Twitch policy requires the chat to be moderated at all times, which is why trolls tend to hate-raid a Twitch channel's chat, then report it to get that channel banned and at the time of writing, it is 100% legitimate, a current threat and the only way around that is to put your chat in emote-only mode.

The "Close Chat" feature I am suggesting ends that. Under this feature, channel editors and owners may use the /closechat command to shut down the chatroom, preventing all users from sending messages in the chat, and only the channel editors and owners may use the /openchat command to re-open the chatroom.

Additionally, there will also be a setting under the "Stream" section of the Twitch channel settings to automatically close the chat after a certain amount of time passes after the stream ends, such as "If the channel is offline for [x] minutes, automatically close the chat". On top of it, there should also be a setting to automatically reopen the chat when the stream goes online. These settings will make it easier to re-open and close the chat without adding on an additional step to starting and stopping streams.

This feature will protect the chat from malicious figures in unmoderated times, allows for more flexibility for the streamer on when and if to open the chat, protects against TOS violations using this new trend of hate raids, and overall I believe this will benefit the Twitch community greatly.