Twitch tweaks ban enforcement messages to include more details on violations committed

Twitch may be one of the biggest live streaming platforms with stringent rules that could easily lead to anyone – famous or not – getting banned. And an update posted on Monday reveals that the company is slightly changing how it will inform penalized streamers of the violations they have committed.

The Amazon-owned platform announced that it is implementing some changes in how it compose messages that tell a streamer they have been banned. The update, also implemented on Monday, will now include the title of the video where the violation happened that led to the ban or suspension. The sample message also shows that Twitch will tell punished streamers the “content date” or the time and day when the stream subjected to the punishment was posted.

In earlier versions of the Twitch enforcement notifications, the streamer involved is only told of the rule they violated and for how long the sanction is going to be implemented. In this screen-captured message shared by streamer Methodjosh in 2019, the notification has a “Where the violation occurred” section, but it only says what type of content did the violation happened.

Adding the content title and content date for supposed violations should allow streamers to easily narrow down how they actually broke Twitch’s rule. The platform has been known for its oft unforgiving sanctions that affected even some high-profile streamers. But fans deem that some of these punishments were also quite controversial.

Meanwhile, Twitch may have bigger things to address and fix other than how ban notifications are composed. On late Monday, tweets using the hashtag #TwitchDoBetter are starting to spread on the social media platform. Streamers and fans are calling out the company for its supposed silence on the rise of “hate raids.”

In recent weeks, a number of Twitch streamers have shared upsetting experiences where their stream comments had been flooded with disturbing and hateful speech targeting the minorities. As can be seen in this clip shared by SafireEGlamour, these types of comments flood the streams very quickly until the section is filled with threatening messages.

The supposed inaction from Twitch to combat the hate raids has also brought to light the issue that streamers only get 50 percent of their streaming revenue, while the rest reportedly goes to the platform. In SafireEGlamour’s post, the drag queen and streamer said, “We help grow and diversify this platform where "creators and communities can interact safely" and don't get more than 50% of our revenue while being unsafe.”

Photo by Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash