Tech

Twitch to Fight Hate Raids With New Verification Tools

By Lore Apostol / October 1, 2021

Last month, Twitch filed a lawsuit against two of its users for running automated hate and harassment campaigns, so the platform announced it's about to implement new verification tools like phone-verified chat and extra email verification settings to stop the hate raids. Moreover, several channels remain offline today as streamers decided to participate in the “#ADayOffTwitch” protest against the rise in hate on the platform and how Twitch approached it.

The official announcement made in a blog post reads:

Hate and harassment of any kind is unacceptable and prohibited on Twitch, whether it’s an offensive message, malicious follows, or the egregious “hate raid” attacks that have targeted marginalized creators over the past months. Curbing this type of behavior is, and will continue to be, a top priority for us. Today, we’re updating our suite of moderation tools by adding phone-verified chat and expanding the settings for email verification, to help Creators better control their chat experience and improve security. This will be available to all Creators starting today.

This tool gives Creators finer control over who can participate in the chat and require some or all users to confirm a phone number before entering the chat. The chat and email verification tools will be available to all Creators starting today and can be accessed from the Creator Dashboard. However, the platform didn't provide any details as to what the email verification settings are.

However improved all these tools are, ban evasion is still an issue, so Twitch announced a prevention measure that would also suspend all accounts tied to a phone-verified account that is suspended site-wide. On the viewers' side, these new standards mean they will need to verify a mobile phone number and/or email only once to be considered “verified,” and this verification will be valid across all Twitch channels.



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