Twitch promises to curb bullying and hate raids for small streamers

Twitch might be one of the biggest streaming platforms on the scene right now, but over the recent years, it has also become the most controversial.

Twitch streamer RekItRaven was recently the victim of "hate raids", which prompted other streamers to come forward and share their experiences.

Hate raids have recently become a matter of great concern. It's a concept where scores of users create dummy accounts to target a streamer's chat with heaps of insults. #TwitchDoBetter has been trending on Twitter ever since, with thousands of streamers rallying behind RekItRaven to talk about harassment and unfavorable pay.

The Amazon-owned streaming platform has been under the microscope for a while now. Twitch, however, has failed to address the streamer's grievances, which is going to change soon.

This is what RekItRaven had to say on the subject:

“I’m just tired of it. I’m tired of feeling like I’m not allowed to exist based off of circumstances that are out of my control, and I know other people are too.”

Another black streamer “PleasantlyTwstd”, who has been streaming on Twitch for a while, stated that identity-based discrimination is inevitable regardless of the views they get on their streams.

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The discrimination has stemmed from the tags Twitch created earlier this year

The streaming platform created tags for streamers to associate themselves with, earlier this year. Sadly, this has caused an exponential rise in insults.

Even though Twitch has banned over 7.5 billion fake accounts this year, things haven't gotten better. Twitch has implemented several strategies to try to put an end to this practice. The platform has been monitoring chats in order to block specific words to eradicate harassment. However, this hasn't worked either as users intentionally misspell words and use other methods of targeted insults.

Streamers have suggested Twitch ban IP addresses over individual accounts. This will not only prevent fake accounts from being created but will also prevent the return of banned users.

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#TwitchDoBetter strikes yet again

A few days after the hashtag perforated social media, it started trending on Twitter once again. Another streamer who goes by Omega “Critical Bard” Jones shared a video of the harrowing experience where his stream was ebbed by the use of the n-word.

It was bound to happen eventually. #TwitchDoBetter pic.twitter.com/mbiN4FtLIb

— ΩMEGA JONES (@CriticalBard) August 10, 2021

This time around, however, Twitch responded via a Twitter post. To start off, Twitch thanked the streamers for coming forward to share their experiences.

Thank you to everyone who shared these difficult experiences. We were able to identify a vulnerability in our proactive filters, and have rolled out an update to close this gap and better detect hate speech in chat. We'll keep updating this to address emerging issues.

— Twitch (@Twitch) August 11, 2021

Our work is never done, and your input is essential as we try to build a safer Twitch. We’ll be reaching out to community members to learn more about their experiences, and encourage you to share feedback via UserVoice: https://t.co/L40vBSAZH7

— Twitch (@Twitch) August 11, 2021

More importantly, the post stated that the platform will do better to detect hate speech and will trigger better updates to put an end to such a disturbing practice.