Following a 12 months that noticed it battle to defend its customers from abuse and harassment, Twitch has of its 2021 security efforts that features a look ahead to how the corporate plans to sort out the problem in 2022. Specifically, Angela Hession, Twitch’s vice chairman of worldwide belief and security, says the corporate will replace its consumer reporting and appeals course of. 

It additionally plans to improve its function. The AI software, which the corporate launched on the finish of final 12 months, robotically flags people it believes could also be repeat ban dodgers. In 2022, Twitch has updates deliberate round how streamers can use info from that software. As the corporate has indicated beforehand, it additionally plans to replace its sexual content material coverage to make clear varied features of it. Twitch concurrently intends to share extra and “better” instructional content material throughout its security middle and different areas.

Twitch spent a lot of the latter half of 2021 attempting to cease automated “hate raid” harassment campaigns. The assaults noticed malicious people use hundreds of bots to spam channels with hateful language, they usually often focused streamers from marginalized communities. In September, the corporate sued CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose, two of the extra prolific people concerned in these campaigns. 

“We’ll likely never be able to eliminate [hate raids] entirely,” Hession stated. However, she claims Twitch “significantly” reduce down on the variety of bots on its platform via a few of its actions in 2021. In 2022, it seems to proceed that work via the enhancements it introduced immediately. 

If the corporate’s security roadmap feels mild on particulars, Hession says that’s out of necessity. “The honest and unfortunate reality is that we can’t always be specific because bad actors can and have used that transparency to attempt to thwart our efforts,” she stated. 

At the identical time, the chief acknowledged Twitch must do a greater job of speaking what it’s doing to make folks really feel protected on its platform. It’s straightforward to see why the corporate would say that. When it felt just like the hate raids that have been occurring on Twitch couldn’t get any worse, many creators banded collectively to the shortage of motion they noticed from the corporate.