Twitch implementing features to stop hate raids

Twitch is making changes to stop hate raids. The streaming service is enabling features that allow creators to restrict who can or cannot hop into their chat.

Twitch streamers have been dealing with a plague of “hate raids” for the better part of the summer. Bad-faith streamers can send droves of commenters to other channels in coordinated harassment campaigns thanks to the platform’s “raid” feature, allowing streamers to redirect viewers to another channel.

The majority of these users arrive with the worst of intentions, frequently flooding channels with waves of vile slurs and insults. According to a report by the Washington Post, these campaigns are run off Twitch, on secret Discord servers. (Read: Facebook will now remove harassment, sexualized content targeting celebrities, public figures)

The “hate raids” happen because it’s rather simple to create new accounts on Twitch, banned streamers can simply create a new account and rejoin the chat. This will no longer be the case following the changes Twitch is implementing.

Twitch is looking to stop hate raids by allowing streamers to require viewers to enter a verified phone number or email address before they can leave comments on their chat. In addition, streamers can make it so that viewers will have to do so either if they’re chatting for the first time, if their account has not been active for long, or if they’ve only followed the streamer from within a specific period. On top of that, streamers can also create exceptions for VIPs, subscribers, and moderators.

Both streamers and their moderators will be able to set the verification requirements of a channel.

According to Twitch, viewers can verify up to five accounts per phone number, acknowledging that there are valid reasons for people to manage more than one account. That said, to prevent ban evasions, Twitch states that should one phone-verified account be suspended site-wide, all accounts tied to that number will also be suspended site-wide. In addition, viewers will not be able to verify additional accounts using a phone number tied to an actively suspended account.

Similar restrictions will also be applied to the channel level. If one phone-verified or email-verified account is banned by a channel, all other accounts tied to that phone number or email will also be banned from chatting on that channel as well.

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