YouTube Live stole one of Twitch’s best features and managed to make raids better

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Live Redirects were added a few years ago to allow creators to hold livestreams that ended with another video on their own channel for fans to watch before the new music video is shown. Live streamers can bounce their audience to another livestream when they go offline with the adjusted Live Redirects. One of the first big events to take advantage of the new addition will be the premiere of Top Gun: Maverick on Wednesday.

This behavior is called a raid. It is a good way to grow audiences and find new content, but it has also been a conduit for harassment on the platform as it would target marginalized streamers with abuse from hundreds of accounts.

Image: YouTube Support

Creators: Live Redirect is here! Help each other grow by redirecting ➡️ your viewers to other creators' live streams & Premieres as soon as yours ends.



More on who’s eligible & how we’re giving you control over who redirects to your channel: https://t.co/OnqR2qip9M pic.twitter.com/EibtaWvTtc

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) May 3, 2022

Live Redirects with settings that could make bot-fueled harassment something streamers don't have to worry about is being launched by YouTube.

Many don't do it because the channels are set to only allow raids from friends, teammates, and followed channels. From the beginning, only channels that subscribe to the streamer can be pointed to by YouTube Live Redirects. Only channels with more than 1,000 subscribers can send a Live Redirect.

Now that the feature is live, we will be able to see how streamers use it, but building in default settings that give streamers one less thing to worry about should be a good start. In a March video, the company showed off several new features that are coming as it tries to convince creators that this is the platform they should use instead of competitors like Facebook or TikTok.