On May 26th the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office in South Dakota linked Twitch in a failed attempt to expose another streaming site associated with underage pornography.
The Pennington County Sheriff’s Office have not taken the time clarify the mistake or link the correct website since tweeting out the first mishap.
The tweet comes as a warning but the mix up has resulted in it being rather counter-productive to law enforcement’s intentions.
The website which they intended to highlight was in fact liveme.com, which according to reports has been involved in a number of instances of online abuse, targeting young users.
live.me, which redirects to Twitch.tv, was accidentally linked in the tweet, creating confusion among Twitter readers.
WARNING: Pedophiles are using popular live streaming app https://t.co/zW9S3ccQP1 to manipulate underage girls into performing sexual acts, reward them with virtual currency, and post screen captures or recordings of the girls online to be sold and distributed as child porn.
— Pennington County SO (@PennCoSheriff) May 26, 2018
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It appears to be an honest mistake, but at the time of writing the Sheriff’s Office Twitter account has not corrected their error.
Penn County SO claimed that the streaming site liveme.com rewarded streamers with a virtual currency, that pedophiles used to incentivize underage users, which is similar to Twitch’s ‘bits’ currency.
Twitch streamers can be donated real money, or bits, a form of virtual currency on the popular streaming site.
While Twitch has not responded to the blunder at this point, users can find relief in knowing that the two websites are not affiliated in any way.
Twitch remains a prominent streaming service primarily for gamers with strict guidelines that prevent disturbing and illegal content, as mentioned in the SO’s tweet, from being promoted or distributed across their service.
