Don't Reward 1: View Botting. Buying or generating fake viewers to inflate CCV.

How platforms detect view bots:

• IP clustering analysis (multiple "viewers" from same hosting providers)
• Account-age signature (bot accounts have distinct creation patterns)
• No-engagement ghost behavior (viewers who never interact with chat or click anything)
• Sudden spike patterns that don't correlate with genuine traffic events

The cost of getting caught:

• First offense: warning + ranking penalty for 30-90 days
• Repeat offense: temporary suspension
• Egregious or commercial-scale botting: permanent ban + monetization revocation
• Detected botting on Affiliate/Partner accounts: payout clawback for the period of botting

Why streamers still do it: the short-term browse-page lift can feel real. Bot inflation can move you from page 80 to page 5 of category browsing temporarily. But the platforms' filter layer (covered in Module 1) catches the inflation and downgrades the underlying ranking signal.

The math doesn't work. View botting costs more in long-term ranking damage than it provides in short-term placement.