Chat Verification Criteria should also prevent users from following
Regarding chat verification, it is good that you can set it to email/phone verification if an account is newer than a certain period of time, however I have confirmed that while this prevents an account from chatting, this does not prevent an account from following a channel without verifying.
In the past I have been harassed by people (and seen people harassed) by users who never said a word in chat. Their method of harassment would be to create an account with revealing information about the streamer and simply hit follow. They would be banned, however the account would be deactivated shortly after and a new one created in its place where the process would be repeated, infinitely if a VPN is utilized. Most streamers use some kind of notification system, either in chat or on the screen (or both), some have events lists that keep the information on stream.
The way that the current verification system works does not protect streamers from this very insiduous method of harassment. Please make it so verification methods also extend to follows. I do not want people following me if their account is less than a week old (unless they can verify via their phone)
As a side suggestion, please also make it so users can submit suggestions and feedback anonymously. Most streamers method of dealing with harassers is to ignore them, however they risk being brigaded, or seen to be susceptible to harassment if they raise it here.

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Intoxikatie commented
Been getting hammered by follow bots for over two weeks straight now. 100% this is needed to combat Followbot spam. While I've had my follow notifications off, and I've used various tools to ban the bots as they come in, I'd love to just cut it off at the source. At least give us the option to require verified emails for follows.
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bulgi_aka_rob commented
For Followerbot protection:
An Option, only allow users whose profile is at least a month old.Update: Followerbot ist now in action for more than 4 weeks 24/7 - I contakt Support 4 Times. They cant do anything.
Twitch let me alone, but money is money....
I lost Viewers and real Followers...It makes me sad...
I love it to Stream and talk with my viewers.... -
SanoTheLantern commented
The tools we've been given thus far are very good, but i have a suggestion.
I was recently targeted during stream. This attacker was making multiple new accounts to follow spam me with different very specific, targetting usernames, each one mere seconds old. "Turn off follow alerts' should not be the solution for this, but I had an idea. just like we can restrict new viewers and followers from doing certain things without verification or if the account hasnt been following for X amount of time, I think we should be able to restrict viewers from Following us with those same terms.
In my experience, having beeen hate raided/harassed 3 times now, all of these instances have been done with freshly made accounts. being able to restrict accounts who are allowed to follow us based on verification, or account age (or even more if we really want to get creative) can help a TON against these hate filled people
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LushkenPlays commented
This is NEEDED to help with Follow bot spam as well!
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CyberneticSusurrus commented
Your proposal defeats the purpose of the "Chatters without a verified phone number must have followed for more than [Option]" verification option.
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tvtulpenland commented
And not Twitch only in 60 min On this platform UserVoice 12x scam mess in this platform whit links, out of topic nothing to do whit Twitch. yess usvervoce is under attack by scambots also now.
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xhadez_xx commented
You can put an option for the dashboard just like for being able to chat but for follow. For example my friend today got a follow bot raid it made my friend shift from happy to stress we tried to over look it but it happens two times in a row. Just like you said in your page it doesn't give the full experience from growing your channel. This would improve chat experience not only for the viewers but for the streamer as well. It will help by letting the streamer not be worry about possibly getting their channel banned for something they couldn't control or get their image torn down by false accusation.
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Valadroit commented
This idea's purpose is to combat user harassment. I would like to see the ability for a streamer to set restrictions on user's that can follow their channel. Similar to chat verification settings, like email verification, account age, phone verification, etc. A streamer should be able to set a level of requirements before an account can follow their channel.
A follow often triggers events like, an automated message in chat or an alert on stream. These events are a great way to engage with new people and let the community see new members. BUT when hateful users continually create new accounts and follow, it forces streamers to disable these features. When these accounts are inevitably banned, third-party clients and/or extensions will often show chat the username that was banned. This often results in a streamer having private information leaked in their chat through the username, such as addresses, phone numbers, etc.
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JahPeh commented
following without a verified email must have accounts older than: (options)
would allow for smaller streamers to eliminate almost all if not all bots and spam accounts and account follow spamming.
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Netheri77 commented
This heavily.
There's now a trend that there's multiple TOS nicknames following channels I follow (and moderate some of them). Also, these TOS names are left as latest follower on the screen graphics if there's one for followers and/or for other all user interactions. This especially is becoming trend now when the summer holidays from schools begin...
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bimten commented
While the current verification features in place are very helpful, they lack the ability to combat targeted username harassment.
Much like the current system, I think streamers should be able to decide how old an account is before it's allowed to follow your channel. Many trolls will tire after a few minutes of no attention, so even being able to set it to an hour, or a day, will make a huge impact on tackling this situation.
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SXR_Wahrheit commented
Twitch does not provide tools to prevent follows from unverified accounts, and new accounts can therefore be created rapidly and used to spam harassment notifications without recourse by streamers. The existing tools used to require certain levels of verification prior to chatting are powerful and useful - this same set of options should be allowed to be set as requirements to follow a channel.
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Cakadyboi commented
Similar to the Chat Privileges settings on your Moderation Settings, Anyone that chooses to follow you on Twitch must have a verified account before doing so, or have phone verification on as well. I strongly believe that this will help the decrease of Follow-Bots from following Content Creators channels.
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Lady_Minokawa commented
The new Chat Verification function is really great, but i want to ask a similar thing for follows. Then the community can say goodbye for the follow bot attacks.
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Vikingo1993 commented
Me parece algo que podria ser muy util, obviamente de forma opcional pero que se pueda incluir incluso el rango de horas.
Me esta pasando que soy atacado por cuentas bots que dan follow para molestar en directo con las alertas y son cuentas que tienen como mucho 6 horas de creadas.Esto seria una muy buena idea para combatir este tip ode acoso asi como el poder buscar usuarios y bloquearlos ya que siempre mantienen el mismo nombre por lo general, pero ya es otro tema jaja.
Saludos a todos
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SirDaniWTF commented
Hello! i'm being raided by thousands of bots constantly, almost everytime i stream. last time were 1790 and i have to say, its very annoying.
I have a very simple idea to help us all ( because im not the one )
this is very simple. we have that option "Only followers chat by (x) days "
so we could have also a similar option that says,
" You can only follow this account if your account have (x) days or (x) weeks from creation "
so, bots are new created accounts mostly. and they get deleted after 2-3 days or maybe 1 week.
this would save a lot of work. maybe... im just tired of deleting bots...
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kj2294 commented
Dear Twitch,
We as streamers should have a way to turn on a feature that allows only accounts that are a specified number of days/weeks/months old from being able to follow. At this point, so many streamers are skeptical of brand new accounts as they could be follow bots that we're ignoring or potentially banning new accounts anyways. This feature would ideally be opt in and in combination with follower/sub only chat could be a good remedy to follow botting.
Sincerely,
A concerned streamer -
tabunet commented
Es muy importante que Twitch empiece a poner remedio a los ataques de bots, cuentas peligrosas y ponga mayor seguridad en su servicio porque tengo una amplia lista de posibles cuentas bots y fraudulentas que comparto a continuación
communityshowcase
dcserverforsmallstreamers
sad_grl
commanderroot
communityshowcase
public_enemy821
bloodlustr
violets_tv
dcserverforsmallstreamers
dcserverforsmallstreamers
bloodlustr
creatisbot
frw33d
chat_fantastic
network_kings
TheTwitchAuthority_E0244
friend_request_me
smallsteramersdcserver
869833518434357289
casinothanks
smallsteramersdcserver
manolia_meow
sad_grlvmanolia
vvvmanolia
manolia_meow
manolia_lunar
manolia_403 -
AGUSSDB_ commented
I agree with SebasMarchadier it would be a very good idea, I hope one day we will have that function in the dashboard. // Estoy de acuerdo con SebasMarchadier seria una muy buena idea,espero algun dia tengamos esa funcion en el dashboard.
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e1_carpintero commented
Aguante MartuBoden