For months now, Twitch streamers have had to deal with barrages of hate and harassment dominating their chats. Called “Hate Raids,” the harassment is usually targeted at specific individuals and bolstered by bots, which has obvious negative effects on both Twitch broadcasts and the streamers behind them. However, a new update should help fight the issue.
In a lengthy blog post, Twitch revealed that streamers can now secure their chats with phone and email verification, which will require “some or all viewers” to have a verified phone number associated with their account before they can participate in a streamer’s chat. Additionally, email verification is becoming more granular, which will also give streamers finer control over who can chat with their viewers.
Not only are changes being made to the core verification requirements, but Twitch is taking further steps to curb ban evasion. A single phone number can have up to five accounts attached to it, but now if a single account has been banned using that phone number, no other account will be able to use it. It can effectively eliminate five malicious accounts from a streamer’s chat in a single go. The new options are available now via the Creator Dashboard, which all streamers have access to.
For viewers, not much is changing – assuming they aren’t spending their time trying to harass Twitch streamers. Each account will need to verify its phone number, email address, or both one time, though no further action is necessary after that. Twitch’s blog post specifically states that it isn’t like 2FA, which requires verification every time an account signs in on a new device.
According to the blog post, Twitch has spent months refining the options to give streamers more effective moderation tools. And the changes aren’t going to stop here, either. While the company didn’t elaborate on its specific plans, it will be making further improvements to the platform in the future to emphasize creator safety. All around, the company’s goal is to make a “safer Twitch.”
Twitch still has issues, which many content creators have pointed out in recent weeks, though this is a big step in the right direction. Hate raids have been one of the primary drivers of Twitch streamers moving to YouTube for broadcasts, so any action fighting the problem is a positive. Of course, hate raids are still a glaring issue, and taking months to combat them is too long of a turnaround for many of the creators out there.