I don't know much about forums or kiwi farms, but I somehow unfortunately recently discovered DSP, which somehow led me here.
regarding the question:
What is the "behind the scenes" money stress?
Around a month ago when I discovered DSP, he was doing his urgent beg-a-thon before the wedding. You might recall he had a folder which he pointed to ostensibly from his tax guy, as if there were important information in it which backed up his urgent begging.
I'm a lawyer. I'm still new to twitch, but what I saw appalled me. I made a complaint to twitch, outlining what typically constitutes fraud in most markets/jurisdictions. It's typically '"obtain financial benefit by deception".
If I were advising DSP or twitch, I would tell them that while it's perfectly legal to say you're worried about money, or there is stuff "behind the scenes", when DSP gets specific as he did with that beg-a-thon, and makes it sound like there's an imminent threat to him losing his house if viewers dont give money right away, and goes into the detail like using props, pointing to folders saying there's proof in the folder from his tax guy of his situation, then using that detail to get money when you're not really about to lose your house risk crossing the line to obtaining financial benefit by deception, i.e. fraud. A court could be convinced of it anyway. Either way it's foolish - he's creating more risks for himself than the money probably justifies, and I would advise DSP to be more careful with what he says in order to induce people to subscribe or tip him.
anyway i wrote this to twitch in the complaint, and went into a bit more detail about it and referred to the relevant parts of its terms of service. not long after the begging changed to "stuff behind the scenes/money really helps a lot" - which is legal, or at least not likely to be considered deception. I don't know if my complaint had anything to do with it, or how these things work. Perhaps twitch laid down the law with its TOS, or DSP got his own legal advice, or maybe I'm way off and it's unrelated. It is interesting though and it does explain the change in language.
Also, anyone who feels they've given money to DSP in the context of one of his urgent i'll lose my house beg a thons might have a cause of action against twitch, and a way to get their money back at least in some markets/jurisdictions. It's silly for twitch to accept this kind of exposure, and makes sense for them to pull him into line. I don't know why they do business with him at all.
For some reason I felt the need to share this, particularly since I heard him recently accuse Tevin of criminal behaviour by talking over DSP's streams. I doubt that what Tevin does is a crime.
To be clear - if everything DSP said was true during his beg-a-thons, including that the folder he pointed to was in fact from some tax expert and backed up his claims, then he has nothing to worry about re: fraud and I take it all back and would withdraw my complaint to twitch if I could. I'm working on the suspicion that at least some of what he said was either not true, or exaggerated, mostly because he seems to have form, and no one has this many financial crises before actually losing their house. Creating the crisis (potentially a deception) seems to be part of the DSP business model.
