“The best way that it’s going to work is should you ban any person and so they’re presently watching, then the stream playback can be interrupted for them in order that they instantly lose the power to view the stream,” he defined. “After which should you go offline, you stream once more, they gained’t have the ability to watch your subsequent streams both till you select to un-ban them.” He stated it will have the identical impact no matter whether or not the streamer or a moderator bans somebody: That individual can’t watch your streams till they’re unblocked.
One vital limitation to the brand new characteristic is that it solely applies to logged-in customers: Anybody viewing a stream whereas logged out of their account can nonetheless watch it. Twitch isn’t blocking IP addresses (at the very least for now), which leaves room for the noteworthy exception.
Fisher burdened that that is an incremental change that solely partially addresses a number of the platform’s moderation issues, together with a number of ladies accusing Twitch streamers of sexual abuse and misconduct. Different strikes to deal with the difficulty have included including a one-button anti-harassment instrument, enhancing its reporting and appeals course of, rewriting its group insurance policies and taking a stronger stance in opposition to deepfakes. “We all know that that is an space the place individuals need us to do extra, and it’s simply been transport off one a part of the issue at a time,” Fisher stated.