Emiru’s Twitch stream sparks viewbotting debate after 7K viewers return in minutes

A recent livestream from Twitch streamer Emiru has started a big online debate after her viewer count suddenly dropped during a stream and then quickly went back up. The moment happened while she was playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on Twitch. A clip of the stream was later shared on Reddit and other social media sites, where many people began discussing whether the strange viewer change was caused by viewbotting or simply a Twitch error.In the clip, Emiru’s stream reportedly had around 16,500 viewers before the number suddenly fell to around 8,000 or 9,000 viewers. Just a few minutes later, the stream gained about 7,000 viewers again and almost returned to the original number. Some tracking websites reportedly showed the sudden drop and recovery, while others did not because they update viewer numbers less often. The whole situation reportedly lasted for only around eight minutes.After the clip spread online, many social media users accused Emiru of using viewbots. Viewbots are fake viewers sometimes used to make streams appear more popular. Commenters believed that the sudden and quick loss and gaining of thousands of viewers was an unnatural act, as it resembled the behavior of bots, which were disconnected and connected again after a while from the same botting service.On the other hand, many have supported Emiru, believing that there is nothing wrong with her and that there is no evidence that she has done anything wrong. Some have stated that Twitch viewers might not always be accurate and could sometimes glitch due to bugs in the API. Since many tracking websites use Twitch’s public data, a Twitch error could also affect those sites.Others also pointed out that random people can send bots to a channel without the streamer knowing about it. Because of that, suspicious viewer activity does not automatically mean the streamer is responsible.So far, Twitch has not commented on the situation, and Emiru has also not publicly addressed the sudden viewer changes. Without official information from Twitch, the real reason behind the viewer drop remains unknown.