Twitch is implementing its own panic button safety feature

Today, Twitch announced it’s implementing a new safety feature that might feel familiar to streamers who’ve battled against the hate raids that plagued the platform last year. Called Shield Mode, the new feature enacts an emergency lockdown of a creator’s stream.

“Shield Mode is a little different from our other safety tools,” Twitch said in the announcement. “While it does introduce some entirely new capabilities ... its real power comes from the way it combines and levels up existing safety tools in one place.”

Shield Mode seems similar to the community-developed “panic button,” which was devised to combat the surge in hate raids that took place last year. With Shield Mode, streamers and their mods can choose settings that will mass...

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