In the never-ending fight to make chat tolerable, Twitch is testing new security tools that notify streamers and mods when a user has been banned on other channels. We caught a glimpse of the new verification tool during a demo presentation of Guest Star, a new feature that allows users to appear on streams as video guests with the streamer’s approval.
As shared by Zach Bussey on Twitter (opens in a new tab), before a user is approved as a guest, mods can see if they’ve been flagged by Twitch as a “suspicious user” or “serial stalker”. This apparently mirrors information already presented by Twitch, but the “shared ban” tag appears to be new.
Twitch didn’t go into detail about this, but the tag suggests it will be possible to share a list of user bans from your channel with other streamers.
While a shared ban list seems like a natural next step for moderation, it’s unclear if this feature will exist outside of the new Guest Star interface or how ban information will be shared. Will Twitch automatically report banned accounts on channels similar to yours, or do ban lists have to be manually shared among cooperating streamers?
It’s a confusing way to launch a tool that could have a big effect on Twitch chat in the future. During the Guest Star demo, senior product manager Chris Miles brought up the feature, but glossed over it as if it wasn’t entirely new. We’ve reached out to Twitch for clarification on the “shared ban” tag and will update this story if we learn more.
