Twitch update: Creators can now require phone and email verifications for chatters

Twitch has made headlines in previous months for infamous reasons, such as the rise of instances of harassment and hate raids that often targeted marginalized creators. Now, the streaming platform has finally responded with updates to its features that will allow creators to have better controls on who can participate in stream chats.

The company announced the updates on Wednesday and confirmed that the new moderation tools are now available to use for Twitch creators. Streamer can now limit their stream chats to accounts that have been verified through phone numbers and email addresses.

The verification requirement can also be enabled for all accounts or certain users only. Twitch creators can choose to only require it on first-time chatters or based on accounts’ age with preset options ranging from 1 hour to six months. Streamers can also enable this feature for chatters who have only been following their channel for a certain period between 10 minutes to three months. Twitch said creators can also exempt VIPs, subscribers, and moderators. The company also noted that these new tools would be disabled by default. But creators can access them through the Dashboard > Settings > Moderation.

To avoid users from being discouraged from verifying their accounts, the new tools are not designed to work like two-factor authentications. It means verification will be a one-time process and will be applied to Twitch viewers’ interactions with all channels.

Viewers can use one phone number for up to five Twitch accounts. Note, however, that a site-wide suspension applied to one account will carry over to others linked in the same phone number.

In an FAQ section of the announcement, the company also confirmed phone verification would not work with landline or VoIP numbers. If users choose not to verify their accounts, they can still watch streams on Twitch. But they cannot join the chat in channels where the creators opted to use the new tools.

Twitch’s announcement follows a successful online protest called “A Day Off Twitch” staged by creators and viewers on Sept. 1 as a response to the rising cases of botting, chat hate raids, and other forms of harassment on the platform. Gamesight reported that Twitch’s engagement took a hit on the day of the protest. “Total channels streaming during the day only dropped around 40,000 channels, about 5%, but the total viewer hours dropped by 10 MILLION, about 16.5%,” the firm said in a blog post.

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