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[Feature] Block "new" known bots without loading old blocklist
A few years ago i've already used the feature to block all known bot accounts. It was probably about ~2 Mil Accounts^^
Now i wanted to refresh that list but its loading the old list (which can take quite some time at 2 Mil blocks..)
Would love to see a Feature where i can block all accounts without loading the old list^^
nvm, just saw #4 and the problem with it..
I don't really get why it has to be a 10+ million users long blacklist, when there's only ever maybe a hundred of bots on https://twitchinsights.net/bots (of which there may be even less in channel's chat). What's all of this blocking for? Why have this going on for hours, as it blocks stuff effectively one by one? How did it even get to that 10+ M size, and does the list ever shrink, or is there just a bunch of dead (banned/deleted) accounts hanging there? Randomly grabbing some IDs off top of the list, and checking them - it's just a bunch of users that don't exist. So it's just a waste of time, useless verging on malicious. (with that many users in blocklist making it unusable, and blocking that many users at all, despite there only appearing maybe hundreds of them in some individual chat)
The list grew with time, you can see the daily stats here. Twitchinsights tracks different accounts, my list doesn't contain the ones displayed there as I don't care about accounts lurking in chats as they don't do anything. My list contains accounts which are used in follow bot raids / attacks. Every week or so I let a script run which scans all accounts currently in the list and removes the ones which are suspended. This is how most accounts get removed from it. It's also possible that some accounts were compromised and the rightful owner got it back and then someone used the "Report" feature on my follower list viewer to report the account as "not a bot". I agree that with the current number of accounts in the list it doesn't really make sense to just block them all. It probably only makes sense if you get follow botted repeatedly by accounts already known as bots.
Is there some visible (user-facing) number of users in known bot list, or is the only way to see the number is to initiate adding that block list? (looks like it's ~12 m ids atm) the problem is, adding 12 million ids to a blocklist renders it unmanageable. it becomes unnavigable. at the very least, a useful suggestion would be 'export your current blocklist so that it'd be recoverable' - and then add this blocklist if you do want to do it and wait. some people might have some specific blocks that they've previously manually added in, and that might not necessarily have to do with bots or anything. if they'd wanna revert the process, re-add users from their more specific blocklist, or remove some specific users from it, it'd be much easier for them if they had a backed up list to reference. a sensible warning like 'back up your list before adding full known bot list' there would be useful.
what i end up seeing people mention more, is them being confused about unknown (bot?/lurker?) accounts in their viewer list and who all those people are, if they're people at all. (why is that feature there is besides the point - people just click on that button that is there, and get confused by what's shown there.) people end up facing/seeing those lurker bots more often than formerly active raid bots, so in terms of 'which kind of accounts it makes sense to ban more / how many accounts would it take to ban for a visible effect', lurker bots outweigh some other bots, particularly bots that aren't actively around anymore. for example, that twitchinsights bot list has two lists: currently active bots and historic bots list, and it really only makes sense to ban currently active ones (which is a much, much smaller number). maybe something similar could be applied to this bot list too. currently, the size of that blocklist makes it hard to recommend, if a user is gonna have to wait several hours for that to finish, and end up with (kind of a) wrecked blocklist - if all that is done for a bunch of accounts that wouldn't even be prevented from anything if they're not active at all, that's really futile. though, it can be debatable if lurker bots are worth bothering with at all if they don't actually do anything disruptive per se - but people end up getting distracted/disrupted by them anyway. and then, only solution to shoo them away and clean that up is banning/blocking one by one (and checking if they're actually bots, in that list, etc.), which takes lotta clicking - hence, a one-click block list for that would be useful.
Is there some visible (user-facing) number of users in known bot list, or is the only way to see the number is to initiate adding that block list?
There currently isn't. The only way to see the current number (~12,541,000) is as you said by starting the "Block known bot accounts" function.
a useful suggestion would be 'export your current blocklist so that it'd be recoverable'
This is already possible by using the "Export all as CSV" button which lets you download your current blocklist. You can then also copy the content of such an export in the "Add new blocks" input field.
that twitchinsights bot list has two lists: currently active bots and historic bots list, and it really only makes sense to ban currently active ones (which is a much, much smaller number). maybe something similar could be applied to this bot list too.
While this might work for accounts sitting in chat (which I already don't track and don't care about as they don't do anything) being "inactive" is not really applicable for follow bots. Just because an account isn't used anymore for new follows it might still be following hundreds or thousands of accounts and if these users use the follower remover it makes sense that they would still see that the follow was from a bot account. With Twitch changes to who can view following and follower lists it's also not really possible anymore to re-scan these 12 million accounts for their current follower activity.
As I said in the previous reply. Using the "Block known bot accounts" option on the blocklist manager isn't really worth it for nearlly everyone. It only makes sense if you get followbotted regularly by accounts which are already in the list. Only in that case would blocking them preemptively have helped. Even then would using the "Block all new followers" with the setting set to just blocking "Known bots" probably be a better option as you then don't have to deal with keeping your blocks up to date.