Twitch streamers can soon block banned accounts from tuning in

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 not have the ability to watch the stream,” Senior Product Supervisor Trevor Fisher revealed on Twitch’s Patch Notes podcast (via 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 way in which that it’ll work is if you happen to ban someone and so they’re at present watching, then the stream playback might be interrupted for them in order that they instantly lose the power to view the stream,” he defined. “After which if you happen to 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 mentioned it could 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 vital 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 (a minimum of for now), which leaves room for the noteworthy exception.

Fisher careworn that that is an incremental change that solely partially addresses a number of the platform’s moderation issues, together with a number of ladies accusing Twitch streamers of sexual abuse and misconduct. Different strikes to handle the difficulty have included including a one-button anti-harassment tool, enhancing its reporting and appeals process, rewriting its community policies and taking a stronger stance against deepfakes. “We all know that that is an space the place folks need us to do extra, and it’s simply been transport off one a part of the issue at a time,” Fisher mentioned.