It’s probably happened to all of us. We tune in to a stream on Twitch wanting to just relax and watch some good gameplay, a major tournament or even some cooking. And then, invariably our eyes stray to the chat. Yes, Twitch chat. That hotbed of thoughtful, fair and equitable destruction.
Or, as Totalbiscuit once described it: eye cancer.
While I won’t characterize ALL Twitch chats as wretched cesspools filled with some of the worst vitriol I have ever seen spew from a human’s mouth, many of them are. Just watch any major eSports tournament, such as DOTA2’s International or the Smite World Championships. Racism, sexism, hate speech. It’s all there. And it would seem Twitch wants to do something about it, because they have just announced a new feature called “AutoMod”.
Streamers can toggle AutoMod in their settings page. If the service works as advertised it will allow streamers to set up filters for both terrible words and the little “l33t” speak version speople use to get around them.
According to Twitch:
AutoMod is a unique moderation tool that does more than filter inappropriate chat. When a user sends a message that AutoMod flags as potentially inappropriate, the message is held in a publishing queue awaiting moderator approval. AutoMod also enables broadcasters to adjust the degree of filtering in the event they are more or less conservative about the type of dialogue they want to see in their chat. Beyond identifying inappropriate words and phrases, AutoMod can detect potentially inappropriate strings of emotes and other characters or symbols that others could use to evade filtering.
This is a potentially big deal, as a large portion of the Twitch viewing audience probably aren’t terrible people. But they get drowned out by the vocal minority that thrive on spewing hate. My prime concern though is this: Aside from when I’m actually the one streaming or acting as a moderator, I habitually hide Twitch chat for the simple reason that I don’t want to look at it. I imagine I’m not alone in this. And I’m not sure that this tool, even if it works 100% as advertised will be enough to change that for many people.
What do you think? Will this tool get you to look at Twitch chat again? Or do you think people will find a way to circumvent it in short order?
