Twitch adds new chat tools to combat hate raids

Twitch has introduced phone and email-verified chat options for its creators in a bid to crack down on hate raids and abusive behaviour.

The options are now available and form part of the platform’s suite of moderation tools.

“We’ve spent many months building, testing, and refining this tool, and while this is far from the last update on our roadmap to improve Creator safety, we’re optimistic about the impact it can have in making a safer Twitch,” the company said in a blog post.

The options come as Twitch has come under fire in recent months for delays in protecting creators from abusive raids and malicious bot accounts.

Creators have been subject to hate raids that flood their stream chats with hate speech.

The scale of the issue prompted several creators to conduct a boycott against Twitch.

Twitch wrote while the new options would not completely eradicate hate raids and spam bots, it would make it harder for people with multiple accounts to harass creators.

Phone and email verification for Twitch chat

The new tools gives creators multiple settings for who can chat in their stream.

Phone-verified chat requires Twitch users to verify a phone number on their account before they can chat in a stream.

Creators can also enable email verified chat.

They can access the verification options in the Moderation section of their channel dashboard settings.

They can customise the verification and chat requirements — for example, only requiring first-time chatters or new accounts to be verified.

Verification requirements can also be set according to how long it has been since the account was created, or how long the account has followed the creator’s account.

In addition, creators can choose to exempt viewers such as VIPs, Subscribers, and Moderators from having to verify themselves.

Twitch has also added measures to prevent accounts from evading channel bans.

A Twitch user can verify up to five accounts per phone number. If a creator bans one phone-verified account, the platform will ban all accounts tied to that number.

Users cannot verify extra accounts if the phone number they are using is tied to an actively suspended account.

If a channel that a viewer is watching enables phone or email verification and they have not previously verified themselves, the channel will ask them to do so when they try to chat.

Once a user has verified themselves on one channel, that verification will carry over to other Twitch channels they watch.

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Featured image: Unsplash/Caspar Camille Rubin