• News

Twitch implements stronger banning and blocking measures

Toxic users can be draining to a streamer and their mental health, so Twitch is finally answering the call for stronger banning and blocking measures.

Ozzie Mejia

March 27, 2020 7:05 PM

1

Twitch can be a wonderful place where content creators can connect with hundreds or even thousands of people. However, for some, it can also be a bit of a nightmare, with chats that often turn toxic. It can take a toll on a streamer's mental health and there's often nothing that can be done about it. On Friday, Twitch finally implemented some stronger measures to help streamers purge their channels of toxic users.

You can manage your Blocked users in your profile Security settings: https://t.co/fIbSvt0DVp

And Channel banned users in your Dashboard moderation preferences: https://t.co/ESUSMwnunG

📚 Learn how to manage harassment in your chat and keep it safe: https://t.co/5CTWtg6Yxh

— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) March 27, 2020

If a streamer has found somebody to be exceptionally rude or toxic, they can block them just as before. Only now, blocking those users will also remove them from the streamer's Followers list. More than that, if a channel opts to ban somebody, period, they will not only be removed from the channel, but it will then shadowban their IP to help prevent them from being a repeat nuisance. The uses for this can range from a larger esports event using these tools to purge their chat of toxic users to smaller streamers using them to ward off harassment.

Some streamers are weighing in on these latest changes and noting how this will prove helpful in the future. N3RDFUSION's Devin Nash spells out what the changes mean, with a number of Twitter users quoting or responding to his post with general positivity for what this means for Twitch streaming in the future:

For context/clarity - we tested this using main and alt accounts. Unbanning removes the shadowban from all accounts. I'm a fan of giving more power to broadcasters. These new tools enable us to curate toxicity from our communities with more reliability.

— Devin (@DevinNash) March 28, 2020

These additions to Twitch were implemented as of Friday, with the company's Help page reflecting these changes. The update is momentarily paused due to an issue found by Twitch's internal team, but it should be up and running again soon.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?