Influencer Hasan Pike on the role of livestreamers in politics | ABS-CBN News

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The Democratic midterm sweep cemented a new front in the battle for media audiences: livestreaming, where left-leaning creators such as Hasan Piker are attracting viewers large enough to challenge established news outlets for attention. “I'm simply a platform, a megaphone, for the frustrations that many Americans are feeling,” said Piker in an interview with Reuters on Thursday (November 5). 35-year-old Piker, a self-described Marxist who has divided Democrats with remarks such as "America deserved 9/11." "I said it and I quickly realized that it was going to be misunderstood. And my intent was not to say that to 3,000 Americans deserve to die in this heinous terrorist attack, of course not. It's fundamentally at odds with my advocacy, with my worldview. I simply was talking about the concept of blowback. So I apologized for the language I used the next day. People still cynically bring this up,” Piker said. Abdul El-Sayed asked Piker to tone down his rhetoric after the streamer said Jews who supported Israel should be concerned for their safety, CNN reported. El-Sayed won Michigan's Senate contest on Tuesday and is set to become the first Muslim senator. Piker drew a peak of 241,783 concurrent viewers to his election-night stream on Twitch, according to analytics platform Streams Charts. The stream drew 1.75 million hours of viewing, making it the second-most-watched individual broadcast after NBC News' "Kornacki Cam." The election-night broadcast brought around 40,000 new subscribers to his Twitch channel, taking the total to more than 95,000. California congressman Ro Khanna also appeared on that stream, underscoring the streamer's appeal among Democratic politicians seeking younger audiences. Piker told Reuters that he was invited to post-election gatherings hosted by Democrats but decided not to attend. "I chose to stay at (my) home base here in Los Angeles and spent the night doing analysis because that is my primary focus. I'm not a campaign surrogate...