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Popular broadcasting platform Twitch has implemented stronger measures against harassment by updating its ban feature. In previous years, policies over banning and blocking users have faced myriad criticisms. There have been some instances where users would violate company policy and not receive any kind of punishment. Others have received suspensions over minor offenses. As users continually fight for stronger and fairer bans, Twitch seeks to remedy most of these situations that escalate.

On a Twitter post on Friday, Twitch Support shared the update to its followers. It indicated a change to its blocking feature that now removes them from a user’s following list. Additionally, channel-banning a user will also remove them from the channel’s Chat list. Both preferences can be moderated by the user through their Settings option.

These features are most useful if a user finds someone to be extremely toxic or harassing and they decide to kick them off their channel. Not only will this ban an offender off of the channel, but they will have their IP shadow-banned as well. This prevents the offender from repeatedly creating new accounts to harass the channel.

Although the banning update has been recently announced, Twitch found a few issues. Until those kinks get resolved, they have temporarily suspended the update. However, they indicate the feature should be up and running soon enough.

Clarification and response

Many followers who have responded to the tweet gave some more suggestions for Twitch to implement. One follower had suggested to give editors more access to certain features, and another suggested to prevent banned offenders from creating content.

Looking overall at the changes, most people happy, though a few are not. One user mentioned the unfairness that could happen with moderators and small offenses. Conversely, plenty of people were excited that they will no longer be harassed on their stream.