Background:

I was effectively banned from talking with my friends on twitch this past Thursday afternoon (2025-04-17) after 7 years of my being on twitch because I do not have a personal cell phone to put on my account; the only cell phone I have is my work cell which I'm unable to use for this. (Already got chewed out once for using it to watch twitch & really do not want a repeat.) During the middle of a stream on a channel I'm subbed to, I was suddenly unable to send chat messages, instead having a box pop up like on Simon's Quest saying I must verify my account with a cell phone in order to send chat messages.

I contacted twitch support & they did absolutely nothing - basically got a form letter telling me how to add my non-existent personal cell phone number, making it clear they didn't even read my message. They directed me here to complain, though I'm uncertain what a forum of other users is going to accomplish when there are people complaining about this same thing going back at least 3 years.

The Bug:

Most of the channels I follow (but not all) now have the "Verified Accounts Only" message when I join their chat, yet when contacting the streamers on Discord, they state that they never turned on that setting and two so far have checked and confirmed that it is NOT on. (This was just last night & I'm waiting to hear back from more.) They're understandably upset and annoyed at twitch about this - the platform itself is sabotaging the growth of their channels.

Even in the channels that do not have the 'verified accounts only' message on them, some of which I'm a moderator on, some of which I'm subscribed to, many of which I'm a VIP in, and all of which I've spent a ton of time in, the web chat prevents me from sending chats without verification.

Just WHAT is going on?!?!??? What is the point of having a setting if it's not going to be honored? Why would you turn on a setting without the permission or at least notifying the streamer? It literally shows as being off on the streamer's side & on when I join their chat. One turned it on and back off, but it still blocks unverified users from chatting. Are you intentionally trying to drive people away or is this yet another example of breaking the site in strange ways? These are real people you're affecting with real friends.

An Aside:

(Unrelated is that I do the majority of the purchasing for my business and amazon just slid WAY down my list of suppliers to order stuff from. We're getting ready to do a PC refresh, so I'm glad this happened now instead of after so I can purchase from a different supplier. I realize that $40k in sales is a drop in the bucket to amazon, but it's going to count up quick if you **** on enough people. Just something for twitch to consider when trying to bully people...)