After a year of fighting to protect its users from abuse and harassment, Twitch of its 2021 security efforts, which includes an outlook on how the company plans to address the issue in 2022. Specifically, Angela Hession, Twitch’s vice president of global trust and security, says the company will update its whistleblower process and user appeal.
He also plans to update his feature. The AI tool, which the company launched late last year, automatically flags individuals it believes may be repeating the ban. In 2022, Twitch has updates planned on how streamers can use information from this tool. As the company previously indicated, it also plans to update its sexual content policy to clarify various aspects of it. Twitch intends to simultaneously share more and “better” educational content in its security center and in other areas.
Twitch spent much of the second half of 2021 trying to stop automated “hate attacks” harassment campaigns. The attacks saw malicious individuals use thousands of bots to spam channels with hateful language and often targeted streamers from marginalized communities. In September, the company sued CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose, two of the most prolific individuals involved in these campaigns.
“We will probably never be able to eliminate [hate raids] entirely,” said Hession. However, she claims that Twitch has “significantly” reduced the number of bots on its platform through some of its actions in 2021. In 2022, it appears to be continuing that work through the improvements announced today.
If the company’s security roadmap seems light on the details, Hession says that’s a necessity. “The honest and unfortunate reality is that we can’t always be specific because bad actors can and have used that transparency to try to thwart our efforts,” she said.
At the same time, the executive acknowledged that Twitch needs to do a better job of communicating what it’s doing so that people feel safe on its platform. It’s easy to see why the company would say that. When it looked like the hate attacks that were taking place on Twitch couldn’t get any worse, many creators joined in on the lack of action they saw from the company.
All products recommended by Ploonge are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.