Deprecation of Create and Delete Follows API Endpoints

[AnD4D]

Hasn’t this been revoked? Shouldn’t this mean follow bots are no longer a thing?

My channel keeps getting followed by some Hoss bot in all different names and spellings. How are they doing that if bot follows are no longer a thing?

[BarryCarlyon]

@AnD4D

Hasn’t this been revoked? Shouldn’t this mean follow bots are no longer a thing?

No

@AnD4D

My channel keeps getting followed by some Hoss bot in all different names and spellings. How are they doing that if bot follows are no longer a thing?

They use the first party APi that they are violating the Developer and regular TOS in using. Or employ humans to manually hit the follow button.

[bastimeyer]

@BarryCarlyon

They use the first party APi

What an unexpected surprise!

[BarryCarlyon]

@bastimeyer

What an unexpected surprise!

And naturally Twitch is working on combatting this, which I thought went without saying.

I reckon most if not all follow botting was done via GQL, so Twitch is fighing the issue via multiple vectors.

[Dist]

Some follow bots that were being tracked operated within the 3rd party rate limits, where as if they were using GQL they could far exceed that, so that would indicate that at least some of the follow bots were using the 3rd party endpoints which this change has successfully stopped. As for the stuff that hasn’t been stopped, like Barry said that’s also being worked on internally at Twitch.

[Mm2PL]

@BarryCarlyon

They use the first party APi that they are violating the Developer and regular TOS in using. Or employ humans to manually hit the follow button.

What in the fuck did you expect! Literally nothing changed about follow bots. Just the sincere third party devs Twitch apparently cares so much about got fucked. And now we have to find ways to somehow do in-app follows (using your 50MB of JS website for a fucking follow button is a waste of everyone’s time and resources) and yet not break TOS and DA at the same time. Shit like this makes me consider leaving developing for this platform altogether (I assume other devs have the same feelings as me). I’ve personally seen ‘illegal’ GQL stuff (not my own obviously) break less than programs using your official APIs for fucks sake!

Something is obviously wrong here.

@BarryCarlyon

I reckon most if not all follow botting was done via GQL

@Dist

so that would indicate that at least some of the follow bots were using the 3rd party endpoints which this change has successfully stopped. As for the stuff that hasn’t been stopped

Was it worth pissing off a chunk of your dev community for stopping a small part (as per what Barry said) of the follow botting procedure? I do not think so. Just look at this damn thread!

How about rate-limitting following to something a normal user won’t exceed? You already do this kind of a thing for clips for third parties apps.

[BarryCarlyon]

Please keep it civil on the forums. There is no need for needless swearing.

[Dist]

@Mm2PL

Was it worth pissing off a chunk of your dev community for stopping a small part (as per what Barry said) of the follow botting procedure? I do not think so. Just look at this damn thread!

Look at this thread? you mean this tiny fraction of the Twitch Developer community (the vast majority of devs either don’t use these endpoints, or have successfully moved on already)? And you value the handful of apps used by a handful of users over the thousands of users impacted by followbotitng and hate raids (some to the extent of doxxing and death threats)?

[Supinic]

@Dist

have successfully moved on already

leaving third party devs no choice is hardly something i call “successfully moving on”

[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.