Deprecation of Create and Delete Follows API Endpoints

[BarryCarlyon]

This thread is now locked from further discussion.

Since it’s just going round in circles and people are not being respectiful to each other.

For further feedback on this change please post to uservoice citing your usecase and reasoning.

Here is one of a few related uservoices.

Create embeddable follow button

And the “main” developer uservoice can be found at https://twitch.uservoice.com/forums/310213-developers/

And to cite the original post for those that arrive at the end instead of the start:

@TravistyOJ

The Twitch API powers a diverse range of applications and use-cases. With each endpoint, we take care to ensure we are providing functionality that will help developers create tools for our creators and engaging experiences for our viewers, all to make the Twitch community strong, safe, and fun. While the ability to follow and unfollow channels with our APIs opened up novel use cases for developers, at times these APIs have also been used by bad-faith actors to harass our community and create fake engagement. In the interest of protecting the Twitch community from these types of abuse, we are removing these endpoints from our API.

Today, we are announcing that we will permanently shut down the Follow Channel , Unfollow Channel , Create User Follows and Delete User Follows endpoints in the Twitch API and V5 on July 27, 2021.

If your application uses these endpoints, please update your implementation to prevent downtime or errors before the shutdown date. Effective today, Twitch applications that have not previously accessed these endpoints will not be able to access them. If you need help or have questions, please feel free to comment below.

Update (2021-07-27): The follow API endpoints have been removed.

And Jon later in this thread regarding feedback:

@jbulava

Removing the follow functionality from the API was a quick turnaround for sure. We understand it is a desired use case, so I’m curious myself if there are other ways Twitch can provide this functionality to third parties outside of the API and without the risk of abuse. It’s something to be discussed and what I’d like to advocate for in some way.

We consider all feedback that is submitted through UserVoice, so adding your comments and use cases to those suggestions and upvoting is definitely the right way to get those ideas to the right teams for consideration.