Twitch now lets you share ban lists with other channels and stomp out trolls

In order to deal with the rise in bad actors and trolly on its platform, the company has come up with a new tool called shared ban info.

The feature was announced on Thursday. It will now be possible for streamers to share banned accounts with other streamers.

The recipient accounts need to approve the request before it can be sent. Each streamer's banned users will be shown to both accounts after that. Up to 30 other streamers can see the ban list of a user.

Users who appear on a streamer's banned list will still be able to chat with the other streamer. The streamer will be warned that they are a flagged account. The streamer can either ban them or mark them as trustworthy.

The move seems to encourage certain communities to take platform moderation into their own hands, rather than relying on the company to take action against abusive accounts.

The answer to the question as to why it wouldn't just ban a "serial harasser" completely is in the FAQ for the feature.

"Rather than making decisions on your behalf, our goal with this tool is to provide you with the information you need to make informed and personalized decisions about who can participate in your community. We want to strike a balance between protecting streamers from harassers while still giving streamers control over who is allowed to participate in their communities. You’re the expert when it comes to your community, and you should make the final call on who can participate."

If the company strikes a balance between those who break the platform's rules and those who don't, it makes sense. The company launched a tool last year called Suspicious User Detection that helps streamers detect users that are trying to get around a ban.

According to the announcement post for the feature, it won't stop hate raids completely. Hate raids have become a problem on the platform where streamers are targeted for harassment using the "raid" feature, which automatically sends viewers to another channel. This tool can help in niche streamers that share a common audience.

Can you exempt fans of your channel who are banned from the chat as a joke from the shared ban info feature, if you can? No is the answer.