Twitch has, once again, promised they’re working on solutions to hate raids targeting streamers, but also say the process is slow going.
For a long time, but increasing as of late, creators on Twitch have had to deal with so-called ‘hate raids,’ where channels are overrun with a large number of bots spouting all kinds of racist drivel in chat, or worse.
Streamers have been practically begging Twitch to take action, and on August 20, the platform put out a series of tweets assuring the community they are trying to fix the problem.
Hate spam attacks are the result of highly motivated bad actors, and do not have a simple fix. Your reports have helped us take action–we've been continually updating our sitewide banned word filters to help prevent variations on hateful slurs, and removing bots when identified.
— Twitch (@Twitch) August 20, 2021
“Hate spam attacks are the result of highly motivated bad actors, and do not have a simple fix,” Twitch wrote on Twitter. “We’ve been continually updating our sitewide banned word filters to help prevent variations on hateful slurs, and removing bots when identified.”
According to the streaming site, they’re doing more than just filtering chat and banning bots. However, they said the tenacity of the people conducting these raids means Twitch can’t share every single detail of what they’re doing.
“We’ve been building channel-level ban evasion detection and account improvements to combat this malicious behavior for months,” Twitch continued. “However, as we work on solutions, bad actors work in parallel to find ways around them — which is why we can’t always share details.”
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In the meantime, please keep reporting these egregious attacks. It helps us identify and remove bad actors and their networks, and update tools as behaviors evolve. These changes may not be visible, but we are making them daily.
— Twitch (@Twitch) August 20, 2021
The replies to Twitch’s second thread in as many weeks on the issue echo the same feelings of the #Twitchdobetter hashtag from early August.
Though the company’s talked more about it recently than in the past, it’s clear some creators and fans want to see Twitch doing more, rather than reading about their intended changes via Tweet threads.
“These changes may not be visible,” the site added on Twitter. “But we are making them daily.”
For now, while some streamers are coming up with creative ways to deal with hate raid bots, what exactly Twitch themselves will do about the problem remains to be seen.
