Return auto host to "live" view
Rollback the changes to auto-hosts that make them not appear in the "live" view of the channel page. It effectively removes all usefulness from auto-hosts by forcing users to seek out the creator being auto-hosted rather than seeing it by default.
We and many other creators have already seen how this negatively impacts our viewership and discoverability.
Auto-hosts have the potential to function as a community building tool that leads to a more supportive and less competitive environment. The recent change to auto-hosts completely destroys that potential.
Thanks for kicking off this conversation! Hoping we can provide a bit more context for why we decided to make this change. While manual hosts will still appear in the live view and channel carousel, we made the decision to have auto-hosts appear only in the channel carousel going forward.
As part of our ongoing research and development for the offline channel page, we conducted a number of experiments over the past year to pinpoint what was most effective in streamers using their channels to enable discovery of other streamers. This includes things like auto-hosts, manual hosts, and raids.
Auto-hosts in live view specifically were found to be confusing for new viewers, and did not result in viewers sticking around to watch the channel. We made this change to reflect viewer habits, and ultimately to prioritize manual hosts that see significantly improved discoverability.
We conducted another experiment to compare a personalized auto-host list versus the “random” order auto-host list which resulted in improved watch time on newly discovered channels, and even the ability for streamers to give more discoverability to more streamers. Because of this, we replaced the “random” setting with the new personalized setting. Now, when you select the personalized option, you can have a larger auto-host list without putting newer additions to the list at a disadvantage based on the default order.
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GamingHuskies commented
The whole idea of hosts was to offer an alternative when you're not live, where you would usually be live so the other content creator is discovered. Not having hosts where the streamer would usually be live is counterproductive. I honestly don't know why the developers at Twitch even thought this would be a clever idea, especially without discussing this with the creators first. Please revert this back as soon as possible so our favourite content creators and marginalised content creators can be discovered more easily.
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AIZxZIA commented
Autohost is not working on my channel and I've got plenty to feature on this list. The settings are turned on fyi
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Manadono commented
Autohost isn't automatically hosting channels on my channel