Twitch will fight trolls with machine learning

Still updates fromApp di Twitch, which is stepping up efforts to reduce harassment of streamers from trolls invading their chats. This time, in fact, the platform has chosen to make use of the support of machine learning to detect users who may not comply with its regulation. The new tool is called “Suspicious User Detection“, And is intended to identify“ probable ”or“ possible ”people who have evaded bans from a streamer’s channel.

Twitch: App will limit the action of trolls with the support of machine learning

The Twitch App uses machine learning to identify users who are not following proper behavior on the platform. And to do this, it evaluates the characteristics and behavior of the account, and then compares them with those of banned accounts from a streamer’s channel. In this way, the system will allow streamers to read the messages of “suspicious” users, but without them being visible on the public chat. If desired, streamers can monitor a “harassing” account, adding it to a special list of suspicious persons. In this case, the messages of the hypothetical trolls will be visible in the chat of the channel, but the streamer will have the possibility to block and / or delete them.

For its part, the Twitch App will activate Suspicious User Detection by default. But streamers can tweak or disable the feature to their liking, with the ability to manually select to monitor suspicious users. “This tool was largely inspired by community feedback on the need to have better ways to curb ban evaders,” he commented. Alison Huffman, Twitch Community Health Product Director. “When we were talking to mods about their problems, we realized that it can be difficult to distinguish whether a user who writes something that violated their channel’s policies was a repeat malicious harasser or just a new viewer who hadn’t learned the habits yet. of the channel “.

And so Huffman concludes: “We therefore designed this tool to provide mods and creators with more information about potential ban evaders so that they can make more efficient and informed decisions within their channel.” On the other hand, it is undeniable that detecting potentially harassing users can be a good solution to ensure the safety of Twitch App streamers. Especially if we add this new feature to the one that allows streamers to request chat participants verification of their identity. It remains only to understand, at this point, how effective these tools will be. And especially if the trolls manage not to get around them.