Correction, Twitch has not yet implemented such a thing in their API. The fact that data is not there already is quite unfortunate.
This is true, but developers should not have to create a workaround for the lack of a roles/tag supplied by Twitch. For the record, I believe there should really only be one tag that species any/all relations between a viewer and a channel. There should be no need for separate tags that define who a viewer is to the channel. I’m referring to the mod/subscriber/user-type tags for those who may not have understood what I meant. The relationship between a viewer and a channel should be specified under one tag separated by a comma and should include all the relations, not just leaving any out because it is not needed for their web based chat (which by the way not every uses). Need I remind that Twitch runs an IRC network on top of their live video broadcasting service so not everyone is connecting via web app.
The same actually could be said for a follower tag.
Hypothetically speaking, if Twitch implemented follow badges and had different tiers based on how long they have been following because it was requested quite a bit. Then would you agree that it would be a key feature for chat functionality?
As my previous message stated, not everyone uses Twitch’s web based chat. Quite a lot of users tend to use third party application/extension that either doesn’t show badges or has features to hide badges so that would not help here.