the power they have over women streamers in a way that pushes the boundary of innocent fun, or crosses it. Sometimes it feels pretty misogynistic, even if it’s not necessarily intentional. You would have a far healthier environment for streamers and viewers alike if you had an overall more equal society, with many people contributing smaller amounts. Rather than a handful as is so often the case now.

A left wing (or even centrist) Twitch alternative I think could very easily take the best elements of the technology, remove all the bad stuff; be a much more inclusive and open minded place for all kinds of thought and entertainment; and become a genuine YouTube competitor. I don’t think that would be too hard either these days, because I get the feeling many people kind of hate YouTube. I used to be a massive fan of YouTube before it became the undisputed home for all internet video not produced by a big corporation like Netflix or Disney. But in the last few years, the algorithm, the AI comment police, the censorship of small channels that speak uncomfortable truths, the incessant clickbait, the stupid facial expressions in thumbnails that creators are forced to make in order to pay their bills. The whole thing has just become so shit. So I think people are increasingly using it begrudgingly and are more open to alternatives. And especially if they’re live focused, because live is relatable, and has a unique, fun element when executed well.

If we do see something new come along, and Twitch does fall out of favour, then they’ll only have themselves to blame. Not least for choosing not to pay their “partners” what they’re worth; which is perhaps the biggest black mark against the company of all. It shows a disregard for the people who generate the money. A streaming platform without streamers is nothing after all. Even the lack of imagination in how payments are structured is mystifying. It seems obvious to me that you should have a progressive payment system. Pay small streamers the highest percentage, to enable them to make a living and potentially deliver more revenue for the company later on; and reduce it down to a base of maybe 50% as streamers earn more and more. But at the moment, you have a scenario where even streamers who have 100k followers and plenty of loyal subscribers are getting burnt out. It makes no sense for anyone. The whole streaming world is ripe for a totally new approach.

August 22, 2025
It’s time to ban (or boycott) AI

I used to think AI had some legitimate benefits. Mostly in areas like healthcare. I still believe that it’s likely to be beneficial in that one specific instance. But I started getting the feeling recently that the capitalist class are using the very few actually useful scenarios for AI as a way to sell their dystopian vision for the technology to people who are otherwise rightly sceptical.

There have been recent reports about how even students at top universities (in western countries I believe, which makes sense) have been relying on AI to write their entire coursework projects for them. If it’s happening in those institutions, imagine what’s happening at high schools. This is my impression of the conservative approach to education through and through, but on steroids. Students learn very little (or in this case, basically nothing), but they get an oh so useful piece of paper saying they passed, which will surely prepare them for life in the workplace. When I left college in the early 2000s, I didn’t feel prepared for a job; and there was no AI back then. It would have been hard to cheat on assignments too, although I’m sure some tried copying and pasting from Wikipedia or something. It illustrates that conservatives never really cared about true education. They always just wanted to create the next generation of obedient worker drones who don’t ask questions, do jobs they’re overqualified for, so they can keep their pay and level of power to challenge the system suppressed as much as possible. And try to push as many people as possible into the financial sector. Simultaneously killing true education as well as the arts. Slowly but surely so people barely noticed for decades (until about now).

So I suppose we can say that AI is the natural next step conservatives want us to take. They want us to be even more incurious than before. And I feel like I’m noticing this everywhere. People are often unwilling to even look up the most basic of facts in a search engine these days. Let alone find an answer in a book while researching the old fashioned way. I’ve been talking to people on services like Bluesky, and they won’t have even bothered to look at my profile to see I call myself a degrowth communist. They’ll be surprised a few days later when I bring it up once I suspect they haven’t seen. And these are otherwise very smart and switched-on people. If they’re acting in this way, what are Trump / Reform voters doing? They’re seemingly waiting to be told what to think and feel. Ash Sarkar said essentially this on Novara Live last week, and it got me thinking about this topic.

Speaking of search engines, that brings me to my next point. People are using AI chatbots as replacements for traditional search engines like Google (or DuckDuckGo, which I’ve switched to recently). This is clearly excessive. Search engines do the job for us perfectly fine. They’re not as conversational, but they work. There’s no real benefit to using AI in this way. In fact, it’s objectively worse. For example, as we’ve seen in a recent story, Grok, which is Elon Musk’s AI built into X, has been giving answers which have clearly been manipulated by an employee at X. Potentially Musk himself. If AI is not truly independently intelligent, and instead just parrots the ideology of its creators, then how can any of us take it seriously and trust its answers? With a search engine, you are shown a list of independent websites best placed to answer your question or provide the information you’re looking for. I know search providers can manipulate this, but generally speaking it’s still decent. With AI, people are often taking the paragraph or so of text it churns out as gospel. If they even bother to look up the thing at all. This is incredibly dangerous for society when opinion is being presented as fact, or if a bug causes incorrect information to be presented as fact too. It doesn’t have to be deliberate to be disastrous. Of course, even search engines are integrating AI answers now. On DuckDuckGo, and most other search engines, you can turn it off, which is good. But how long are these companies going to give us the option?

And this is another massive problem with AI. The energy consumption. An AI search request uses around 10 times more energy than a Google search, for example. This is something that we absolutely can’t afford to scale up to all web searches, for obvious reasons. We’re already destroying our climate and environment at a rapid pace. Are we determined to put ourselves out of our misery faster? Is that it? Or is it just incredible levels of stupidity that has pushed us into doing the worst possible things at the worst possible time?

As I said earlier, there are a few legitimate areas of society where AI can improve our lives in a tangible way. But I’m not willing to implement those at any cost. If we limited the scope of AI purely to these areas, such as healthcare; then fair enough. But that can only happen under a socialist or communist society. As long as the capitalists are in charge, we’re going to get a nightmarish implementation of AI that we really don’t want. And it doesn’t have to include a Terminator style robot uprising for that to be the case. The acceleration of the dumbing down of society, and the additional climate damage being caused are nightmarish enough. And I haven’t even mentioned autonomy taking people’s jobs. That’s a whole other topic that gets endlessly written about.

I’ve been boycotting AI for years already. Everyone else who cares about our future needs to do the same. It’s getting progressively more difficult to avoid, but we just have to stay one step ahead. If that means switching email provider, or not using a social network, switching to a different type of smartphone; or even stopping using a smartphone altogether; we have to do it.
Fediverse Reactions
May 24, 2025
We should be demanding DRM-free eBooks

Since Amazon recently removed our right as Kindle eBook owners (or licencees?) to download our books (and subsequently strip the DRM – Digital Rights Management) from them to enable use on other devices; I’ve seen YouTubers talking about switching to the Kobo store for example. As though Kobo is perfect. People talk about how they trust Kobo to not be the evil corporation that Amazon are most associated with being. And while Kobo certainly does seem vastly more focused on customers having a good experience; they still have DRM on their books. People talk happily about being able to easily strip the DRM. And that Kobo even tells you how to do it themselves. That’s a lot better than Amazon as well, of course. But we shouldn’t continue to accept this as normal.

There’s absolutely no reason why all paid eBooks can’t be sold entirely DRM free tomorrow (or maybe in a month. It might take a while to make the switch. But you get the idea). We fought for and won DRM free iTunes music 16 years ago! Even in the book world, we have Libro.fm, the fantastic audiobook service (that I use and recommend). It provides DRM free audiobooks that you can download, back up, and play on any media player on any device. They also have an excellent app which has streaming, and cloud sync of your place. I tend to back up books, but then listen via the app. It’s awesome. As a communist in a miserable capitalist world where pretty much all corporations exist to fleece you; it’s shocking to me that I found even a single company that I’d recommend this highly. Stop giving Amazon (and then Google) money for audiobooks; as I was before I found out about Libro.fm. Before I get accused of being sponsored, I’m a communist. I hate sponsorships. So no.

It’s pretty bewildering that audiobooks are DRM free, but eBooks mostly aren’t. I would have thought the book industry would be more protective of audiobooks than eBooks because of their increasing popularity and their investments in the production of the audiobooks, the narrators and so on. There are two reasons I can think of why the publishing industry would do it this way round. Either they would be fine with DRM-free eBooks, but no one really complains vocally (because they’re quiet and polite bookworms), and therefore they haven’t realised there’s demand for it. Or they’re worried about how easily eBooks (which are small files) could be shared around. Compared to audiobooks, which are relatively large files and so people will be less willing to make the effort to steal them? I think the first option I’ve arbitrarily given myself to pick from is clearly more plausible. I mean I don’t know if that second argument holds water at all given the speed and reliability of our 2025 internet, and the affordability of storage as well.

DRM is definitely a big problem in our lives in various fields. Gaming is a big one. I’m not exactly sure how that gets solved under capitalism, because I do think that if gaming publishers did offer DRM-free, I’m not confident that the majority of gamers would keep paying. I honestly don’t think the gesture of respect would be reciprocated by enough. Although I hope I’m proven wrong on that. I’m sure there are many gaming industry experts (on the left) out there who can speak to this better than me. But certainly we can continue to eliminate it from more places very easily, and books are one of the easiest. I do think that the publishing industry could be easily pushed to do it with a relatively small co-ordinated campaign. Libro.fm shows that it can definitely be done.

Hopefully pretty soon, the only place where DRM for books exists will be with digital borrowing from libraries; where it actually makes total sense.
Fediverse Reactions
May 17, 2025
Why the Left’s Strategy is Irrelevant

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

One of my biggest bugbears in recent years has been hearing this idea being banded around in socialist media; (I don’t want to say left because that can mean too many different things) that suggests that socialists are to blame for our lack of societal traction.

To me, this is total nonsense. While you can argue, and I’d agree, that the Corbyn campaign didn’t do everything 100% perfectly strategy wise for example; the discourse amplifies tiny strategic errors as being the virtual sole cause of loss of support amongst the electorate. Societal political literacy and media influence get mostly overlooked with less importance placed upon them. People like Nigel Farage and Richard Tice get the opposite treatment. Some prominent British socialist journalists are quick to praise Nigel Farage in particular as a political strategic genius. I’m not saying he isn’t a shrewd operator and a great public speaker / showman. He is. But he, and most others like him generally find their popularity falls into their lap. All they have to do is avoid a mega blunder that would cut through to the mainstream and expose them for the anti-worker charlatans they are and always have been to a population that barely pays attention to politics at all. Apart from on polling day where about half of them can be bothered to actually turn up and express their anger at how much more shit the country has become since last time.

And that’s in a country where we still have a modicum of common sense and we aren’t by and large a zombie wasteland like the United States. There, you don’t even have to avoid the mega blunder. You can be an out-and-proud fascist, rapist, fraudster and so on; and still win the popular vote. It’s almost as if the less strategy you have, the better. So, why do we allow Farage, or Tice, or any of the rest of them to get painted as strategic masterminds even by socialists like Aaron Bastani (who I generally like); and meanwhile someone like Jeremy Corbyn gets harsh criticism from the same journalists and outlets for tiny strategic errors that would never even make the news if Farage did them?

We don’t like to blame the public. We don’t want to have to say that a large part of our electorate are blithering idiots (which often leads them to racism, bigotry and sometimes violence); but it’s true. Look at every man or woman on the street “vox pop” video that’s been released on youtube or broadcast on TV in the last few years. They almost seem to be getting stupider, more racist and more bigoted with every single video. Maybe they are. Take Bastani’s recent trip to Runcorn for example. The vast majority of the people he talked to were convinced that Britain is a poor country and we have to choose between either housing and supporting British born citizens, and treating “illegal migrants” (aka desperate asylum seekers who have been through a hell of a lot to even get here) to lavish lifestyles in hotels. And they also tend to think that the migrants don’t want to work, when they are literally being prevented from working. The government refuse to reverse a couple of decade old policy that stops refugees contributing to society because it allows them to more easily demonise the vulnerable people; which in turn benefits them politically. Although it will benefit Farage more obviously.

Even the people he interviewed who weren’t entirely brain rotted didn’t have much of use to say. Out of the whole almost half an hour long video, only one person mentioned the Green Party (the only left of centre party in England), and he was basically the only person who made any cogent points at all. As far as the two women I think it was who said they were going to vote Labour in the parliamentary by-election; the best argument they came up with was that Labour just needed a bit more time to see if they could turn it around. Aaron mentioned this as notable in his summary of the video as well.

We need to be honest about the fact that British people are very, very stupid and uninformed on average at this point. Yes, you can say that Farage and Reform are “strategic” in terms being best placed to manipulate fools into voting against their own interests. But they’re not strategic masterminds. They’re just benefitting from decades of societal decay. There’s nothing significantly wrong with the left’s strategy. It’s been more than good enough to win elections in 2017 and 2019. We’ve seen it in Canada and Australia in the last couple of weeks. I’m not saying those results were good for the left. They weren’t. But those countries show that the more educated a society is, the more likely it is that they will resist fascism. Canada and Australia have definitely fallen back in education standards and political knowledge as well, which is why the results were still bad for socialists and social democrats. The “Shit Lite” party (as The Juice Media would say) won in both of those cases. I think that’s a really good illustration though of what this is really about.

Smart countries vote for socialists. Moderately intelligent countries vote for the neoliberals, and brain dead looney populations vote for obvious charlatans who offer nothing to them, and get propped up by the media, like Nigel Farage.

May 10, 2025

Design a site like this with WordPress.com