User follows

[spirit1337]

Hello @mauricew

I managed to check who follows a user but I just can't seem to get who a user follows to work.

According to page doc:

query { user(login: "Amouranth") { follows(first: 25) { totalCount edges { followedAt node { login } } } } }

Getting the following error when trying to fetch:

{"errors":[{"message":"service error","path":["user","follows"]}],"data":{"user":{"follows":null}},"extensions":{"durationMilliseconds":21,"requestID":""}}

Can anyone confirm if this method is still working?

[mauricew]

If this isn't a server hiccup then it's more likely tied to Get User Follows being removed from Helix in September (https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/t/legacy-follows-api-and-eventsub-shutdown-timeline-updated/46769). There is a replacement Get Followed Channels which could indicate that the same authentication & permission requirements to use that are also required when making this call.

[spirit1337]

That's what I thought but there appears to be a way to get around the public API change and to check follows without the user needing to be a mod for the channel.

For example this site operates like before the API change. It's behind a paywall but I can confirm it works. I thought it uses the GQL API. Any idea how this is possible?

[mauricew]

Can't say for sure, does that site require logging in via OAuth? The only method I know of is the one where you access Settings > Notifications and the list that gets generated in the "Per channel" section, but that's only for the logged-in user. I'm sure if the call was known or heavily used it would be patched out quicker, hence the reason why that feature is paywalled.

[spirit1337]

No authentication needed and it works for every user. The only solution I can think of is to scrape the followers of every channel - save it to a database and fetch the data from there but that seems inefficient.