Twitch is making it easier to ban and block abusers with new moderation tools
Twitch is introducing significant changes to how chat moderation works.
Twitch has announced a big update to banning and blocking. It's no secret that Twitch chat can become a cesspool of slurs and harassment, but the biggest problem was that banned offenders could just come back minutes later with a new account and continue their barrage.
Channel-banning an offender will soon remove them from the chat list entirely, and blocking a user takes them out of the list of followers. This is a big deal for a couple of reasons.
Being removed from the chat list means they'll no longer be able to see chat. Furthermore, not being on the list of followers after getting banned prohibits users from joining the channel again quietly and making a fuss about it later. This also should cut on instances where some despicable users were able to effectively stalk streamers by being on the list of followers and causing trouble in different ways outside of chat.
These changes were meant to be already live, but Twitch delayed them after identifying a last-minute issue.
Separately, Twitch also launched the new Mod View, a channel mode designed specifically for moderators. No longer would mods have to type in commands in chat to perform the different tasks.
Mod View will make it easier to have access to all moderation tools while following the stream. The new design allows mods to "dock" less-frequently used actions in widgets, which they are able to drag out when needed. There's also an easier way to search for users in chat and find out certain details about their history on the channel.