Twitch introduced this week that an upcoming change will permit streamers to dam banned customers from tuning into their streams. “You possibly can select to have your banned chatters now not have the ability to watch the stream,” Senior Product Supervisor Trevor Fisher revealed on Twitch’s Patch Notes podcast (by way of TechCrunch), stressing that the characteristic received’t be enabled by default. The brand new blocking characteristic will roll out within the subsequent few weeks.
“The best way that it’s going to work is in case you ban anyone they usually’re presently watching, then the stream playback will likely be interrupted for them in order that they instantly lose the power to view the stream,” he defined. “After which in case you go offline, you stream once more, they received’t have the ability to watch your subsequent streams both till you select to un-ban them.” He stated it might have the identical impact no matter whether or not the streamer or a moderator bans somebody: That individual can’t watch your streams till they’re unblocked.
One important limitation to the brand new characteristic is that it solely applies to logged-in customers: Anybody viewing a stream whereas logged out of their account can nonetheless watch it. Twitch isn’t blocking IP addresses (not less than for now), which leaves room for the noteworthy exception.
Fisher pressured that that is an incremental change that solely partially addresses a number of the platform’s moderation issues, together with a number of girls accusing Twitch streamers of sexual abuse and misconduct. Different strikes to handle the problem have included including a one-button anti-harassment software, enhancing its reporting and appeals course of, rewriting its neighborhood insurance policies and taking a stronger stance towards deepfakes. “We all know that that is an space the place individuals need us to do extra, and it’s simply been transport off one a part of the issue at a time,” Fisher stated.
