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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Monkey commented
there is one mistake in here:
u can gather chat info even without any account. so u will not be able to ban these info-gatheres anyway because the info they are crawling is public anyway. apart from that, i understand your argument, but i am sorry, as said, that info is public anyway. -
Nekomancer_Evei commented
to: "n3td3v commented · September 16, 2018 2:08 PM
@Evelyn McKnight Your post from 091118 erroneously lists me (n3td3v) as a bot which I am by no means. I am not only a streamer supporter & promoter, but I am also a Twitch content creator much like yourself, and correct me if I am wrong here, but I do not believe I have ever been to your channel so therefore it would be wrong to lump sum me along with several others on your list as 'bots'. I only actively lurk the channels of my subscribers and other small streamers that have asked me for help in growing their channels because I SUPPORT ALL STREAMERS that want/need it. Also, I have personally talked to CommanderRoot on many occasion and I can testify that he is also not a bot, but actually Twitch staff."I never stated you were in my channel, but I've seen in channels I moderate for, and I've gone through the list of all the people listed, and review behaviour, I had put you on the list because you were showing very similar signs of bot like behaviors, never stating anything and were amongst many of the bot channels. as for commander root, as I stated, states that he does lurk in many channels, has admitted to making a bot, other's confirm his bot, (I couldn't find the command to remove said bot from his channel or was it the one that was too long and assinine to use? like a big fuck you to your face if you ask me), and states that he doesn't record or even watch the streams, so it's not actually helping anyone, so why is he there really? This was a question I asked, and now being told he's twitch staff just makes it even a bigger Fuck you to our faces because they are basically running twitch like they are above their own rules. The rules are there for all to follow equally if the rules aren't followed, why even have them?! Are they not there to actually protect us, to help us? really, it's just... arrogant, and disgusting, I see he's a partner on twitch, nowhere did I see the twitch wrench or staff symbol by his name, but to allow that to continue to go on while we're are stating that we have a problem with this sort of behaviour? How are we not suppose to be pissed off by such actions?
If someone is a real person in my channel, I have no problem with them lurking, but it's getting harder and harder to tell who is and isn't real anymore because of this bullshit going on. Just a few weeks ago, even twitch staff accounts were compromised by bots, and they still haven't given us any options to protect our streams, the streams we moderate for, nor give any indication that viewers that add to reports is getting anything done. so excuse me if this bot situation is literally plaguing Twitch right now, and you might have gotten caught in the net by accident.
I have friends that use Chatty to lurk and help record chat logs for moderating purposes for our own channels (to prevent trolls from spreading their hate, etc etc), but they don't normally spend time in more than 60 channels, Chatty has a bit of a memory leak, and they still show up in those channels as a regular viewer, watch, comment, interact, sometimes lurk while they are off at work and what not. but these bots we see in more than 100's of channels at once, that's someone using a server or something much smoother than a typical home computer to be in all those channels at once. it's not often to find people that can lurk in so many channels due to internet limitations, or computer limitations etc. so that's probably the most likely red flag I saw from your username, and what many other's had seen, I'm not the only one that listed you if I recall, which is why I looked into it before making that list.
It's been a while, and searching these comments takes a little more time than I have today to do. I don't have time to recheck said list today to update for other's convenience right now. but we shouldn't be needing a list when all we're asking for is a simple kick option. but it's what we have to work with for right now.
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Nekomancer_Evei commented
@averageBot, it's amazing that someone doesn't fully read everything that's stated all through the comments, especially when mentioned that people have better things to do with their life, like actually LIVING THEIR LIFE outside of the internets, than needing to monitor something 24/7 on something that should be common sense, when the ToS clearly states that these are people breaking rules, but no one is doing anything about it... nice try shaming someone trying to do right for a community of hard-working streamers. Now buzz off, and let the real people make their statements.
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AverageBot commented
My favorite part of this is when people who aren't bots responded and the creator still puts them as bots. Awkward moment when your post was proven a myth.
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Junkotorus commented
Bananennanen
Commanderroot
Jade_elephant_association
Kingnosebleed
P0sitivitybot
Skinnyseahorse
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Inc1neRyu commented
Sickfold also one
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Mark Allan Lang commented
personally most I dont have the problem with bots that tell you how to get rid of them but the ones that just sit with 0 information on them sure right totally legit I just hope some of the Twitchpartners actually gonna go and complain to twitch about those bots so that Twitch thinks ok now we could do something....
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Ripazha commented
Commanderroot
Bananennanen
Lanfusion
P0sitivitybot
Skinnyseahorse
Slocool -
Anonymous commented
I will be addressing this in person at Twitch Con. I hope having a person in front of them might make some kind of impact. It would be a bigger impact if many people approached them at TC this year about this bot business.
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MrEMeatshield commented
@Critango These bots can be in thousands of channels at a time. I don't see how any one account could keep them there and not on anyone else's channel.
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Critango commented
If we still cant ban then, I have a solution. We need to create a univeral sticky account that we can atach all the bots to. This would be hard, but if it became well-known, then we can send all of the bots to the same account by hosting it and keep that one stream running 24/7. If they are all there and the stream never closes then it would be like prison for the bots... Essentially, if we cant kill it then trap it. Its either genius or I dont undnerstand how it works
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Anonymous commented
i'm guessing there is no way of getting rid of these bots. i tried yesterday !leavechat in skinnyseahorse channel, gets banned no reason asked. You can clearly look at his channel. bot settings.Its not like i care about being ban from a channel that is an actual bot. In my opinion i think some are doing this to advertise, like some that lurk in everyones channel trying to get a lot of followers. That's what i think.
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Derpforger commented
you know my main question is what are these bots tracks and who are they selling to. honestly with this many bots there must be money in it people dont do something in mass if theres no reward.
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Derpforger commented
im sharing this on discord were getting this seen dammit
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MrEMeatshield commented
@N3td3v I've spoken to CommanderRoot as well. He's the guy who runs the CommanderRoot bot. It's a bot in the same way that HydrationBot is. If not, there wouldn't be a sentence that you can input to have them leave your channel permanently.
https://i.imgur.com/V2NFpwR.jpg
And that's one of the reasons I'm ok with his style of bot. There's actually a way to make him leave permanently. So does Lanfusion and one other that I'm forgetting.
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n3td3v commented
@Evelyn McKnight Your post from 091118 erroneously lists me (n3td3v) as a bot which I am by no means. I am not only a streamer supporter & promoter, but I am also a Twitch content creator much like yourself, and correct me if I am wrong here, but I do not believe I have ever been to your channel so therefore it would be wrong to lump sum me along with several others on your list as 'bots'. I only actively lurk the channels of my subscribers and other small streamers that have asked me for help in growing their channels because I SUPPORT ALL STREAMERS that want/need it. Also, I have personally talked to CommanderRoot on many occasion and I can testify that he is also not a bot, but actually Twitch staff.
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Mr. Baggins commented
In respond to -> #4 - It got gifted a sub? That’s unlucky. Twitch need to fix their algorithm.
Good bots just deactivate in the Twitch Settings that they can receive gifts.... :)
Also I do not care about "bots" in my channel as long as they do not talk.
You also could use tools like Chatty or TC to join hundreds to thousands of channels and would receive a lot of Subgifts because of the broken Algorithm. And you wouldn't watch any of the streams as you just lurk in the chat. So its not a bot only thing. :)
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marcmagus commented
@murderbits if by "completely change the fundamental way that IRC works" you mean "implement an equivalent to IRC's /kickban (set usermode +b and kick) in Twitch's IRC derivative", then yes.
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MrEMeatshield commented
@Murderbits
No, we want a way to remove people from our channels. Not just banning them, because that still lets them stay there. We want to be able to completely stop them from being in our channels. No lurking, no idling. Banning people still lets them hang around and watch the stream. We want to go further and get people we don't want in our channel to not be able to do that.The fact that a lot of us will probably also be using this kick feature (if implemented) on bots, is just a bonus. But it doesn't have to be exclusively used on Bots.
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murderbits commented
So, you want them to completely change the fundamental way that IRC works.