Limiting participation in chat based on account creation date
To help reduce the blatant and increasing violations of the harassment policy on Twitch, you should implement a new feature that allows a channel to prevent users from participating in their chat if the account is under a certain age, which could be specified specified by the channel.
Currently, it's easy for a user to create temporary email and Twitch accounts and harass a live streaming account under the guise of anonymity. This would add a much needed barrier to entry without requiring a user to follow or subscribe to be apart of a channel. The code currently exists for this feature regarding followers, and this feels like a natural next step for Twitch to help protect their creators.
Hello everyone! Apologies for missing this post - but good news! Now creators can enable phone/email verification for a designated amount of time to verify their chatters.
You can find more information in our blog: https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2021/09/29/securing-your-chat-with-phone-and-email-verification/
Thank you all for the feedback!
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Tim2point0 commented
I mod for a channel that has a few people who are frequently banned due to harassment and simply create a new account and continue harassment. A mode that prevents new users from chatting for a week or so would I think deter a considerable amount of this harassment from occurring.
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CarrieTheOne commented
Glimesh can do this and they only have one dev. No excuses. Do better.
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aJive commented
Seems pretty simple to execute. Let’s do it!
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grumpy_walrus commented
Amazing idea! I can't believe this isn't already a feature on the site.
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HullyGee commented
This is such a no-brainer that I can't believe it wasn't baked into the site already
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StoicWolfGaming commented
This is a good idea.
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RiikkaTheIcePrincess_She_ commented
"Considering" a five-minute feature for around a year (if not more; consider that there are at least two suggestions of this idea here that are from 2017 and 2018) does seem to suggest that they aren't actually intending to do anything about this. Alternatively, perhaps they /do/ care about us in oft-targeted communities/groups but their work environment is awful and abusive so what should be doable in under an hour takes years and three mistreated workers have to take mental health leave. (No really, that happens some places. In the US.)
I suppose the most likely story is a bit of both their environment being somewhat **** and people in charge of it not caring in the least about the constant abuse that occurs on their platform.
Fun side note: I really hate followers-only mode. Personally, I detest the notifications every channel has (among some other reasons). Objectively, I have to wonder what good that does against harassment when
1. The notifications will pop up thanking [slur][slur][offensive term]urmom for following, which kinda seems like doubling up on the abuse potential when someone decides to hate-raid. "Thanks so much for the raid, [bunch of slurs]!" "Thanks for following [slurs] and I hope you have a great time!"
2. As far as I'm aware, this adds about three seconds of delay between joining and chatting. That doesn't sound very effective. Am I wrong about this? If not, then what's the feature even for? Anyone can just click the button then click it again to unfollow later. It means nothing to anyone who isn't me.So how about giving us something useful, Twitch? No no, don't answer. I wouldn't want you to waste another year "considering" typing up a reply.
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Janne "Lietu" Enberg commented
This seems to have a good amount of overlap with my earlier idea https://twitch.uservoice.com/forums/310201-chat/suggestions/18886954-established-accounts-only-chat-mode where Twitch said "they are considering it", which probably means they will do whatever they can to avoid giving streamers the tools to restrict harassment until some external force forces them to. 😄
Hope we all get the tools that Twitch really needs.
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BossStompTV commented
Staring at newly created accounts and waiting for them to harass the streamer is a significant part of my time spent moderating.
edit: just a quick note to mention that this is easily bypassed in the context of hate raids. They'd just generate a batch of accounts and sit on them to let them age up a bit before using them. But it would cut down on fly-by harassment and casual ban evaders.
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AdrienneDriggs commented
PLEASE! We need this and more tools for filtering. If we could filter out new accounts like this, AND have a better way for users to be required to validate their +18 Age to better control our mature audience, this would eliminate SO much of our troll and spam issues.
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AgnewHawk commented
In light of recent onslaught of hateraids and followbots, AstroAnie has made a brilliant frontend mock-up proposal. Would be great if this was considered.
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imRioBop commented
I would love this option to be extended to raids as well. In a channel I moderate for, over the span of 6 minutes we were hate raided by three accounts, all 5 minutes old. The usernames were transphobic and vile and included bots with equally vile usernames. The fact that this has not been considered from day one seems like a oversight and sets marginalized creators up for sustained harassment.
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Oceanity commented
This is honestly something that should have existed from day 1. The fact that new accounts can be made and IMMEDIATELY can start harassing streamers is a glaring issue with Twitch that needs to be corrected.
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itteramaTV commented
This request was submitted in Feb 2021. Here in Aug 2021, we are dealing with more bots than ever. This implementation would greatly reduce this MAJOR problem that isn't being addressed. Twitch does seem to be deactivating some bots AFTER the bot causes a bunch of chaos. The ability to manage a channel should include tools for dealing with this stuff.
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TheLadyDame commented
Honestly, this would do more for me I think than even having followers only mode turned on.
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twitch.tv/MonicaElleRose commented
I am a huge fan of this feature being added. I likely think it will be added by a chat bot like streamelements or nightbot before its ever added by twitch which is unfortunate.
Its no surprised that twitch does not require captcha for any user to to make accounts which makes it super easy for bots to come through and make hundreds of thousands of accounts a day to harass streamers.
adding some sort of CAPTCHA in making accounts, and being able to restrict brand accounts would make twitch so much safer.. ive never once had a good interaction with an account made within 24 hours and typing in my stream.
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Contracrostics commented
I absolutely agree that this is a necessary feature.
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Lunar_Penguin commented
This would certainly be useful. A stream I mod recently had someone come in and start spamming lewd ASCII art. When banned, they kept creating new burner accounts to continue the spam, which forced us to put chat into followers-only mode to stop it. The ability to restrict brand-new accounts in chat would definitely help cut down on all of that.
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BasedBidoof commented
This seems like a really good idea. As a mod I use the FFZ add on for showing new accounts less than 3 days old, but why do I have to? When I ban some racist troll, they make a new alt, use a vpn, and come back. Thanks to the plug in I can spot them instantly, when their message highlights in chat. If I could set that new account limit to like 24hs, after that 1st alt account comes back, then I don't have to worry as much about repeated harassment from them. Or do I? Would this promote more old account purchasing? More hacking of old accounts? More alt creation and parking? I think this would turn what's now an obvious troll, into a more dedicated, possibly more anonymous troll. Creating different alts on different days to remain undetected. I suspect this would give the bad actors more power in the end.
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GullibleGambit commented
This is a great idea! I 100% support it as-written