Sunday, September 9, 2018

Let's discuss self-promotion

Self-promotion is a means where a user joins a channel & attempts to get them to come to their own through advertisements, sometimes using bonuses for new visitors or followers (sometimes bogus, sometimes real).  While this may be a real problem on various sites such as Twitch or YouTube, you have to look at how much can be said before it actually hits the point of self-promotion.

I for one have no problem pointing out certain details about their channels, provided they aren't outright attempting to get my viewers to go to theirs.  To give a few examples, a few channels that I used to go regularly to (regularly enough that I had follows & auto-hosts on them) or even was new to made these accusations, the irony about it was that the auto-hosts (or manual hosts, if I chose to do so) was basically promoting their channels through my own when whatever was said that they felt they had enough detail (however minor that detail may have been) to call me on what they believed to be self-promotion.

To give a few examples:
  • I pointed out that I had some videos of people griefing in games, for use in reports against them or just to get the word out on who they were with video proof of the situation.
  • I made it a point to say I would leave the host on their channel going on my own until I got my own stream up (the irony in this one is they already know they are being hosted & it's in the same sentence where they are already getting promoted on my channel; despite it being in the same sentence, they call you on self-promoting).
  • The channel is getting trolled, the streamer is detailing the rules of their channel & I back up their statements stating the rules on my channel are the same (or at least similar), apparently enough for them to warn you that you're self-promoting where the purpose was backing them up...

I don't know about you, but saying something minimal about your own channel shouldn't be considered as self-promotion & it only makes me wonder how much they run into problems with others self-promoting on their channels to make that much of a hair-trigger conclusion that you're only in their channel for no good (even if it's a channel I've been to many times before).  It's these types of allegations that have had me end a host I had put on their channel prior or remove an auto-host I may have had on them for some time.  Streamers may be able to run their channels as they see fit, but is it worth the negative publicity & loss of potential income if they make the wrong decision?  This is something streamers need to ask themselves before they allow a hair-trigger shotgun misfire on actual viewers that made no mistake other than attempting to speak in chat on those channels to begin with.

My channel bans owners (and sometimes moderators) of those channels when they decide to make such faulty decisions (sometimes with an article being written to my personal site), sometimes including followers of those channels if they are coming to my channel to harass me while I'm streaming (these are extreme situations, I've done this with 2 streamers & their followers coming to my channel in the past); while that might not mean much to larger channels, those that don't have the option to receive donations over Twitch itself (or have a decent income to purchase new games themselves), it does cut them out from being able to accumulate points that can be used to purchase new games with those points (not having to spend actual money or getting them a discount if they want to cover the rest of the points in tips), so those who actually see this (particularly those with smaller channels; I'm sure larger channels don't need this benefit with the income they may be gaining from Twitch simply for streaming, so it won't matter if they get banned or not) need to consider the consequences of their hair-trigger actions, start thinking it out & looking at the full picture.

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