(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc.’s livestreaming site Twitch is poised to cut 35% of its staff, or about 500 workers, according to people familiar with the plans, the latest in a series of job reductions there.
The cuts, which could be announced as soon as Wednesday, come amid concerns over losses at Twitch and after several top executives left the company in the span of a few months. A Twitch spokesperson declined to comment.
Running a large-scale website supporting 1.8 billion hours of live video content a month is enormously expensive, despite Twitch’s reliance on Amazon’s infrastructure, company executives have said. In December, Twitch Chief Executive Officer Dan Clancy said the company would cease operations in South Korea, where the costs are “prohibitively expensive,” according to a blog post he wrote.
Twitch has increased its focus on advertising in recent years. Nine years after Amazon’s acquisition of the company, the business remains unprofitable, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.
In the final months of 2023, several top executives announced their departures, including Twitch’s chief product officer, chief customer officer and chief content officer. Twitch also lost its chief revenue officer, who worked on Twitch from within Amazon’s Ads unit.
“It’s always bittersweet when talented leaders move on to pursue new opportunities,’’ a Twitch spokesperson said at the time. “We are incredibly grateful for their contributions to Twitch and our community, and wish them all the best.”
The former employees all declined to comment.
Since he took the position in March 2023, Clancy has been on a cross-country charm offensive to mend relations with the gaming celebrities who make a living streaming on Twitch. Many of them chafed at Twitch’s original approach to ads, which the company reworked after criticism. Streamers have praised Clancy’s desire to listen to their concerns after years of complaints that the service was out of touch with its users.
The new chief has struggled to stem losses, however. Twitch undertook two rounds of layoffs last year, cutting over 400 positions, part of wider job reductions at Amazon.
The online retail giant initiated its biggest-ever corporate job cuts in 2022, which it expanded to 27,000 positions across the company. It continued in October with a new round of cuts to its music division, which encompasses the company’s audio streaming platform and digital storefront for songs.
Two things:
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if you VPN to Ukraine or various other nations which are deemed "not profitable" or whatever to Twitch/Amazon you will receive NO ads. You don't even need to VPN all your traffic either. Just the specific URLs that Twitch uses to serve ads (you can google for more info if interested. "TTV PRO LOL" or something along those lines (it's an addon but the community + devs tell which sites to route) + "self host proxy" will get you get there. I just have my home network setup to forward all their ad domains to Ukraine through a commercial VPN. No ads on all my devices. Particularly useful for Apple and other annoyingly locked down devices)
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Twitch makes as much profit as Amazon wants it to make.
By this I mean Amazon is a de facto monopoly in a bunch of sectors (or part of a collusion between other corporations. Oligopoly).
Amazon Web Services aka one of my picks for "massively underrated domestic threat to the US" is owned by, obviously, Amazon. It serves as a core backbone at this point for the internet as a whole. Any rational person would assume such power would be held by a government department or at the least be heavily regulated by one... wrong! Because America. Anyway, Amazon owns AWS and Twitch. AWS is clearly going to be Twitch's biggest expense besides labor.
AWS is free to Twitch. However, Amazon has a vested interest in
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never saying this (antitrust laws might start hovering) and
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gaming the numbers as required to appear more or less profitable in order to push certain narratives to achieve certain goals. Perhaps like this upcoming purge.
Twitch steals a fuckload of cash from streamers who, as much hate as they mostly legitimately deserve, are still workers and are being exploited by Amazon (Twitch) who has no right to the bulk of what they skim. They are allowed to do so only because of holding essentially a monopoly in their niche sector.
Google seems complicit in this since they make nearly no attempt to move in on Twitch despite having massive resources. They seem content to be just the VOD guys and let Twitch dominate live streaming. Typical collusion type shit. There may be a better word for it legally, but everyone understands my meaning. "Working together to fuck the public and their workers."
This isn't me taking a pro or against stance on Twitch's output. I don't care that much. I am anti Amazon though and anti corporations using manipulation of accounting figures to steal more from workers. At the end of the day, the workers who keep Twitch running probably individually suck shit. Most of the streamers on Twitch are reactionary and suck shit. I'm still going to call out Amazon's bullshit here though. Mostly because it's an obvious thing to people who know literally anything about how accounting works for corporations (ie it's all fake and lies), but also because redditor-types will gobble up the official Amazon narrative. Just like they do state dept narratives. So, I gotta do my bit to shout into the void.
I think its worth remembering that Twitch started out as "Justin.tv", a popular site for pirate streams of athletic events. The popularity of video game streams was almost an afterthought until the company pivoted to legal monetization. Then, as streamed gaming and TTRPG let's play videos took off, they got the kind of cash injection that made them attractive for acquisition. But the legit cash stream also forced them out of the pirated athletics space.
In that way, it sort of followed Napster's model - initially illegal/quasi-legal consumer consolidation that pivoted to legal service built on name recognition - abet far more successfully.
Downsizing the staff to nothing and just squeezing the firm out based on name recognition seems to be all anyone at Amazon HQ knows to do with the firm. They're just profiting from inertia at this point, as people with recognized brands struggle to jump ship without losing their base of viewers.
I have to wonder how soon it'll be before Amazon buys up Patreon and repeats this trick.
In that way, it sort of followed Napster's model - initially illegal/quasi-legal consumer consolidation that pivoted to legal service built on name recognition - abet far more successfully.
Crunchyroll is a slightly better example. They were a straight up pirate anime site until they pivoted to being a legal service successfully and these days they're the most anti-piracy bunch of shits in the sector.
Google seems complicit in this since they make nearly no attempt to move in on Twitch despite having massive resources
YouTube has thrown massive exclusive contracts at some streamers and successfully gotten them to convert
Issue is these sites depend on the network effect so it's pretty hard to break in like with Google+ attempt
youtube live and youtube shorts are becoming massively popular though
Most of YouTube shorts is just TikTok reposts, and YouTube live is mostly already popular YouTubers livestreaming. A different demographic than twitch. It will be more popular than twitch in the long run, because twitch is run by fools.
It could be incompetence or just me being too critical from the outside, but what you've said is true. However, I'd say YouTube never tried hard enough. I think if they asked viewers, customers, whatever we are (ad watchers 👀) for "tips" to make YouTube Live more viable, and they specifically targeted watchers of TikTok lives and Twitch (being the most popular already) they'd hear (from me anyway): emotes, emotes, emotes. Separate client/app. Promote live content more front snd center. The way they do their "Shorts" TikTok ripoff content now. That got popular despite original pushback from people because they just kinda held our mouths open and let the shit flow in. They never did that with live. I know some of this has been addressed fully or half assedly, whichever, but still. YouTube has kinda given up now. And they never even tried that hard. They tried harder with YouTube Music (also a bit of a flop considering it was around back when Spotify was coming up) than they ever did with Live. It has its own separate app which is a necessity, it's marketed as an additional feature with YouTube premium, that sort of thing.
Amazon Web Services aka one of my picks for "massively underrated domestic threat to the US" is owned by, obviously, Amazon. It serves as a core backbone at this point for the internet as a whole. Any rational person would assume such power would be held by a government department or at the least be heavily regulated by one... wrong! Because America.
I've long thought that radicalising the people that could seize this is a fun fantasy but I can't see any simple way to do so when they are generally paid very well and pretty comfortable, unlike for example the staff in the amazon warehouses.
It's the same story with google and their private infrastructure like the backbone of datacenters they operate. Extremely high-risk.
The AWS corporate workers would never unionize until America is literally burning to the ground but the people operating the data centers on premise are a different story
There are a few examples of Google data center technicians trying to unionize. But tbh they're still not that easy of a target either
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/google-workers-explain-why-they-unionized/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-contractors-allege-were-fired-160410018.html
There are a few chokepoints to target that don't include the office workers. For example, on Google Search and Bard, there's contractors responsible for training the ML models that unionized. Not saying that this specific example is a critical chokepoint though since this could be easily outsourced
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/07/group-of-google-contractors-who-work-on-win-union-vote.html
Seizing that stuff at this point in American politics seems like, yes, total fantasy.
There is another S word though which is more possible
Slithering snakes scheming to stilt the stalks of society. "Stop sugaring my server, swarthy scoundrel!"
Sugaring is the word of the day. Is it word? I don't know. It is now. I hope no one sugars any servers though.
Yeah it's still certainly an infrastructural weakpoint. I think amazon knows this though, they employ ex-cia (""ex"" lol) for their security team (which coincidentally is also their union busting team). They probably keep some pretty serious monitoring on the staff members involved with these weakpoints and would drop them at the first sign of any links to radical groups.
We know they do company-wide monitoring for union busting, heatmapping out their facilities based on highest risk of unionisation too. They do some pretty advanced stuff.
Amazon outsources to the DoD and UK equivalent (whatever it's called)
So I do not doubt they have their own private teams on constant lookout and also basically the 5 eyes like secret service style surveillance going on at any given time. At least just keeping tabs on worker attitudes, their personal finances, and relationships to foreign governments and whatnot. It would be a "fun" little canary type thing if a worker directly for AWS gifted like $10K per month to a pro-Palestinian charity. Just do that and only that and never say anything online or in person and just see if they get more scrutiny at work, etc. Of course an impossible experiment. It would be interesting though
It's not just outsourcing, it's definitely in-house teams of cia too.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200901125940/https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/1026060/intelligence-analyst
Show
· Perform intelligence analysis of groups, actors, and incidents using advanced analytic techniques that transform relevant facts into meaningful insights; Analysts are also expected to develop intelligence collection plans that observe operational security (opsec), collect on intended topics/POIs/groups, adhere to responsible collection techniques, and are relevant to highlighting risk to the business
Preferred Qualifications:
· Previous experience in Intelligence analysis and or watch officer skill set in the intelligence community, the military, law enforcement, or a related global security role in the private sector.
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Oh and twitch staff on twitter found out about this news the same way we did and have no idea currently who is getting cut. This is all leaked.
We're 10 days into January and 2024 already has 20% as many layoffs in the gaming industry as occurred in 2023. 10,500 was the total number of estimated layoffs last year.
This is nice data but it doesn't group by sub-industry. All the gaming companies are "consumer" compared to this list for just gaming. Definitely a good site though. The fact they're tracking exactly who was laid off at each company is very interesting and could be very useful for targeting.
Tech companies really fucked themselves by all making a run on that one bank that was apparently funding literally every tech company in amerikkka
95% of the tech industry revolves around servicing businesses that were only viable with the free loans that the feds had been handing out the last few years
Excuse you, my company that provides a way to coordinate the different templating languages of six other companies for marketing emails is perfectly viable by itself, and without us, there's no way that our clients would be able to scale to billion-user multi-cloud marketing email campaigns.
They also assumed growth pre COVID and during COVID lockdowns would continue infinitely and based hiring policies and business plans off of that. Now it's all over, the growth has stopped and they're screwed. I think Twitch even tried to allow nudity and softcore porn on the site with the new terms of service, that's how desperate they are for user growth.
The worst thing about these layoffs is that the company doesn’t collapse from 1/3 people getting chopped.
Because it is a form of austerity. Once there is enough unemployment in the tech sector and people are desperate enough, some of them will be re-hired again with shittier pay and conditions.
I still see some leftists who believe in the myth that capitalists need workers to function. No, it is the other way round under capitalism: as long as the wage relations is protected and maintained, workers will always need capitalists to survive. A key component of socialism is precisely about dismantling private property ownership and the wage relations that sustain the capital order.
I mean, don't capitalist also need workers to survive, given that they (capital owners) don't make anything? Though I do agree that a decent portion of these layoffs seem to be more about disciplining the industry rather than any serious business proposals.
Weren't a lot of tech firms also famous for just taking any available talent that was for hire, even if they had no need for their labour at the current moment, just so those talented workers wouldn't go to their competitors and do something useful?
I spend all my time on twitch, and the only thing I've ever paid for is Twitch Turbo (gets rid of ALL ads, no matter what) and the free prime sub.
Can't wait for that tech bubble to burst!
I haven't used Twitch much in the past few years but I'm pretty sure a VPN or just using the site through an incognito browser gets rid of ads. Would recommend to stop giving money to Bezos.
