Twitch Debuts Shared Ban Info Tool

Twitch introduced Shared Ban Info Thursday, calling it a way for streamers on its platform to share information about users they have banned from their channels with other streamers in order for its community to collaborate and weed out serial harassers. Shared Ban Info is an extension of the Suspicious User Detection tool Twitch released late last year to help streamers identify and take action on potential ban evaders. Twitch wrote in a blog post Thursday, “We’ve heard your feedback and know that many communities already rally together to share information about users who they have banned. This tool will help streamline those efforts. We want to help streamers and moderators protect themselves and their communities, while also helping to prevent harassers from attempting to harass other channels. Our hope is to continue improving upon and expanding this feature but, for now, here’s how it will work at launch.” Streamers can initiate a sharing request via the new Shared Ban Info section of the moderation settings in their Creator Dashboard, sending an on-site notification to the channel they want to share information with. When a streamer requests another channel’s ban information, they are also consenting to share their ban information with the other channel. Streamers have the option to accept share requests from anyone or only from affiliates, mutual follows or partners. The limit as the feature debuts is 30 such relationships, but should a streamer desire to increase that total, they can contact the UserVoice forum. Streamers can select whether flagged users on their channels are monitored, meaning that they can still send messages in chat, but those messages will be flagged for streamers and their moderators to keep an eye on, or restricted, where messages are held so that only streamers and their moderators can see them. Restricted will be the default setting. Once a user is flagged, streamers can opt to ban them, change them back to trusted or continue monitoring or restricting them. The first chat messages from flagged users are clearly marked with a red border and include details on which channel they are banned from, and those messages are also queued in the Suspicious User Activity moderator view widget. Sharing relationship can be ended at any time via Shared Ban Info settings. Twitch wrote in the question-and-answer portion of its blog post, addressing a query about why it doesn’t just suspend flagged users altogether, “Rather than making decisions on your behalf, our goal with this tool is to provide you with the information you need to make informed and personalized decisions about who can participate in your community. We want to strike a balance between protecting streamers from harassers while still giving streamers control over who is allowed to participate in their communities. You’re the expert when it comes to your community, and you should make the final call on who can participate.”

Streaming & OTT

Twitch Debuts Shared Ban Info Tool

Streamers can share information about users they have banned from their channels

David Cohen

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David Cohen