Twitch’s new boost feature puts porn on the homepage

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

After porn ended up on users' homepages with the label "promoted by the streamer's community", the boost train feature has been paused.

Several users on both sides of the internet shared pictures of porn at the front of their live channels. The streams showed up there thanks to an experimental feature that was announced last year. The basic concept remains the same, but the feature has changed since it was first introduced. Content not allowed on twitch was what happened in this case.

Unless the users promoting the streams were explicitly trying to get the feature shut off, or get the creator in trouble, it would be hard to call it money well spent. The boosted streams could have also been plain old-fashioned troll.

Sam Faught, head of communications for the company, said in a statement that the company decided to pause the train due to some safety considerations. Additional updates will be shared with the community around new features to improve discoverability.

It seems likely that the reports played a part in the decision to stop the experiment. Nudity and sexually explicit content or activities are not allowed on the platform. We've seen how unwanted attention can harm marginalized streamers, which is a concern if the feature lived on. Kotaku asked if the feature would return or be changed, but it was only replied that it was on pause for now.