Let Twitch streamers block banned users from watching

Twitch’s chat ban tools have been around for years, but the platform is about to let streamers control who can watch.

In Twitch’s latest Patch Notes, its monthly product update show, the company announced that streamers could soon block banned users. If moderators or streamers enable it, banned users will be kicked out of chat and livestreams in real time.

In a few weeks, Twitch’s blocking tools will automatically block blocked users from viewing streams with the new anti-harassment feature.

The feature won’t be enabled by default for banned users, but streamers can toggle it in moderation settings. Twitch Senior Product Manager Trevor Fisher explained in the Patch Notes stream that the long-requested safety addition is a first step toward a more robust solution.

“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 new option only blocks logged-in blocked or banned users from streaming, so there will be workarounds.Twitch won’t block IPs for now and has no obvious way to track logged-out users.

The feature won’t stop unwanted viewers from watching VODs, highlights, and clips, but Twitch plans to add that later.

Fisher: “This is something where we’ve kind of had to make a lot of incremental progress.”