Twitch streamers can soon block banned accounts from tuning in

Twitch introduced this week that an upcoming change will enable streamers to block banned customers from tuning into their streams. “You can choose to have your banned chatters no longer be able to watch the stream,” Senior Product Manager Trevor Fisher revealed on Twitch’s Patch Notes podcast (through TechCrunch), stressing that the characteristic received’t be enabled by default. The new blocking characteristic will roll out in the following few weeks.

“The way that it will work is if you ban somebody and they’re currently watching, then the stream playback will be interrupted for them so that they immediately lose the ability to view the stream,” he defined. “And then if you go offline, you stream again, they won’t be able to watch your subsequent streams either until you choose to un-ban them.” He mentioned it might have the identical impact no matter whether or not the streamer or a moderator bans somebody: That particular person can’t watch your streams till they’re unblocked.

One vital limitation to the brand new characteristic is that it solely applies to logged-in customers: Anyone 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 harassed that that is an incremental change that solely partially addresses a few of the platform’s moderation issues, together with a number of ladies accusing Twitch streamers of sexual abuse and misconduct. Other strikes to handle the problem have included including a one-button anti-harassment instrument, enhancing its reporting and appeals course of, rewriting its neighborhood insurance policies and taking a stronger stance towards deepfakes. “We know that this is an area where people want us to do more, and it’s just been shipping off one part of the problem at a time,” Fisher mentioned.