Twitch looks to combat hate raids with Chat Verification

Twitch is introducing its latest tool for streamers to counteract chat-based harassment. Streamers can now moderate their chat rooms through chat verification.

New phone and email verifications look to be Twitch’s solution for a number of “hate raids” on the platform that resulted in multiple users starting a #TwitchDoBetter social media campaign. This campaign also includes a hashtag titled a #DayOffTwitch.

Twitch responded to criticism by stating it would continuously work on fighting hate on the platform. However, the company did not specify their exact plans to combat attacks on marginalized streamers. Now, with a plan intact to protect streamers, Twitch is looking to reduce the amount of harassment on their platform through verified chat.

Creators and Mods will need to set up the verification requirements on their channel. They can do so by going to Dashboard, Settings and Moderation in that order. Meanwhile, Mods will gain access via Chat and into Manage Moderation Settings.

There will be various chat verification settings you may apply to your Twitch Stream. The various options are all below:

The varying options allow Twitch creators to place specific chat verification settings on specific groups that are likely to create hate spam while excluding certain groups that are known followers of the creator. 

More restrictions will be put in place for viewers depending on the content creators chat verification settings. If you have not yet verified a mobile phone number or email, you will be asked to verify it before you send a message in chat. However, this will only need to be done once and will carry across all channels on Twitch. 

As a result, the chat verification system will still allow Creators to grow their channels and interact with new viewers without being affected by the initial limitations of chat verification.

The primary reason behind chat verification’s creation is to prevent hate raiding that accompanies the platform’s chat system. Now that creators have the ability to better control hate messages in their Twitch communities, it will require less work for the content creator and mods to have a better streaming experience for their viewers as well as themselves. 

With chat verification set in palace, Twitch will continue to build upon this initial start to stop hate against streamers. Throughout the process, Twitch will be looking for feedback about this new feature. You can do this by dropping a message and/or call to Twitch’s UserVoice.

The entire blog can be seen on Twitch.tv’s announcement on chat verification. 

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