When I view Twitch streams, I rarely am logged in. I log in when my goal is to chat. Other than that, I’m logged out 99% of the time. Most times, I close chat because I don’t find it a complimentary experience unless I’m watching a creative stream. While I give credit to the streamers who try to control their chat, they have to jump through a lot of hoops to have consistent control. Most times the chat flies by quickly, the trolls successful proceed to troll, and the chat can be filled with garbage like overuse of ASCII characters, etc. No, I am not forgetting the sexist and racist comments that haunt Twitch.
Twitch announced a solution to improve chat. AutoMod can be configured to detect problematic messages and send them into a moderation queue. Moderators can handle these messages by either approving or removing the message. The original sender is notified of the result and chat is spared from messages that can distract from the viewing experience.
I’m not sure which channels have it implemented but I thought I’d try it out. I went to the most popular streamer online at the time. It was Nightblue3, a League of Legends (LoL) player, which was perfect as LoL chats can be the most toxic and I drop by his stream from time to time so I could compare then vs. now. He had 20,755 people watching him (no, I’m not kidding) and the chat was much improved from when I last visited his stream. He did not have subscription mode implemented (which would allow only viewers subscribed to his channel to chat) and the chat was slow, non-toxic, and manageable.
I am impressed by Twitch’s innovation the past couple of years. The company has gone a long way in innovating their offerings to appeal to the streamers using their service while attracting more viewers, and evolving their offerings to ensure they remain a leader in their industry. If only Twitter would take some cues from Twitch. For as many employees as Twitter has, they have very little innovation. Twitter can learn a lot from Twitch…take notes!
Can we get a mod to bring the game back as the main focus and not ads, subscription messages, etc.?
