Twitch Goes Nuclear Against Toxic Players, Launches Machine Moderator

Toxic communities within the gaming industry have become an accepted part of life lately, with angry enthusiasts launching tirades against companies, titles, and each other every chance they get. The community at Twitch is a little less aggravating than most, but it would appear that the streaming service doesn’t think it’s enough. By launching an anti-troll machine moderator, Twitch wants to clean house in the most thorough of ways.

The machine moderator in question is called AutoMod, PC Gamer reports, and as the name suggests, it moderates the comment section at Twitch automatically. According to the streaming brand’s description of the service, it uses "machine learning and natural language processing" in order to identify those comments that can be considered offensive.

Some examples of comments under this category include those that can be considered racist, bigoted, sexist, harassment, and downright trollish behavior. Such comments can be particularly brutal for female Twitch streamers, where users hiding behind the veil of anonymity get up to all kinds of nasty behaviors.

By combining the efforts of its human moderators and its machine moderator, Twitch believes that it stands a good chance at preserving the delicate balance of free speech and a non-toxic environment for its users and its content creators. As Ryan Kennedy, the lead moderator at Twitch says, giving the creators the tools they need to maintain a respectful streaming community is paramount to producing quality content.

Since Twitch is a global service, it’s only natural that it would also come with moderating options for other languages. The AutoMod is no exception, with languages like Arabic and German also being moderated, Venture Beat reports.

Naturally, with the internet being what it is, it’s likely that trolls will inevitably find a way to circumvent the system and get on with their despicable behavior anyway. However, in the digital age, fighting the good fight has become more about keep trolls at bay than actually getting rid of them.