Kick leadership praises Twitch anti-troll feature and plans to copy it

Kick praised Twitch for giving streamers more tools to fight back against trolls, and the platform has plans to copy the feature in a future update.

Back in August 2023, Twitch announced that streamers would be able to ban users from being able to view their content while previously a ban just prevented them from being allowed to type in chat.

The feature was praised by streamers when it went live a month later and now, even Kick has been forced to admit that its arch-rival did something right and has plans to implement their own version.

During a May 2024 stream, Kick Head of Strategic Partnerships, Andrew Santamaria, was asked if the site would ever introduce such a feature and shared his thoughts on the matter.

“You know what? Twitch has been doing a really good job at that. At actually cutting off everything that you can see from clips to a live stream, all that stuff from a banner user,” he said, giving some rare praise to the purple platform.

While Santamaria admitted that the system has some faults, such as not recognizing if a banned user created another account to view the content or keep trolling the streamer, he wants a similar system to come to Kick.

“Yes, that is coming,” he revealed with an added caveat. “When? I don’t know.”

Santamaria has been keen on listening to viewer suggestions on his broadcasts, even revealing that he’s brought some ideas to the team in hopes that they’ll be implemented in future updates.

Earlier in the month, he voiced interest in a concept that would add a timer to banned users’ channels so viewers would know exactly when they’d be allowed back on the site and provide even more transparency than other platforms such as Twitch and YouTube.