Twitch is under fire this morning for seemingly failing to protect one of their streamers from her online stalker. The streamer has now turned to Twitter, hoping that the added attention will help force Twitch into action. The gaming community has had a long-term problem with fully welcoming and accepting female gamers. One of the major ways that manifests is through stalking and general harassment of female gaming figures.

Women in gaming are more likely to be stalked, be sent death threats, and have those death threats acted upon. That mixed with the fact that both America and England's laws for protecting people before a crime happens are particularly weak as the justice system is focused more on punishment than prevention. Because of all of this, there is much more emphasis on platforms like Twitch on doing their part in disrupting this abuse before it becomes violent.

Related: New Game Has You Protecting a Female Streamer From Online Trolls

Streamer Sweet Anita tweeted this morning about Twitch no longer replying to her messages dealing with her stalker who has been using Twitch to get to her. Twitch covers stalking in its harassment section of the platform's current guidelines and the consequence for it is only a suspension of the violator's account. After Twitch paused communication with Sweet Anita she went to Twitter, where she has already been talking about her stalker troubles for weeks, and sought out community support to help pressure Twitch into taking action. This has seemingly worked, as she has confirmed on Twitter that Twitch has started replying again and that hopefully now something will be done.

The stalker in question has been harassing and threatening Sweet Anita for a few months now and has even been arrested and convicted of stalking. They received a restraining order and a suspended sentence of 2 months in prison. After all that, they have left more recent death threats on Sweet Anita's Twitch chat. This is a deeply troubled and apparently violent person who the law needs to stop. Twitch also needs to do all it can to prevent this person's harassment and their ongoing contact with Sweet Anita.

The conversation on Twitter has been a great showing of support for Sweet Anita and her situation mixed with many people trying to tell her what to do. There are people telling her to get a gun, or a dog to protect herself. The Police she has interacted with even asked why she doesn't just stop making content, which would take away her livelihood because of someone else breaking the law. She has valid reasons why these "quick fixes" won't work in her situation, but even if they would they should not be the first response of people to her plight. Sweet Anita said, "We all get stalkers. The problem is not content creators it's stalkers." The actual issues here are a justice system that can't or won't properly protect her, a gaming culture that breeds this obsessed nightmare "fan", and an internet culture that recommends that she shoots and kills someone as their first solution. The terrible thing is that this is not at all a unique scenario. Everyone from Twitch, to the justice system, to the everyday Twitter user needs to do better in supporting and protecting these content creators from toxic evil people. Remember above all: stop blaming the victim.

Next: Why Twitch Banned Dr. Disrespect: Everything We Know & What's Next

Source: Sweet Anita - Twitter