This is not to take away from the improvements that have already been made, and are being implemented. The work that is being done is greatly appreciated.
However, further change is needed to better protect streamers for banned users. Merely preventing chatting is not enough to deter harassment, stalking, or intrusive bot behavior.

Most people are aware that measures often can be circumvented, that is not an excuse for the lack of protection that currently exists.
Streamers need a way to completely cut off a user from content. I believe the proposed measures are reasonable, and will also provide protection against abuse as well as preventing intrusive bots from squatting in channels without permission.

The proposed changes are:
1. A banned user is prevented from connecting to a channel's chat completely, which means their name does not appear in the list of viewers.
2. A banned user is prevented from viewing the stream itself, on site or using other means.
3. A banned user is blocked from subscribing and following, and will be automatically unsubscribed and / or unfollowed.
4. A banned user is prevented from viewing any other channel information and content, including the streamer's panels, VODs, clips, followers, and followed accounts.
5. A streamer must be able to toggle an option to treat logged out viewers similarly as a banned user, preventing any access until they log in.

Additionally, to prevent excessive account creation, the following measures should be implemented as well:
6. Accounts need to be verified by e-mail.
7. Limit the amount of accounts per e-mail, to 1 or at a maximum 2.
8. Limit the amount of accounts that can be created from a single IP address per day.

Thank you for your consideration.

Dear Twitch,

We are now dealing with a new threat of bot accounts. These accounts sit lurking in channel, possibly logging info of either streamers or chatters. They may be using this info for giveaway sniping, or possible future bot attacks, including viewer bots, follower bots, and even spam bots. They sit there and do nothing, they follow us to other streams we host/raid. We ban them, not like they ever say anything, but to prevent them from spreading, we need a way to KICK THEM OFF THE CHANNEL.

Recently had a run in with "Opentwitchbot" whom acknowledges that they are running a bot in other's channels, but never requested permission to do so, instead, they want us to run THEIR command in our channels to make them leave, which isn't possible on our bots, because our bots are not design for that command, nor is it a Twitch command. I don't know what their command is doing, and I certainly don't trust it. When confronting them on the fact that their bot is breaking ToS, they reported me for reporting them. I requested and stated to them several times, their bot is not welcomed in my channel, and they refused to remove themselves until the end of my stream, waiting for me to host someone and latch on to them, thus spreading.

We've all been noticing another set of bots possibly working together, Faegwent ThisIsMyDevAccount and chatdb, they never speak, but they have hundreds if not thousands of followers, they never broadcast, etc etc, what are they doing sitting in our chat? sending info to these followers? that's against ToS. We the broadcasters need an option to kick them from the page, doesn't have to be permanent, they might have an option to hop back on, but I think we should have some sort of captcha security so they can PROVE they are human, and not a bot when rejoining the page!

Banning doesn't do enough if they can still read the chat and gather the info. Reporting seems to do nothing for the past 2 months of reporting them, from MULTIPLE witnesses/reporters. It's about time we have some control over the unwelcome bot accounts.

Help us help you lessen the load!

Sincerely,
A Hard Working Broadcaster, just trying to stop the spread of unwanted guests.

Since Body Painting has been established as a valid category on the platform, there has been a noticeable lack of encouragement from Twitch in creating a healthy community around it. This lack of support is further emphasized by the massive push back and public harassment of Body Painters online, including but not limited to: Organized hate raids by other streamers, Streamers sexualizing body painters on their own live streams, Public groups that organize mass reports on body painters, Lack of response by Twitch to counter the culture of continued degradation of women through objectification by viewers (including inappropriate usernames).

Twitch has a growing issue on its platform in regards to Body Art, one of its more controversial categories. The streamers of this category are heavily targeted for harassment every day by other streamers and their communities, often leading to malicious mass reports on accounts resulting in account suspensions and bans with little offering as to the specifics of what the offense entails. While the community is grateful for Twitch to include this art on it's platform, the seeming lack of effort to foster a sense of support for the community is disappointing. While it is true that Twitch has offered a recent update to the community guidelines in regards to body painting, they still leave too much up to interpretation. These gray areas leave a number of inconsistencies laid bare on the enforcement of these policies, and leave the streamers feeling a lack of safety in their art. The additional focus, and inequality of these rules being enforced on male presenting streamers as well, also has a play in how the Body Painters are objectified as these guidelines are settled under "****** Content".

Proposed Solution
Twitch has an opportunity to lead by example and help to change the rampant culture of ****** harassment and hateful conduct on the platform by showing support for one of it’s most controversial categories. After much discussion with over 100 body painters about the trials we face on a daily basis, we came to a few proposals that if implemented would create a better sense of belonging, safety, security and health in the category. Many of these proposals also have the ability to improve the ****** harassment faced by all females on the platform if expanded on.

Being as controversial a category as Body Painting is, the community would like to ask for even MORE defined guidelines. There are too many areas that need further definition, such as how long is a short break when painting since the average body paint takes anywhere from 6 to 8 hours to complete? What constitutes performing unrelated activities? How much coverage actually has to be painted before a stream starts (whole ***? Areola/*** and underbust only? Does it need to be detailed or is a single color ok? Do we need to start with the chest as we paint or starting with the face ok?)? As streamers we've seen inconsistency in enforcement of these rules as some streamers are known to show off a pet on stream in a break from painting, some eat while simultaneously painting, and others may take a moment to answer bigger questions on stream. In many of these situations we've seen some people become suspended or banned from the platform when being threatened with reports while live, and others no severe action taken under the same threats. By further defining time limits, expectations of paint coverage to meet, and what is considered a break versus participating in unrelated activities, it leaves little question to the streamer as to what is allowed, and removes some of the discrepancy between how these reports are handled.

To further elaborate on these discrepancies, we would like to propose that a team of two persons be assigned to review reports against body painters. This can be expanded on to include all ****** content reports that happen live, but is important that there be little room for error when handling these cases. In order to set a precedence for conduct and what is expected, there has to be consistency in the actions taken as well as the reasoning behind those actions. Not only are the guidelines easily interpret-able, but the reasons for suspensions and bans are even more vague and lacking context. If the reports made against body painters are handled by specific staff, that further makes it possible for consistency and clearer definition of the offense when resulting in punishment.

I cannot stress enough how the platform as a whole would benefit from clearer reasoning for suspensions and bans. While it is hard to give time stamps for the offense in question due to the VOD being removed from the site, it would not be impossible to supply a screenshot or clip with clearer definition of the actions being performed that were against policy. Not only does being clearer about policy enforcement help the community by setting clear precedent, it honors an overwhelming outcry to Twitch to honor its commitment to transparency.

There is also a great opportunity here to add in a community manager for the creative category with an emphasis on Body Painting. With a community manager, those streaming in Beauty&Body Art would have a designated point of contact when there are questions or concerns about content they wish to produce. Community managers also allow Twitch to have live eyes on the category and better utilize the warning system as things are happening live allowing the streamer to either end their stream or course correct immediately. This line of communication also narrows the ability of more edgy streamers to intentionally misinterpret the guidelines, and would give Twitch staff in Safety and Policy a better view of the issues and harassment going on. This suggestion is one that has been implemented by competitors, including YouTube, who have active community managers that do outreach to streamers and communities while live.

The list of issues facing body painters is long, and the concern over the lack of support received from Twitch as a category is frustrating. We truly believe in Twitch as a platform though, and the powerful change that can be made in the current culture of objectification and ****** harassment, not only by other streamers but the viewers as well, if Twitch were to take a stance in this controversial category. As a community, we sincerely hope that you will hear our voice, our concerns, and take into consideration our many proposals for solutions. We are open to discussion with policy staff and willing to work to help better the platform as a whole.

I would like to propose that Twitch implements much stricter rules surrounding username creation and the terms which are allowed to be used in usernames. Users are still allowed to create usernames which are hateful, sexually explicit and degrading, despite this behaviour being against the Twitch Community Guidelines.

I appreciate that moderators and streamers are able to ban and report these accounts, but stopping this behaviour should NOT be the sole responsibility of content creators and their team. Furthermore, this method merely addresses the problem AFTER it has already happened. We need Twitch to implement a system which can identify harmful usernames and prevent them from being created in the first place.

I am proposing this out of both a need to protect streamers and their communities. I was targeted by numerous accounts, with usernames including the statements 'all lives matter' and 'no consent', as well as phrases relating to graphic ****** acts and anatomy. Although my mods were able to ban and report these individuals, the usernames were still visible to my community and myself, and affected me deeply. Twitch needs to do more to protect content creators, and the simplest way to do this is by addressing the problem BEFORE it happens - by preventing the creation of these harmful usernames.

I would like to remind people of the Twitch Community Guidelines, specifically relating to Hateful Conduct and Harassment, and a couple of these guidelines which were clearly violated from my own experience:

Content that is prohibited under our Hateful Conduct policy—regardless of whether it is intended to be hateful—includes, but is not limited to the following:
- Content that encourages or supports the political or economic dominance of any race, ethnicity, or religious group, including support for white supremacist/nationalist ideologies

The following categories of behaviors are considered to be sexually harassing, and are prohibited on Twitch:
- Making unsolicited objectifying statements relating to the ****** body parts or practices of another person
- Making unsolicited statements in reference to performing graphic ****** acts on another person
(And perhaps most relevant:)
- Creating accounts dedicated to harassment or hate, such as through abusive usernames

I understand that this may be very difficult to implement, however it would greatly improve the experience for both content creators and their communities, and foster a much safer environment. I believe that actively ensuring hateful behaviour has no place on Twitch is worth the challenges that might arise.

Since the creation of twitch creative last year, there's been a great community growing. Twitch has made a new and exciting platform for artists to connect with their audience that hasn't really existed before. It allows for such a personal connection between the art, artist, and viewer. When I see artwork from an artist that I watch regularly, not only do I see their beautiful creation, I remember special moments when they completed a section of their work.

On October 28th, 2015, when Twitch creative was announced on the Twitch blog they wrote, ”We expect to learn much about what is, and is not, appropriate for Twitch as the community grows.”

After a year of silence, I hope that the community can get some answers and solutions to this important issue.

For clarity here are the terms of service regarding nudity.

For Twitch gaming:

“Nudity can't be a core focus or feature of the game in question, and modded nudity is disallowed in its entirety. Occurrences of in-game nudity are permitted, so long as you do not make them a primary focus of your broadcast and only spend as much time as needed in the area to progress the game's story.”

For Twitch Creative:

“We are working on ways to ensure that artists can produce the work that they want, while also fostering a safe space for the community as a whole. We ask that you refrain from creating or using depictions of nudity or extreme violence until those features are implemented.”

For gaming, nudity can't be the primary focus. For creative, nudity can't be shown at all.

These rules imposed upon the creative community, cripple creators and the viewers knowledge from such a fundamental core of drawing, the human anatomy. Artists want to share their creative process, including their skills as they improve. How can they improve when the necessary knowledge of human anatomy is forbidden?

When game designers make a choice to have nudity in their games, the majority of the time it's for sexualized purposes.

However what the creative community wants is to at least have nudity as an educational tool to build upon our skills as artists to further our understanding of anatomy.

Today you can view nudity in games, however if there's a drawing thats somewhat suggestive it's a bannable offense.

Just as flowers, sunsets, and mountains are useful tools in the artist’s toolkit, the unadorned human body can be an essential tool to express the pure emotion of what the artist is trying to convey. Artists use nudity as a tool to focus attention on the human form, and not irrelevant aspects like how their shirts are buttoned, how clothing is being draped, or whether they are wearing the most stylish kind of hat. And if the point of art is to primarily express ideas about the nature of humanity and our role in the world, then it would be natural to expect the nude body would be among the most powerful of those expressive tools.

Artists deserve the same level of freedom as gamers. To put a lid on our talent diminishes the range of appreciation for the human condition and causes us to constantly edit our creativity.

I want the artwork I experience to be created with the best training, the most creative ideas, and the widest freedom to use all those things to make the most excellent works that best efforts can achieve. To do any less would make the world a worse place to live.

You allow gamers to play their games. Allow artists to create their masterpieces.

Please allow streamers to remove people from their follower's list. As a small streamer, I struggle with trolls, and I have made many streamer friends who have had the same experiences as me. On more than one occasion I have banned a troll from chat and had them return with upwards of 3 other accounts, sometimes even up to 10 or 15 other accounts during one stream. (Keep in mind my average stream is about 2.5 hours, and I try my best to not acknowledge or encourage the trolls at all, I just ban them and move on.) They follow each time they return, adding new but empty follows to the follower count.

I have had trolls return with new usernames that target my mods, or reference something that was said earlier in the stream, or even referencing their past usernames that were previously banned. Their follows are meaningless because they will likely never return with that account that they made to troll a specific streamer.

Many streamers try to keep track of their follower to viewer ratio as they grow. To see what they're doing wrong or right, and to see what helps them grow or makes them lose followers. Having those empty follows of people who will never return is quite a problem.

Here are a few of my suggestions:

• Automatically removing someone from the follower's list if they get banned in chat.

• Giving streamers the option to view their banned chatters list and manually remove the follow themselves.

• Remove the option to make multiple accounts with one verified email address. (This enables trolls to make new accounts in just a couple of minutes and quickly return to keep harassing a streamer)

• If a streamer has banned several usernames that share the same email, allow the streamer to ban the entire email address and any associated usernames.

• If a streamer has banned several usernames that share the same email, allow the streamer to remove any and all usernames that are associated with that email from their follower list.

Trolls will not keep me from streaming, but implementing at least one (if not several) of these ideas would be a huge help to me and many other streamers out there. Thank you for your time and consideration!

Ban the word "r*tard" and all variations from Twitch. This is hate speech. Recently, Twitch put a ban on words like "simp," "incel," and "virgin." Meanwhile, there are many partnered streamers, including Asmongold, one of the biggest streamers on Twitch, constantly using the R word and sees no problem with it, therefore influencing their audience of tens of thousands of Twitch users to do the same.

There are many, many, many articles on the internet explaining why and how the word is harmful, hate speech, and a slur. Most people don't even have to read them to know this. Recently a clip has surfaced of Asmongold saying he won't stop using the word unless he is banned. Ironically, he brings up a good point. Why is it that words like "incel" when used in a derogatory manner are bannable, but a word like "r*tard" which is MUCH more commonly thrown around as an insult, as well as being a more commonly known slur, is ok?

In Asmongold's words, on a Twitch live stream, "I don't think there is anything wrong with saying the word rtarded, and I think that the people that get mad about it are just ****** stupid. And I'm gonna keep saying it until they tell me I can't--If I say it they'll ban me right? Obviously, if I can't say it, I won't say it."

Your move, Twitch!

Users are able to hide specific badges already (Twitch Prime, Turbo, Bits, ...) but what about Moderator Badges?

The reason for this suggestion:
In smaller streams (new) chatters might get scared if moderators post messages.

So I see 2 potential ways this could be achieved:

1. Only visually disable the mod badge (keeping the moderation actions in-tact)
2. Allow moderator to go into "non-moderation mode" - in this mode, the moderation actions are not available and they are like a normal chatter

In both cases moderators should still show up in the Moderator List (/mods).

Recently Twitch added a "Mod View" into the chat settings - maybe something could be added in there?
Say a "Hide Moderator Badge" option?

I'm a Twitch moderator for 3 small Affiliate streamers. I'm also a former tech support escalations agent for multiple companies & have a business degree, & I do free small business consulting to help small streamers reach Affiliate, start their streaming business, & grow their own communities on Twitch, because I think people have potential to work for themselves doing a job they enjoy & that Twitch has a lot of potential to be a platform to help them do it.

It was the community potential that made me spend the last 10 months learning the platform to help others who were just getting started & that's why I'd rather not leave, I'd rather just help Twitch Do Better with practical solutions based on my insight, because bots are a complicated issue with a lot of factors that are hard to manage, & these particular bots are more sophisticated than simple chat spam bots.

So I've evaluated how the hate raid bots operate by studying one that follow/unfollowed my streamer & others that caught my attention while I waited for the report to be actioned & for Twitch to shut it down. These bots are exploiting vulnerabilities within Twitch to keep coming back, hosting Twitch Partners to harvest IPs & spread from their popularity & viewers to find tagged accounts to hate raid.

They hide from the search algorithms so they don't come up under a name search & instead reroute to a dormant, inactive, randomly chosen twitch account they base their names off of. These bots have also already caused at least one small non-affiliate streamer to get banned by Twitch & have to fight to be reinstated, & if Hoss00312 hadn't gone on a twitter rant & linked his twitter on his Twitch page, I wouldn't have known he was actually a victim of the bot problem & not a participant.

Hate raid bot Hoss00312_ gained over 10k followers in the 18 hours I monitored it waiting for my report to be actioned, because there was no category that made sense to report a bot that never chatted & nothing about its page or content was the problem, so I had to go for a vague "something else" category which likely put it at a lower priority.

And streamers don't seem to understand a ban doesn't block anything but chat & these bots in particular un-ban themselves, come back, & follow again & again waiting for the day they use a tag to conduct a hate raid. Banning is incredibly easy & the reporting is complicated & overwhelming particularly to someone who's either shocked or upset or afraid, so streamers haven't been submitting reports for Twitch to actually review the accounts, just muting them from blasting their chat.

Below is the practical back end technical changes that Twitch can make that will resolve a lot of issues, help Twitch streamers & viewers understand & utilize the the reporting process, get rid of at least this type of sophisticated hate raid bot & help prevent & manage others that come up in the future.

1- These bots are hosting Twitch Partners to harvest IPs & hunt for targets who stream with identity tags to hate raid.

Solution- Bring back the ability for streamers & moderators to see who is hosting their page in the Stream Manager & the option to manually remove themselves from being hosted.

Add a pop up "why do you want to be unhosted from this channel?" with options including "Suspected bot account" & make that create a report for Twitch Support to review with a link to block the account.
If a 3+ month dormant streamer account is added to an auto host list, trigger an email telling them.

2- People believe enough bans & public outcry will trigger Twitch Support to look into an account which demotivates them to report & block

Solution- Lower the threshold for bans on an account to trigger a report to Twitch to investigate, accounts catching 50+ bans an hour are either a bot or a toxic chat troll.

Rename "ban" to "mute" & give a pop up asking if the account needs to be reported for hate speech/hostility or as a bot so users better understand that they need to report it to Twitch Support for review.

3- The reporting process is a complicated tech tree with too many options. It's easy to ban & make it "not my problem anymore" & difficult to report a problem account to get Twitch to investigate.

Solution- Simplify the reporting process, start with WHAT the problem is, then WHERE the problem is with a text box at the bottom for added notes. Make it easy for people to report bot accounts & let back end keyword algorithms filter it down the tech tree to the right department in Twitch Support for review.

Add an internal flag on accounts that spam-report multiple streamers across multiple days to investigate for potential reporting abuse.

4- Hate raid bots fill chat with hate speech & the only option for streamers to spare their followers & themselves is to clear chat for the whole stream, which impacts their content & ability of other streamers or viewers to report.

Solution- Take away "Clear chat" & replace it with "Blackout chat," add censor boxes to the last 2 minutes of chat & time out all chatters for 5 minutes to give everyone a time to submit reports.

Add a subcategory to "View Recent Raids" to see all chat names that came with the raid & a "Report this Raid" mass report/ban/block option.

5- The hate raid bots don't show up in search & scapegoat legitimate accounts & open multiple gibberish string screen name bot accounts to conduct hate raids.

Solution- Internally flag multiple close variations of a name & random gibberish string names so any reports on those accounts are automatically set at a higher urgency for a review of the chain of accounts.

Check your search priority algorithms to see how bots at 25k+ follows are evading search results.

6- Hate raid bots gain followers & grow extremely fast, sometimes 1k follows an hour.

Solution- Flag accounts that gain follows too fast to be organic growth or human effort for review, add an exception for accounts that actively stream content to account for popularity growth.

For 9 months I have been reporting someone who has been harassing me over and over with NO response from Twitch. When will there be a real system in place to protect streamers??

This person has made numerous accounts with usernames that have shared personal information including my phone number, addresses, and names of family members. I have reported, banned, blocked, and had my MODs do the same, but nothing has ever been done on Twitch's end.

If others are going through this, I want to hear about it and what Twitch is going to do to help those of us who are dealing with long term harassment and the emotional duress that follows it.

Recently in the twitch community, there has been a rise of hot tub streamers also known as the "Hot Tub Meta". This has been a very controversial issue but I'm going to give my thoughts on the issue and hopefully twitch will do something about this. On twitch TOS it's stated "Content or camera focus on breasts, buttocks, or pelvic region, including poses that deliberately highlight these elements". This means any sort of content that deliberately does these would be against TOS. Now when we look at how the Hot Tub Meta we can see that it's unhealthy and unfair to the community. When I was looking through some of the streams a streamer called "Kaellyn" had their butt covering half the screen which I would assume is against TOS but nowadays it's hard to tell. Although the whole stream isn't just that it was obvious that she did to satisfy her chat. Another example is the popular streamer "Amouranth" who lets their viewers donate money to get their name written on many things the most common one being floaty. Just tuning into the chat for a few minutes I saw many twitch users send very questionable things such as "Show feet Kreygasm" "Show your booty" "Change bikini" and many more things. Constantly messages were being deleted by mods because they were either offensive or very ***. Another issue is the fact that it's clear that these streams are *** but the streamers don't even care to put the stream to mature just to get more people. This means that many kids can easily just go onto these streams and see big booba's. It's clear that this issue has gotten out of hand and that it needs to be stopped. My final thoughts are that although this stuff is "content" I don't think it's healthy or fair to the community and streamers to continue letting these streams go on. I think streamers should be able to be creative with their content as well. Hopefully twitch will something about this. Thank you for reading.