The announcement was made on a Twitter thread after the hashtag #twitchdobetter trended earlier this week, which brought light to the harassment Black creators were experiencing. Twitch stated that it detected a vulnerability in its proactive filters and updated those filters to close the gap to detect hate speech in the chat better. As seen from various comments in the Twitter thread, the harassment comes in the form of hate speech in chats and bypasses existing filters by using non-Latin characters. The update aims to fix this issue by better detecting these characters. The company also announced that it would launch “channel-level ban evasion detection” and improve account verification. However, twitch has yet to give a concrete date or details about these new protection features. Until then, streamers and users will have to utilize the currently available moderation tools such as blocking people and clearing the chat. Twitch frequently implements new features to boost the popularity of marginalized streamers in an attempt to be an all-inclusive platform. However, some streamers still believe Twitch lacks in the necessary moderation and filtering of hate speech. The Twitch streamer at the center of this controversy is RekItRaven, a queer Black creator who started the #twitchdobetter hashtag after they were hate raided for the second time in a week. They and other streamers believe that Twitch’s Tag system serves as a beacon for trolls to target a streamer and bombard them with harassment.
