To be honest, I do not know why this was not a feature from the jump. BUT, to combat unnecessary bot accounts, having a verified email to follow a channel would be a good start.

Absolutely massive agree on this. I tried removing a few of the bots that came in and the tool I use ended up removing over 4500 followers and I had from scratch. Please have this implemented.

Looking at the 5.8 million accounts which I have in my known bot list, ~58% of them have a verified email.
This means it's easy enough to do for bot creators if wanted / needed.

This is a great idea. Just removing existing bot accounts has had minimal to no impact on malicious bot spam, as account creation is just too easy to automate. Anything to break automatic account creation, like email verification, or strong captcha, would be very welcome.

Bots are annoying in several ways including the fact that if you are pushing for partner you can't have any bot viewers or you will get denied. Also the spam from bots is rediculous. I hate having to stop what I am doing to ban bots. Such a waste of time.

This sounds like a fantastic tool to have for streamers to use!

If we can make this a chat restriction, we sure as heck can make it a general restriction with follows.

Yes, without question or hesitation. This is a great idea and will massively help in reducing successful bot raids/attacks.

This would be a great idea, would make it harder for bots/burner accounts to follow and less hassle for the streamer to remove/block the accounts later.

absolutely. Had 43 consecutive bots follow me, making my alerts go absolutely nuts, and my chat get spammed with follow messages. I'm sick of these bots, and want them gone.

Yeah that would be a Good idea to combat the Bots