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.

Given the existing infrastructure behind the (1) first-time chat callout experiment, (2) non-mod chat delay, and (3) automod caught message queue:

There should be a toggleable setting where the initial message of any newcomer to chat must be approved by a moderator for that and any subsequent messages to appear to non-mods. Thus, this would limit the ability of newcomers to send messages without prior approval.

Not only would this reduce how many eyes see hateful messages from human accounts, it would neutralize spambots from having their messages show up to non-mods -- a useful step in responding to the current wave of "hate raids," especially when these messages can include streamer dox info.

Technical note: such a feature must work whether the incoming chat originated from a raw websocket or the first-party site. That is, this should not depend on a gql token negotiation system as is implemented for the new_chatter ritual.

Additional nice-to-haves:

• Bulk ban/allow buttons for the queue this would create: Bulk ban would be useful upon a spambot attack while bulk allow would be useful upon a legitimate raid

• Official pubsub topic for listening to these caught messages. Official helix endpoint for approving them. This would allow third-party chat clients (e.g., Chatterino, Chatty) to hook into this system for power mods. Also, this would allow specialized bots to automate actions (e.g., ban all first-time chat messages that match a certain regex). Note: this does not need to be implemented for the initial release of this feature request - it's more important to have an agile response (and some third-party devs can live with unofficial pubsub to get the job done)

Given the widespread use of hostile bots on Twitch right now by bad actors, particularly those targeting LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities, it would be great if we could have a RegEx pattern block/ban/follow restriction option. A number of the accounts being spun up for the purpose of harassing and stealing the identities of streamers have consistent name patterns, and being able to issue a regex block/ban on those patterns would be useful.

This sort of feature would obviously be something that streamers would have to use at their own risk. Overly inclusive block/ban patterns could potentially limit legitimate viewers. But for those of us who are more tech savvy, this could be a massive time-saver.

On the same broad thrust, the ability to add users to a whitelist so as not to unfairly impact existing supporters of a channel, and either a temporal or behavioural filter which automatically adds users to a channel's whitelist would be useful. This could be a more effective approach than the current "followers only" or "subs only" chat options. More fine-grained control on the white-listing process would be appreciated.

For example:
Whitelist on account age
Whitelist on x minutes/hours/days follow age
Whitelist on x minutes/hours/days without mod action in <max> other channels
Whitelist on x minutes/hours/days without automod action in current channel
Whitelist on x minutes/hours/days without automod action in other channels

This could perhaps be branded as an "advanced mod tools" option which can be unlocked by the streamer at the account level so those comfortable with the existing system could use that, but those needing more nuanced tools could have such systems made available on request.

Enable 2FA as a chat optional requirement for users to be required to have 2fa before typing in a users stream chat. This would drastically reduce the number of times a banned user will try to evade a ban to harass a streamer / disrupt chat.
On top of this it would drastically increase awareness on 2fa. Being optional it wouldn't force people or streamers to turn it on or use it. This could also help people who have 18+ Mature content streams reduce the number of people under 18 from engaging.

As 2fa already exists within the twitch platform and is required for affiliated/partnered streamers enabling this to a chat setting would be pretty easy for a developer to add into a code

Its already clearly a pretty popular idea
https://twitter.com/ellerows/status/1299393402266628096

How it could look here:
https://twitter.com/ellerows/status/1299403769634000934/photo/1

Block users banned from a channel from joining a raid from the channel the users are banned from to the raided channel, and also not notifying the banned users the name of the raid target channel (specifically the notification appearing on the top of the chat when the raid is about to happen).

As with a raid, the raiding streamer will be in the chat of the raided channel, and the raiding and raided channels usually have related communities, malicious users can use this opportunity to continue harassing the streamer or spreading damage to related communities, despite being banned from the previous channel. Therefore, allowing banned users joining raids exposes both the raiding and raided streamer to the risk of being harassed by previously known and banned malicious users.

I have recently witnessed an account maliciously disrupting the chat with inappropriate ASCII spam, and after the account was banned from the channel, the stream ends with a raid, and the same account attacked the raided channel with the exact same method, so this is a happening issue and actions should be taken against it.

Moderators on the browser and desktop versions of twitch have incredible access to moderation tools such as mod icons, mod view etc. this makes handling larger chat rooms incredibly easy for a group of mods working together.

Unfortunately I, like many others, am in a position where I am a mod for a larger community, yet am often on the go and find myself using mobile twitch far more often than desktop. This makes it so much harder to keep chat under control, as the current moderation process on mobile is utterly laughable. Messages that would be deleted instantly if we were modding on other platforms will be shown in chat for a period of several seconds before we can even act on them due to the fact we need to press and hold on the persons name, then choose a moderation action. This causes huge headaches for the streamer, viewers in chat, and the other mods.

I would love to see more convenient mod icons on mobile twitch, or the ability to do quick 2 tap moderation by merely having to press chat member’s names, rather than hold for a period of time.

A condensed mod view page on mobile twitch would also be incredible, so that mods on the go are able to help with things like running predictions, unban requests, channel point rewards etc.

These changes being added to mobile twitch would be massive for moderators and streamers alike, allowing us to perform our roles just as well on the go, as if we were on a desktop.

Every game that is released is released with an ESRB rating determining its appropriateness for various audiences. Twitch already collects these ratings when they add new games to the platform.

Now streamers have the option to turn a "Mature" warning for their content, but rarely is a streamers content always Mature, or always all-ages-friendly.

Given that Twitch has this information, it would be a great help to many if depending on which category you are streaming to, it automatically enables or disables the Mature filter based on the ESRB rating of the game.

For non-gaming categories, some could easily be defined as Mature or Friendly (eg, Hot tubs - Mature, Art - Friendly), and for ones where it has a broad manner of interpretation, it defaults to the streamers set state.

Many ideas have been discussed here about adding 2FA as a next level security for accounts to verify they're legit and not just a spam bot account and chat. (See: https://twitch.uservoice.com/forums/933812-safety/suggestions/41306257-adding-2fa-to-chat-as-optional-filter)

What I propose here that is different those ideas is adding a CAPTCHA solver puzzle for people who want to follow a channel. And I'm not talking about those silly Text Based CAPTCHA solver puzzles that are distorted with upper and lower case characters and other things, but an image based CAPTCHA solver puzzle.

1. New followers will have to solve a CAPTCHA, a One-time Only process before the follow goes through.

2. Non-Followers sending chat messages to channels will have to solve a CAPTCHA in order to post messages in chat, and is NOT One-time Only, and will have to redo a CAPTCHA every 45 Minutes.

3. Regulars, VIPs, and Subscribers are immune to needing to solve a CAPTCHA portal to post messages in chat, providing they have verified their email and phone number on their account, and that their accounts are older than 90 days, and already completed a One-time Only CAPTCHA portal.

With these 3 things, this will mitigate the most common types of abuse, bot spams, bot follows, hate raids, etc... Requiring the user to solve a CAPTCHA portal would need to be an essential feature globally enforced to prevents these things happening on the platform in light with what's going on with all the hate raids that are going on, it would also enhance safety of its users on the platform from abuse, harassment, etc...

Bot spam, bulk follows, etc. have always been a problem but it seems that this is only growing more prevalent as time goes on. Additionally, the phenomenon of troll raids has been something I've become more aware of over time and suspect is growing as well.

Having a feature where streamers and moderators can bulk select users based on criteria (e.g. follow age, view time, joining from a specific raid, message pattern posted in chat, user name, etc.) and then use a single action to report and ban / timeout / block users would be immensely helpful in combating these trolls.

As someone who mods (and has dealt with these issues before) I believe that this is a feature that would obviously mesh well in the moderator view (and presumably the streamer dashboard, but I'm not personally familiar with that.)

For the sake of completeness, I would also suggest that there be both unbans for specific users (in case someone is caught in the mass ban by mistake) and a single action unban for the entire group (in case a mod decides to do something trollish themselves or in case of misunderstandings - like a raid message that gets mis-interpreted.)

There needs to be a change with in twitch as there has been multiple profiles with problematic pictures that are grounds for banned. There needs to be a implementing of a non-approved stage for profile pictures followed by a approved stage so that way we don't have problematic grounds when someone's profile picture shows up in someone's stream during a game or such ex being marbles. Because this brings up problems for the streamer were we have to take even more steps to avoid being flagged or banned for something we ourselves didn't display. This includes but not limited to NSFW material and pictures with racial slurs

As a mod for an LGBTQ+ and trans streamer, we have been hit with a ton of followbots coming in and spamming chat with hateful intent. I had an idea for a command that would ban all accounts that have followed in a recent timeframe.

For example, (/banall 10) would ban all accounts that have followed in the last 10 minutes. This would greatly reduce the amount of time that moderators have to spend on banning all accounts separately. I spent an hour last night doing so, and while I had backup to monitor chat, I know that many smaller streamers might not have that luxury.

In addition, a way to select multiple usernames to ban/report would greatly improve the interface, as we could then at least try to keep up with the fake accounts, and keep our communities safe.

This is directly copied from the proposal update from Jambo, which states as follows:

"Twitch Safety Support - Update Proposal by Jambo

1. UPDATED REPORTING TOOL
   Twitch’s reporting tool is outdated, and needs to be revamped. The biggest suggestion for this is to have a lesser detailed reporting still available on profiles but provide a link to something similar to submitting a ticket, but will allow the user to submit images as well as links (currently images cannot be uploaded with a report) be marked ‘high priority.’

2. HAVE A DIRECT CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESS FOR PARTNERS
   Along with an updated reporting tool, make it easier for Partners to contact the team for urgent matters. A ticket queue will not always work when situations require more attention, and allow actual responses to come through, not an automatic response to a ticket. Designate members of your team to reach out to, as well as reassure, those with high urgency situations.

3. CONDUCT ON OTHER PLATFORMS MUST HAVE MORE OF AN IMPACT ON TWITCH
   If a Twitch user harasses others on another platform, there is clearly a direct correlation and this needs to be addressed. Twitch should absolutely have open communication with other platforms, such as Twitter and Discord, and be able to abolish communities and users who bully, harass and target attacks on others. Their activity represents the site regardless and that responsibility absolutely falls on Twitch to make note when it’s brought to their attention. There may not be anything Twitch is able to do with regard to the other platforms, but can absolutely take matters into their own hands for theirs.

4. BUILD AN EMERGENCY/URGENT RESPONSE TEAM
   Twitch may be a streaming and gaming website but internet threats are all too real. Harassment and bullying are not medium level urgency. The mental health of the streaming community needs to be a higher priority. While there are definitely other large issues, many attacks online impact the very real lives of content creators every day. For a platform that cares heavily for inclusivity, safety and equality, there are not a lot of tools in place to ensure its safety.

5. STOP ALLOWING THE CREATION OF RACIST AND HATEFUL USERNAMES
   We are able to ban these words in our chats, it should be just as easy to create a filter that prevents names of this nature. Plain and simple. Allowing these words to be used, and their creation allowed, is setting us back. While there will always be an exception, the exception and rare circumstance is better than allowing these to be made with no precaution taken.

6. WORK WITH DISCORD TO BUILD A FILTER/INTEGRATION
   DISALLOWING BANNED ACCOUNTS JOIN A STREAMER’S DISCORD SERVER
   If a streamer or viewer has their Twitch linked to their account, any user who joins from a link originated by said streamer for their chat only (a creator link, if you will) that’s built into chat through a linked bot that does not allow users who have been banned in chat to join a Discord server.

7. DO NOT ALLOW BANNED USERS TO VIEW CONTENT
   While having banned users unable to see chat is a great step in the right direction, it’s not enough. As streamers, your personality is on video, not in chat. It’s great to keep your community safe, and unseen, but the streamer is more than likely the target in attacks like these. While, yes, incognito tabs exist and there is nothing that can be done with that (outside of IP bans, which should also be considered), it needs to be noted that keeping your creators safe should be a top priority.

8. NAME CARDS SHOW IF USER IS BANNED IN OTHER CHANNELS YOU MOD FOR
   When you click on a users name, mods in that channel should be able to see if this user has been banned in other channels that they mod for, and be made aware of potential incoming issues.

9. ADD A MODERATOR CHAT BUILT WITHIN MOD ‘VIEW’
   Build a chat box/space for moderators to discuss without leaving stream to talk in a separate app’s chat (i.e. Discord) and lose sight of chat in the process."

Would it be possible to create a tool that would allow mods/streamers to obtain KNOWN troublemaking accounts such as the recent string of hate raids and bots and then ban them in bulk as opposed to one at a time?

I moderate for several streamers and I've been trying my hardest to help support the more nervous ones who have been getting follows from suspicious accounts matching the ones I'm sure most of you are aware of. But going through and manually banning one at a time is extremely time consuming, especially considering there are so many of these accounts.

If we know for sure that they are harmful and want them removed then surely a bulk ban option would be extremely useful for small and large streamers alike?

Quick Edit: I'm not suggesting a tool that will harvest names to give to streamers, just something that will make it easier to ban multiple accounts at once. People are already very good at sharing these usernames on social media sites, so all we'd need from twitch is a bulk ban option.

The current Twitch account creation system offers little to no assurance of protection for creators. Enforcement actions, when taken, are reactive, rather than proactive, and require submitting reports, writing descriptions, and disrupting the stream, which is exactly what these people want. Even enabling email verification for users to chat does not prevent someone from creating multiple successive, free "burner" email accounts for the express purpose of harassing one or more users. Someone can simply create a free email account online, create a free Twitch account, use the new email to verify the account, and circumvent that particular feature. To prevent this, there are a number of possible solutions.

1) Implement a one-time account creation fee. It doesn't have to be a huge fee, and could of course come with maybe a few bits or a free sub or something. Not much, but enough that it would deter all but the most determined from creating say, 12 accounts in a 30 minute period. How many people would be willing to spend money just to harass someone for a few minutes before being blocked and banned? Probably a lot less than are happy to do it for free. Obviously, an account creation fee wouldn't apply to Amazon Prime users, but I feel there should be some sort of consequence for any Prime user whose account is connected to ToS violations (i.e., forfeiture of Prime benefits, Prime fee, and being barred from subscribing in the future).

2) Require credit card verification. Look, I promise, I don't work for the man, but studies have shown anonymity to be a major factor in online harassment. A credit card (or debit card with a credit card carrier like most have), would be tied directly to the individual, providing traceability, and therefore accountability.

3) As many other posts have suggested, implement IP or MAC tracking. Look, you aren't fooling anyone, when a secure connection is established, the IP address is requested and sent as part of the handshake. The information is already there, and consequently (because servers), logged. Use it.

The reality here is that harassment will be a problem as long as there are avenues for individuals to exploit. Banning or suspending a user after the fact does nothing to discourage the single-minded, therefore precautionary measures must be explored and implemented to protect creators who choose Twitch to safely interact with their communities. It's worth noting that cyber harassment is actually a crime in some jurisdictions, so maybe putting a little more effort into preventing it - instead of worrying so much about what to do after it happens - might be a good investment for everyone.

I understand you do not manage moderation, but consider this. If you don't, who can? That's like saying youre not held responsible for a workplace accident.

Today, I was timed out for using the words "foretard". It was Kitboga, and someone he was talking to was calling him ********. I could tell this by how deliberately he was saying it, as well as he spoke every other word correctly, fluently and phonetically. This was an insult to me, as I have brain damage, so i made a comment about it.

Scammer: "Yes get 4 tard"

me: "foretard? you mean 4head?"

timed out for one second

Quote by Oscar Wilde: “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

think about it like this, twitch. LGTBQ communities says gay, lesbian, trans, bi, and whatever the Q is, im not going to say, but here I am with brain damage and I'm not allowed to say what's on my mind, even though I just watched someone get insulted using a term that applies to me.

You need to tell these mods and streamers what leniency is. Just because they don't like a word, doesnt mean no one should be allowed to say it.

Isnt that what the profanity filter is for?

Isnt that what discretion is all about?

How about my first amendment right?

Sure, you can ban someone for cussing out the streamer, but when you tell a brain damaged person he can't say "tard", even though i was called that repeatedly on xbox live pre-brain damage, is like removing their first amendment. I am who I am. I would go back to my old ways before my accident and never use the word, but it is neigh insulting to watch someone say it, the streamer not recognize this, but I do, and then I get timed out. Thats like grounding one kid until he's 18 and the other for a day for going to same party.

You see my point twitch? You need to take what's called a "chill pill", and be more observant of what people say, and not what you think they said.

I bid you adieu, farewell, live long and prosper, and stop violating my first amendment right (even though you banned the military from playing in E-sports for banning people talking about war crimes).

Am I making any sense here?