If there’s one thing Twitch CEO Dan Clancy wants people to know about what’s special about Twitch, it’s that the live streaming site is community-focused.
“Interestingly enough, social media has become anti-social,” Clancy said during a fireside chat titled “Why Live Is the Future of Connection: From Passive Scrolling to Real Connection” held at VidCon 2026. “Social media started as a technology that brought us together, but now just sitting and swiping can actually make you feel a little bit more isolated. It doesn’t make you feel connected. That’s why live is gaining momentum right now.”
So what is it about Twitch that fosters community? Clancy says the platform encourages people to stay with streamers longer than the seconds they spend with someone on TikTok. When streamers go on vacation, viewers notice their absence in a different way than TikTok creators. Plus, there’s the magic of being able to react in real-time to the same content as the rest of the chat.
Dan Clancy on stage at VidCon 2026.
Credit: Bethany Allard / Mashable
“Sports is often thought of as watching the best athletes in the world, but that’s not the case at all. It’s a community, right? It’s a shared identity,” he said during his talk. “In fact, Twitch is like a cluster of affinities with streamers, but you form horizontal bonds, so the same things that happen in sports are exactly the same on Twitch.”
Still, building a community can come with challenges.
Twitch lacks creator discoverability, but that could change
Clancy noted that Twitch content often flows onto other platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and encouraged creators to use multiple platforms.
“Use short form for discovery [and] We use long texts to build emotional connections and earn a living,” Clancy said in his talk.
Still, small and medium-sized streamers have long struggled with the platform’s own lack of discoverability, as it doesn’t push algorithmic recommendations as aggressively as YouTube and TikTok. Clancy told Mashable that’s by design.
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“When I say solve the discovery problem, the only way I can completely solve it is to remove them from the page and put more stuff on the page to distract and keep more stuff away from you. And that’s exactly what our creators don’t want,” Clancy said.
Still, he admitted he’d like to see some fixes. He shared that Twitch is committed to bringing short-form content to the platform in a meaningful way by investing in a feature called Recaps. Clancy explained that this is an evolution of Twitch’s existing Stories feature and is intended to show users clips from recent streams selected by the streamer after going live.
“I think the biggest benefit for creators is that it makes it easier for creators to create short stories and it encourages viewers to watch more on Twitch,” he told Marshvert.
How generative AI fits into the Twitch ecosystem
Addressing concerns about AI during his on-stage talk, Clancy said Twitch has plans for what happens if AI channels become more prevalent, but for now they are limited to a small number of channels that are clearly AI-identifiable, and he said they aren’t attractive enough to hold viewers’ attention for the same amount of time that human creators can.
In an interview with Mashable, Clancy also pointed to ways AI can be leveraged to improve the viewer experience, noting that large-scale language models could improve existing AutoMod functionality that automatically flags and preserves potentially inappropriate messages within streamers’ chats.
Twitch creators are growing beyond gamers
Twitch is essentially an entertainment platform. Traditionally its roots have been in gaming, but over the years it has become increasingly common for artists, musicians, actors, and even animal sanctuaries to find a home on the platform. Clancy said the change in user base over time is like “night and day.”
“Now, when I meet actors and musicians, when they hear I’m the CEO of Twitch, almost 70% of the time they say, ‘Oh, yeah, I thought we should do something.'”
Safety concerns ahead of the next TwitchCon
But communities cannot function without safety. Twitch faced backlash after streamer Emiru was assaulted at TwitchCon last year. Before the start of the competition, major streamers such as Hasan Piker, Valkyrae, and QTCinderella announced that they would not be participating in the competition due to safety concerns. Ahead of this year’s conference, Clancy assured Twitch that it is taking steps to prevent future incidents.
“We’ve updated the way we have more structured meet and greets. We don’t allow same-day sign-ups. You have to reserve your spot. So it’s a little bit limited, but it’s limited in a way that protects creators,” he told Mashable. “So I’m very confident in where we are in terms of our ability to prevent something like this from happening again.”
Mashable is reporting live from VidCon 2026 in Anaheim. Follow our coverage of creator interviews, panel highlights, the biggest moments from the convention floor, and more.
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