Kick unwanted users/bots from Channel COMPLETELY!
Dear Twitch,
We are now dealing with a new threat of bot accounts. These accounts sit lurking in channel, possibly logging info of either streamers or chatters. They may be using this info for giveaway sniping, or possible future bot attacks, including viewer bots, follower bots, and even spam bots. They sit there and do nothing, they follow us to other streams we host/raid. We ban them, not like they ever say anything, but to prevent them from spreading, we need a way to KICK THEM OFF THE CHANNEL.
Recently had a run in with "Opentwitchbot" whom acknowledges that they are running a bot in other's channels, but never requested permission to do so, instead, they want us to run THEIR command in our channels to make them leave, which isn't possible on our bots, because our bots are not design for that command, nor is it a Twitch command. I don't know what their command is doing, and I certainly don't trust it. When confronting them on the fact that their bot is breaking ToS, they reported me for reporting them. I requested and stated to them several times, their bot is not welcomed in my channel, and they refused to remove themselves until the end of my stream, waiting for me to host someone and latch on to them, thus spreading.
We've all been noticing another set of bots possibly working together, Faegwent ThisIsMyDevAccount and chatdb, they never speak, but they have hundreds if not thousands of followers, they never broadcast, etc etc, what are they doing sitting in our chat? sending info to these followers? that's against ToS. We the broadcasters need an option to kick them from the page, doesn't have to be permanent, they might have an option to hop back on, but I think we should have some sort of captcha security so they can PROVE they are human, and not a bot when rejoining the page!
Banning doesn't do enough if they can still read the chat and gather the info. Reporting seems to do nothing for the past 2 months of reporting them, from MULTIPLE witnesses/reporters. It's about time we have some control over the unwelcome bot accounts.
Help us help you lessen the load!
Sincerely,
A Hard Working Broadcaster, just trying to stop the spread of unwanted guests.
Hi, I know that this is a very late response, but we’re hoping to find time to address this issue later this year. There are a few steps we’ll have to take to solve this problem in a way that will work for all streamers, but we understand the severity of the issue.
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jamesanderson0345 commented
To effectively remove unwanted users or bots from a channel completely, administrators typically employ a combination of measures. This includes using robust moderation tools to swiftly identify and ban offending accounts, implementing strict verification here https://menualerteg.com/mo-bistro-menu-garden-8-and-other-branches-in-egypt/ processes for new members, and regularly monitoring for suspicious activities. Additionally, educating channel members about security practices and encouraging reporting of unauthorized users or bots can help maintain a safe and secure community environment.
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chologamingbayonetta commented
Please remove my bots
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AustTech commented
This is not official, but you can remove and ban bots from rejoining via this tool: https://twitch-tools.rootonline.de/follower_remover.php
From the website:
"Twitch Tools by @CommanderRootThis tool lets you remove followers from your Twitch account.
You can filter followers by follow date, account creation date, time between account creation and follow and username.
It is very powerful and can, if wanted, clear your follower list completely.
There is no way to restore a follow, even for Twitch. Only the user itself can re-follow (if you didn't also block)."If you want to preemptively block known follow bots you can use:
https://twitch-tools.rootonline.de/blocklist_manager.php -
FoxChaotica commented
Twitch, are you just gonna sit with your fingers up your arses ignoring this, or are you actually gonna do something about it?
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atvcrash commented
This is still an issue years later. All these bot accounts promote raid services and Twitch still does nothing. Not a big surprise.
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itterama commented
Continuing to post for documentation. It is now March 2023. Years of an issue being known, documented, and reported with seemingly no plans for a fix , regardless of the 'planned' marker added 4 years ago.
The confirmed bot list is ever-growing. More and more malicious links are being spread via spam bots and lurk bots. Lurk bots have solid documentation of being in tens of thousands of channels at once. Verification requirement settings have helped stop some, but not all follow bottings and hate raids.
This issue has pushed creators and viewers off the platform altogether and continues to affect Twitch users every day. Where's the action?
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CalAlaera commented
This is still an issue in December 2022. Please address it.
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Nekomancer_Evei commented
Just an updated reminder, Twitch just gotten an influx of 4 million+ accounts within 24hrs as of September 25th 2022, (yesterday of this post), and most likely are all bots for possible hate raids, or follow botting. I already went through an banned 209k+ known bot accounts that have been on twitch for the past 5 years alone (still active accounts as far as I know of), and that takes me 6 days to run on each channel I moderate for, ain't no one got time to go through 4 million accounts to figure out what needs banning or blocking. Twitch has never cared, they only care about money, Never been about creators or their safety or the viewers safety (if these bots are also around monitoring people's activities to gather info about them). Justin.tv was a great site in its day and had a lot of potential, and Twitch (specifically Amazon) has completely blown it.
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Hyruled_Fields commented
Upvoted because this is still an ongoing issue, and even the original poster has updated that a lot of the things they mentioned still have yet to be addressed.
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Nekomancer_Evei commented
So I'm the one that posted this back in May 2017... want an update on how well Twitch cares? I put together a list of all bot names from Oct 2021 to June 2022, after removing invalid names and safe bots (like Nightbot, etc, or at least all the safe bots I know) I barely managed to bring that list down To this day, there are still these bots active and I haven't started July's list yet. want to know the number? 190,058 bots are STILL active accounts on twitch... These are just the bots! They don't contribute to views, they tend to be malicious in hate raids, or they are collecting people's info. They have been linked to targeted attacks by investigating easy targets to follow and spread, these are bots that in anywhere from 50+ channels (no normal person is going to sit in 50+ channels for no reason, if they can't even contribute to Twitch's views to support streamers), all the way up to almost 76k channels at a time.
This request wasn't just about bots too! It was to also ban unwanted viewers (stalkers, harassers, people with mal-intentions, twitch streamers have been known to be stalked and threatened, especially those in minority groups, females, and other cases, twitch doesn't do ****, the police don't do ****, how would you feel if you been swatted because someone you banned was still getting info on who you were and where you are by lingering in the channel, a ban should also be a block, and it should also remove their ability of even finding that channel for protecting creators and other viewers!) I've been in moderating positions for over 15 years in different platforms and games and communities. This is absolutely atrocious and just Greed talking from Twitch's end, they don't care, if they cared, something would have been done years ago, I've been around since the justin.tv years back in 2010. The pure frustration with talking to anyone on twitch staff is real, because they just don't care.
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A_Rolo commented
There are like 320 bots who are following my channel and have the same profile picture but different names, is there a way to quickly remove them from my channel? If there isn´t please make a way to.
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itterama commented
Posted May 2017, response April 2019, still an issue in March 2022.
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Kozaka commented
@HelixxVR, that's the problem! You ban them, but they are still there. I would expect, if I ban somebody, he should be not able to connect to the chat, and would be not able to watch my stream. That's it. I ban a harassing person, but he is still reading my chat and watching the stream. Creates a new account or use an old one, and harassing me again...or send a 10 bit cheer to harass me...and so on....ok. Those bots are do such things probably not.
And as in the original idea is written, such bots like electricallongboard should be banned from Twitch, forever. I voted at least for this.
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HelixxVR commented
I use a bot checker that one of my stream team made. it works by checking all the users in your chat and telling you how many are bot accounts so you can easily ban them from the channel.
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darthclide commented
"It is not possible to retrieve compromising or sensitive information by lurking in chat."
Ummm, you can literally log all messages with a basic script. Aka data mining. Aka, hoping someone slips up and reveals a bit too much information.
I find it fascinating how you honestly think these bots can never be used maliciously, when only a few seconds of critical thinking debunks that idea.
The fact is, Twitch needs to strengthen their bot rules so I don't have to go to a third party website and check if the lurker in my chat is a bot I need to ban.
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Business_Daddy commented
Also just wanted to add that the hossbots are run by a known bad actor who has been violating TOS and I do not support this misuse of the platform/bot tools.
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Business_Daddy commented
You can just ban accounts that lurk; twitch uses IRC (internet relay chat) and some info, like whether you are live, etc. is available to anyone who looks for it. Twitch’s API allows this so that extensions can function, and bots can’t access any information that is private. It is not possible to retrieve compromising or sensitive information by lurking in chat. If lurkers are spamming chat with unwanted messages, that means they aren’t lurking, and THAT is a twitch TOS violation. But please be aware that millions of people/users have access to the same info that those lurkbots do. It’s public information. Most lurkbots don’t care about that unless they are aggregating data about how many accounts are playing what games (twitch insights.net) or just lurk to passively get people to check out their channels. The /ban @username command isn’t “their” command. It’s a universal command that all streamers can use to ban users they don’t want to be in chat. Lurkbots aren’t “following” on raids, they can’t through IRC api calls. They are SIMULTANEOUSLY in many chats at once.
I’m currently lurking to promote a promotional channel for marginalized streamers. Bots are people too.
Live and let live.
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Mystixa commented
I was happy tosee this suggestion.. untill seeing it was from 2017. Well.. I made the same general suggestion to Twitch today over Twitter.. For 1 banning the bots and hate raiders should keep them off of the channel all together.
Ideally remove it from being seen at all.. but short of that at LEAST keep them from refollowing and retriggering follow notifications with that.
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Krojack76 commented
@Zaytri
> This idea was submitted in 2017, Twitch finally addressed it in 2019, how has Twitch not fixed this issue yet?Because Twitch won the streaming wars. Mixer is gone and Google doesn't know how to make their system good. Twitch literally doesn't care now.
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DethNade commented
I'm having problems with "viewer bots" yesterday when i was streaming the new Halo infinite beta. where can i go and do to report this? I tried clicking on the report button to report them for having a bot account but you don't have a option to report something like this. .Bot named hoss00312_manage followed me then about every minute I got hoss00312_digestion, hoss00312_trouble, hoss00312_receptive, hoss00312_riddle and then three hours latter hoss00312_soak.