I have been streaming on Twitch for three years, but have been considering quitting as early as March 2025 when I drafted – but never published – a blog post about my reasons for leaving. I have come close to publishing that post and quitting several time since then. Yet I had always managed to stop myself and feel like the good outweighed the bad when it came to Twitch. But this incident has tipped the scales unfavorably.

The Bad

Here are some of the other reasons I am leaving Twitch.

Ads are only getting worse.

I block ads almost everywhere else on the web, but I chose to not block them on Twitch to support streamers I don't subscribe to in some small way.

Some months ago, related to the point about toxic content, I was repeatedly shown an ad on Twitch for a lingerie brand that was pornography by most definitions of the word. I do not want to view pornography. I do not seek it out. I strive to avoid it.

There was no way to skip this ad. I had to minimize my browser or look away. There was no way to block it aside from using ad-blocker browser extensions or paying for a subscription to Twitch Turbo, which removes ads across all streams. I found a way to provide feedback, and I did so. But there is no guarantee I wouldn't be shown such ads in the future.

I've also noticed I have to watch an increasing number of pre-roll ads, sometimes 7, 8, 9 pre-roll ads at a time, before I can even tune into some streams. This is at least partially due to the streamer's own ad schedule settings. But it seems like Twitch is ratcheting up ads, in general.

Ads are getting out of control everywhere, not just on Twitch. But now every time I stream, it's not just increasingly more ads my non-subscribed viewers have to watch, but now I'm potentially exposing them to pornography and other questionable content. Even if I block ads for myself, there's no way I can personally justify streaming on Twitch or continue to use it as a viewer knowing that other viewers who can't afford to pay are drowning in ads and potentially blindsided by inappropriate ones.

And as I mentioned earlier, subscribing to Twitch Turbo to get rid of ads site-wide is an option (if you can afford it), but that would be funneling even more money to Amazon and Jeff Bezos. And, as I will explain in the next section, I don't want to do that any more than I have to.

It's part of the Amazon machinery.

Amazon is the parent company of Twitch. Reasons not to support Amazon would be a blog post unto itself. But there already many articles and blog posts out there explaining reasons to avoid or actively boycott Amazon. The “Criticism of Amazon” article on Wikipedia is a good place to start.

Here's a quick bullet list of some of the most common, well-documented problems with Amazon:

• Tax avoidance
• Crushing small businesses
• Profiting off surveillance data
• Poor environmental record
• Terrible treatment of employees

Suffice it to say, the less money I make for Amazon and Bezos, the better I'll feel.

And now we can add:

It does not respect users and opts them into data collection to train Amazon's generative AI models without their prior knowledge or consent.

At some point, we have to not only speak out and declare that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, we have to take action. And one of the best actions we can take against companies with terrible business practices is to boycott them.

I'm done being taken for granted by Twitch and Big Tech. Done being tracked, manipulated, exploited, and monetized. Done being opted into all of this without my consent.

The Good

Despite the bad, my experience streaming as a music selector (DJ) and interacting with good people on Twitch has been a mostly positive one and I will miss it dearly.

My love of music has been reignited.

I have always loved music and have enjoyed listening to it in some form or fashion. But I had forgotten how wonderful and enjoyable it was for me to sit and intentionally listen to music – particularly entire albums – rather than just have it playing in the background while I did other things.

I had also forgotten how fun it is to collect and listen to music on physical media. The experience of going to record stores and losing all sense of time as I discovered musical treasures. Getting lost in the stacks. Taking those LPs, CDs, and/or cassettes home, listening to them for the first time. It's an intentional experience that brings me a tremendous amount of joy.

Sharing music in this way is also a joyful experience, one I will always cherish. It breathes new life and fresh perspective into music I've loved for a long time because it's like I'm hearing it for the first time when I introduce it to others.

And being able to discover brilliant music that I couldn't have discovered any other way has been one of the reasons I found the Twitch experience so compelling in the first place. I will have to work hard to find other ways to discover human-curated music outside of algorithms and playlists.

I have met some amazing people.

It's been wonderful meeting and getting to know people from different parts of the world and diverse backgrounds, nerding out over music together. I have met kindred spirits and made good online friends through a shared love of music. I've even met one of them in-person and I was delighted to discover that he is as authentically himself online as he is in real life.

It brought a little joy into people's lives.

I have always tried to make people feel better for having tuned into my stream. Whenever a viewer said something like “I really needed this today” or “you've helped me through a bad day” or “I'm glad I found this stream”, it made it all worth it. This is what gave me the greatest sense of fulfillment as a streamer, and I will miss those points of connection and bright spots the most.

I've learned a lot.

I have learned how to create fun and interactive live streams and how to configure and use the technology to make it all happen.

And I've learned what really matters to me, what is most important. I've been reminded that, although it can bring some momentary pleasure, money really cannot buy enduring happiness. And joy that comes from material possessions is shallow and fleeting.

Relationships and shared experiences provide much deeper, richer, and more enduring happiness. Real relationships with fellow human beings, and especially, with God.

If I went deaf tomorrow, my music collection would no longer be a source of entertainment or joy. But my relationships with loved ones and with God would continue to provide joy, comfort, strength, and meaning.

Changing the Channel

Until last week, I felt like the good outweighed the bad when it came to Twitch.

In my own small way, I hoped that I could do with Twitch what Fred Rogers did with television. He lamented the mindless, crude content on TV, yet he saw the great potential of the medium to be a tool not only for education, but for spreading goodness, truth, and beauty throughout the world. And he made it happen.

But given the present controversy and legitimate concerns about “AI” as it stands today, I don't believe Fred Rogers would have allowed any company to use his program to train generative “AI” models, either, especially without his consent.

And I also realize now that Twitch is really not like television as a whole, it is merely one “channel” among many. And when my stream is live on Twitch, it is just one “program” on that channel buried amongst hundreds of thousands.

So it's time for me to change the channel.

I will have to use other live streaming platforms besides Twitch if I wish to continue to refine and share the social and musical experience I have so enjoyed. Platforms that treat users like human beings are not nearly as popular as Twitch (yet), but they exist.

I have already done a few streams on a platform called PeerTube, a decentralized, federated video hosting/streaming platform with no ads, no algorithms, and no mega-corp baggage.

I am also testing my own Owncast instance, which I think will be a closer experience to Twitch.

It's possible, though, that this might be the end of my live-streaming adventures. It might be time for me to pursue a different hobby and other ways of connecting with others over shared interests.

Discuss...

#100DaysToOffload (No. 164) #Twitch #tech #AI

I've already written about this but it bears repeating: if you do not have control over the tech you use, you should assume that it can – and probably will – be used by those who control it or later gain control of it for nefarious purposes.

This is why I have never owned a smart speaker, smart doorbell, or other such devices, and why I am constantly wary of using an iPhone or a conventional (“Googled”) Android phone.

I understand that my iPhone is not truly mine. Apple ultimately decides what software I am allowed to run on it and they have the ability to completely brick it or turn it into a surveillance tool without my knowledge or consent.

So why do I keep it? Because I'm expected to use a phone for work and church purposes, some of the apps I need to use do not run on de-Googled Android, and from my perspective, “Googled” Android phones are even more of a privacy nightmare than iPhones. So it's a situation where I have to choose the lesser of the evils.

To mitigate risk, I try to use my iPhone only for the purposes required, and I have a second phone running de-Googled Android with OS-level tracker blocking (/e/OS) for everything else. It's not perfect, but it's better than doing nothing.

This is just one of many adjustments I have made by assuming that tech I don't control can be used to spy on me.

Beware of the dangers of using Imperial tech and make adjustments accordingly. Every change you make, no matter how small, makes a difference.

Discuss...

#100DaysToOffload (No. 129) #tech #privacy #AI #smartphones #internet

The second season moves fast. It has to – they had to condense 4 more seasons of material into one. It's brilliant, but the first season is still my favorite. A lot of people didn't like the pacing of Season 1, but I absolutely love it. The intentionality, the deliberateness of it. So much is conveyed in the drawn-out scenes and moments without speech. The music and thoughtful cinematography in those moments tell important parts of the story that action sequences and dialogue could never tell. They give space for the viewers to contemplate what they've seen and heard. They allow room for imagination.

It's so compelling and meaningful because it's so relatable. And it's also terrifying for the same reason. Just replace some fictional names with some real-world ones, change a few minor details, and many of the sub plots and story arcs of the series could be real-life stories that have played out and are playing out right now.

The stories also apply in different contexts. As I once again reevaluate my relationship with technology, one part of Nemik's Manifesto stood out to me this time.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

It got me thinking, what are acts of technological insurrection?

Any time we choose to use a piece of technology that is not controlled, tracked, or surveilled by Big Tech, it's an act of technological insurrection. Any time we choose to resist the urge to look at a screen for no reason, it's an act of technological insurrection. And no matter how small the act, it pushes our lines forward.

How awful is the current state of things that writing this blog post using my own brain and my own fingers, without the assistance of an AI LLM chat bot, is now an act of technological insurrection?

2025 started strong for me, and then, for reasons I'm still trying to understand and sort out, I took an emotional, mental, and spiritual nosedive to finish out this year.

I have never felt so uncertain, confused, and directionless in my life.

Whether a symptom or a cause, I've been using technology most of this year without restraint and without intent.

I want 2026 to be different. I need it to be different.

My technological insurrection resumes now.

Discuss...

#100DaysToOffload (No. 121) #tech #TV #intentionism #DigitalMinimalistm #AI

I do not use or consult AI in the research or writing of my blog posts or in any other aspect of this blog. What you read comes from my own mind as typed by my own hands. I also do not willingly or knowingly post AI-generated images here (I did that once in 2022 when DALL-E was a new thing, but have since deleted that image).

I believe it is wrong to train AI on human-created content without the consent of the humans who created it. While there is little I can do to prevent it, I do not consent to the scraping of my blog content for the purposes of training AI.

My blog is written by a human for humans.

Discuss...

#100DaysToOffload (No. 102) #AI #tech

But I have the same concerns about AI as I have with virtual reality and the “Metaverse”, social media, smartphones – media and computer technology in general. We talk a lot about what we gain by embracing these technologies, but we talk too little about what we might be losing or giving up.

I recently finished reading The Good Neighbor, the biography of Fred Rogers. The following excerpt (p. 341-342) echoes my concerns:

Over the years, Fred Rogers grew fearful that the dominance of television and the computer would overwhelm the simple human values he held most dear.

Excerpts from two university speeches he made in midcareer capture his concern: “It really has been very effectively communicated in many circles that computers and their relatives are more clever, are much quicker, make fewer mistakes and are more to be valued than human beings. But without human beings there never would have been a computer or anything else that we call advanced technology. That's something I like to help children remember: that, no matter what the machine may be, it was people who thought it up and made it, and it's people who make it work.

“And as we . . . find ourselves being concerned about the conditions that make life on Earth possible, we will recognize the need to make people more important than things, and we will join hands with young and old alike by putting our dominant energies into developing a sane design for living.”

He even suggested, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, one answer to all this complexity: Turn off the machine. In an appearance at the opening of a Fred Rogers exhibit at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum in 1998, he said, simply: “I've always said the best time for our program is once it's over and the television is turned off.”

Technology has advanced significantly in the twenty years since Fred Rogers died, and his concerns have become only more relevant. It's not the technology itself that is the issue, it is how we use it and what we do with it that matters.

For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic we relied heavily on video call technology to stay connected and interact with one another safely and over great distances. My siblings, father, and I live in four different states. In 2020 we started doing weekly video calls with one another, and we have enjoyed it so much that we have kept them going ever since.

However, video calls are still a poor substitute for meeting with others in-person. Since 2018, I have worked from home either part of the time or full time. And while I am thankful that video calls exist and allow me to have the flexibility to work from home and meet virtually with my colleagues, I still travel across the country to visit the office every three or four months. Why? Because there is no substitute for in-person interaction and connection. There is a social and cultural aspect to being in the office that is very hard to cultivate with full-remote employees. Some managers of remote workers try to build some social time into virtual meetings. Mine does not. Social interaction with work colleagues fosters a sense of belonging and camaraderie that you just can't get in a 15 minute daily video call.

Likewise, the weekly video calls with dad and siblings are great, but if time and distance weren't an issue, I'd visit them in-person often, too.

#tech #intentionism #LessConvenient #AI

Topics of Focus

#faith – thoughts related to my religion #tech – everything having to do with technology

Other Topics

#100DaysToOffload #accessories #AI #automobiles #Bandcamp #books #business #cassette #charity #Christianity #Christmas #ChurchOfJesusChrist #climate #community #compactDisc #contention #COVID19 #decentralization #DigitalMinimalism #economy #electronicMusic #EveryDayCarry #eWaste #family #FOSS (free-as-in-freedom and open source software) #friends #gratitude #haiku #health #hobbies #HomeOffice #humor #intentionism #internet #laptop #LessConvenient #libraryMusic #life #Linux #loneliness #media #meditation #mentalHealth #misc #movies #music #news #nostalgia #physicalMedia #planning #poetry #politics #privacy #prophets #retro #smartphones #SocialMedia #synthwave #travel #TV #Twitch #unity (not the game engine) #Utah #vaporwave #writing