Twitch is finally adding a long-awaited feature that could be controversial

Twitch has made some changes to its reporting system that allows for additional ways to report streamers, but some of the options they’ve added may end up being controversial.

Traditionally, Twitch reporting is straightforward. You see someone violating the terms of service directly with something that is clearly visible on stream, and you report it. Things like nudity, harassment, and bullying are pretty cut and dry at most times.

However, users can now report a streamer for viewbotting as well, cases that require a bit more of a careful eye than things you’d traditionally report for.

And, while it’s an improvement for viewers to have more options when it comes to reporting streamers breaking terms of service, these have the potential to be abused by users mass reporting streamers in an attempt to get them falsely banned.

Twitch adds viewbot reporting feature

As of March 2, 2025, Twitch now has a feature that allows users to report for viewbotting. The option to report scammers and fraudulent accounts has always been there, but there’s a small addition to the list:

You’ll notice that viewership tampering is now listed at the bottom. When expanding the report menu, Twitch gives a bit more detail about what that actually means:

It is described as anyone who is “tampering with viewer, follower, or other channel statistics via artificial inflation.” And, while this could be something like buying viewers in the traditional manner of viewbotting, there are other ways to do this that are harder to detect.

For instance, FextraLife was embroiled in drama in 2023 when they were accused of using their guide site to artificially boost Twitch viewership by embedding their stream on every page. This reporting function covers instances like that as well.

Considering how often viewbot accusations get flung around from streamer to streamer, being able to report based on that is a theoretically positive change. However, due to how difficult accusations like these can be to prove, this has a chance of being used for false reporting.

Whether or not this feature becomes controversial is up to how reliable Twitch is on properly identifying cases of viewbotting and filtering through spam reports.