Twitch's latest crackdown on bots (fake accounts that artificially inflate viewer and follower numbers) has caused some of the platform's biggest streamers to lose millions of followers.

Earlier this week, Twitch announced through Twitter that it was taking action against more than 7.5 million accounts suspected of follow-botting or view-botting. The site warned that some streamers could see a "sharp decline. Indeed, streamers who had lost hundreds or thousands of followers seemed relieved to finally have a more accurate figure.

However, some streamers lost even more followers. Former OWL player Félix "xQc" Lengyel reportedly lost over 2.6 million followers to "only" 5.5 million. Meanwhile, Chance "Sodapoppin" Morris lost more than 3.3 million followers this week. Ninja, the blue-haired Fortnite streamer, was relatively unaffected, losing only about 200,000 followers.

It is worth noting that, for the most part, streamers seem to welcome the cull, while others have been waiting for months for the issue to be resolved. twitch is adamant that its goal is to punish streamers who use bots, not streamers who use bots. Twitch is adamant that the removal of fake accounts does not seem to have led to a significant change in the number of concurrent viewers, which plays a role in determining ad revenue payments.

It's not just bots that Twitch has its sights set on. Last week, the streaming platform announced that it is taking a more serious approach to extreme criminal behavior within the Twitch community.

Thanks, Kotaku.