Twitch’s next way of letting viewers interact with streams is with GIFs. The latest customization tool for the popular broadcasting service arrives via a partnership with Giphy, and the way it works sounds pretty simple. A broadcaster sets a location on the screen for where users can drop GIFs, and once a stream starts viewers click the Giphy icon to start searching for the perfect reaction to the ‘caster’s on-screen antics. From there, it’ll overlay on the stream. Cool! Before you get any crazy ideas for trolling, GIFs will be curated for appropriateness.
“GIFs are limited to a PG rating and below, meaning [GIFs] with violence, sexual references and lewd terms are all prohibited, amongst other things,” according to the official extension description.
It stands to reason that there are some controls available for broadcasters too, so their shows don’t turn into endless streams of cats riding motorcycles, but that wasn’t clear from the initial announcement. After all, the service has tools for keeping chat manageable for popular channels, so we’d expect similar here. We’ve reached out to Twitch for more information and will update this post when it arrives.
Update: A Twitch spokesperson provided the following clarification on its new GIF policy: “GIFs are queued up and delivered one at a time. As with all Twitch extensions, the viewer can minimize or close the screen at any time.” The power is in your hands, folks.
