Channel thumbnail not updating while stream is live.

[ndzwill]

Describe the bug
While hitting the public/v1/channels API to get updated thumbnail information for a live stream, over the span of multiple hours, the thumbnail never changed for a stream that was being reported as live. Data was being returned, and the stream had an accurate stream.start_time, but a static webp was repeatedly returned for the stream.thumbnail value.

To Reproduce

• Start a live stream.
• Call public/v1/channels to get channel details, note the stream.thumbnail value.
• Continue stream for an extended period of time - longer than the thumbnail refresh cycle.
• Call public/v1/channels again and note the stream.thumbnail has not changed. It is the first image that was returned. it appears to be the last thumbnail from the previous stream.

Expected behavior
On some cadence, the thumbnail would be updated with a newer image.

Screenshots
Some logs trimmed down for brevity to show the issue. No screenshots to provide.

Logged at 2026-05-18 02:20:11.977:

{
  "broadcaster_user_id": 1443194,
  "slug": "karmapangya",
  "stream": {
    "is_live": true,
    "start_time": "2026-05-17T23:08:28Z",
    "viewer_count": 45,
    "thumbnail": "https://images.kick.com/video_thumbnails/BUdZmJA1V87N/500RILY8Pra8/480.webp"
}

Logged at: 2026-05-18 03:56:02.972

{
  "broadcaster_user_id": 1443194,
  "slug": "karmapangya",
  "stream": {
    "is_live": true,
    "start_time": "2026-05-17T23:08:28Z",
    "viewer_count": 56,
    "thumbnail": "https://images.kick.com/video_thumbnails/BUdZmJA1V87N/500RILY8Pra8/480.webp"
}

Desktop (please complete the following information):
This is a server to server call made from a pod running in AWS. No browser involved.

Additional context
This is being done via a server to server call using oAuth to get the public details of the channel. The slug query parameter is being passed in to filter down to the desired stream.