Twitch has introduced an anti-harassment feature that makes it impossible to block banned users from watching their streams.
The function was first introduced by Twitch in August. Although there are techniques to prohibit banned users from participating in a stream’s conversation, streamers have limited control over whether banned people actually watch their streams.
The “Stop banned users from viewing stream” option can now be toggled on by channel owners in the moderation settings of their Creator Dashboard.
The feature was released by Twitch in response to user input. Trevor Fisher, senior product manager at Twitch, stated that blocking unwanted viewers is the first step in addressing the harassment concerns with the site during the August episode of Patch Notes, its monthly update series.
“We’ve gotten a lot of feedback over the years, to be honest, that people want their channel bans to do more,” Fisher said.
The functionality is also included in Twitch’s blocking capabilities; if a streamer bans a user, that user will immediately lose the ability to watch streams. The site does not yet support IP filtering, and it only applies to users who are logged into their Twitch accounts.
Not everyone has access to the functionality yet. Twitch acknowledged that it would take some time until all channel owners get access in remarks to streamers. A chronology was not provided by Twitch.
