Twitch is suing two customers in US federal court docket, accusing them of orchestrating ‘hate raids’ spewing abuse at online game play streamers who will not be white or straight.

The Amazon-owned platform is searching for unspecified money damages from the pair, recognized within the lawsuit as a Netherlands resident behind the account CruzzControl and a Vienna resident with a CreatineOverdose account.

In about August of this yr, CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose “began coordinating attacks on Twitch’s streamers by raiding their channels and spamming those communities with hate,” Twitch stated within the lawsuit filed Thursday in San Francisco.

Hate raid targets had been usually streamers from marginalized teams, resembling racial minorities or members of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood, in accordance with the submitting.

“Defendants attack these streamers by flooding their chats with bot-powered Twitch accounts that spew racist, sexist, and homophobic language and content,” the swimsuit said.

Bots are software program packages that may shortly and routinely fireplace off messages or different content material.

“Defendants’ bots permit them to spew hateful content at a robotic pace, often sending dozens of messages per minute that often outpace the targeted streamer’s ability to moderate chat,” Twitch stated within the swimsuit.

Twitch suspended and ultimately banned offending accounts, solely to have the pair create alternates to keep away from detection and resume raids, the swimsuit stated.

Twitch is asking the court docket to make the offenders pay unspecified money damages. Twitch stated within the submitting it might amend the grievance with the culprits’ actual names as soon as it figured them out.

CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose work in live performance in what’s known as a “hate raiding community,” speaking on platforms resembling Discord and Steam, in accordance with the swimsuit.

Users of Twitch, the world’s greatest online game streaming web site, staged a digital walkout final week to voice outrage over barrages of racist, sexist and homophobic abuse on the platform.

In current months the phenomenon of “hate raids” — torrents of abuse — has been making life more and more disagreeable for minority customers of Twitch.

Twitch has maintained that it’s working to enhance instruments for shielding accounts from abuses.

A Twitter hashtag, #TwitchDoBetter, has turn into a magnet for complaints over the previous month, largely from feminine, non-white and LGBTQ gamers that Twitch is failing to cease web trolls working amok — all whereas taking 50 % of streamers’ earnings.