Sometimes the chat experience is impaired by trolls continually and relentlessly creating/using additional alternative accounts to repeatedly circumvent any ban, return to chat, and continue spamming or harassing the channel.

I suggest that Twitch provide an additional set of moderation commands, capabilities, and information in the chat-related APIs and IRC interfaces to assist broadcasters and their channel bots to control abuse in these types of situations.

Some ideas for suggested channel Moderator Commands/Options to Add:

• "Approved" chatters list - A List/Hash table of unlimited size for any users manually approved by a moderator to chat plus a list of all the users who have in the past already sent a chat message to the channel before and not been Banned or Purged since their last message.

• Two-Levels of Approval that can be applied to any Chatter: (1) Automatic/Normal, (2) Validated by Channel Extension or AddOn, and (3) Moderator-Sanctioned Approval
  ** An "Approved-Users Only Chat Mode", for emergencies, separate from Followers-Only chat that can be set to either Level 1, 2, or 3.
  ** An additional option for FollowerOnly,SubOnly, EmoteOnly chat to make "Approved" chatters exempt that can be set to either "Level 1", "Level 2", or "Level 3" Approved chatters.

• Option to Require Two-Factor Enabled on non-Mod Twitch accounts to send chat messages (Essentially, the chatter will have verified one step beyond e-mail address).

** Suboption to exempt users from 2fa requirement "just to chat" who meet another criteria such as "Subscribed, Approved Level 1, Approved Level 2, Approved Level 3, Chatted here before, Prime/Turbo user, or Account older than X days"

/GBAN - "Ghost Ban" / "Stealth Ban" - The same exact usage as the traditional /BAN command; However, when chat messages by affected user are purged the CLEARCHAT IRC message will be restricted to users not affected by a ban -- No chat connections from the user affected by the ban will receive any feedback or user-interface change showing that offending messages have been removed, nor that they are now affected by a ban. Everyone else in the channel will see the CLEARCHAT / <message deleted> entries for the Ghostbanned user. If the GBAN'ed user tries to send additional messages to the channel, the server should simulate that they have gone through successfully.

/WBAN <user> [<{IP|SUBNET|SITE}>] [<{EMAIL|EMAILDOMAIN}>] [<LEVEL>] - "Watchlist Ban" - A type of automatic ban based on details watchlisting - but a channel should be limited to a small number of entries, and the target user must already be Timed-Out, Normal-Banned or Stealth-Banned. A copy of the target account's IP Address, Subnet/24 or IPv6/64, Site /16 or IPv6/32, Email Address, Email Domain, Hash of payment account Id, Etc are recorded in a Hash Table of "Watch" items for the channel - The first time a new user who has never messaged the channel sends a message, their account items are checked for matches in the Watchlist hash tables, and if there is a match on a selected watch item: the new account is automatically added to the Banlist or Gbanlist - ONE TIME Only, and channel moderators should be alerted through the modlog.

An approval level is Attached to the WBAN, and Chatters at the level or Higher than the level specified are exempt from Watchlist checks.

Some ideas for suggested capabilities to Add:

• IRC Tags for chat messages that allow a channel bot to see immediately when a chat message is the "First Ever" in that account's history: chat message a new user sent to the channel, including the account's creation date.

• 3rd party external app/extension based approval of new chat users. Allow a channel to optionally require new users who join a channel for the first time to chat: grant permission for access to email and IP address data and interact with channel "Access Control" overlay extension that will provide an approval before a new chatter can post ther very first chat message (That may involve answering questions, acknowledging additional rules or policies, or verifying info, may be immediate approval, or delayed approval).

I've been spending a lot of time at Twitch for the last two years. I see that there are still very important problems that have not improved in time. This is one of the problems: for example, when large broadcasters host small broadcasters at the end of the broadcast, in the small broadcasters' chat room there can be some users who share inappropriate links, make toxicities, and make spam. Small or new publishers remain uninformed in this event. I mean, they can't handle what's going on in the chat rooms. So the broadcasters cannot do their job properly. Foreseeing that this will happen, large broadcasters do not host small broadcasters. İt is a huge impact on the shine of these small broadcasters. This also prevents the development of Twitch.

I mean, create a global moderator group of tight viewers or give more authority to the moderators who came from there. I believe that in such matters it will give a huge positive effect.

Please add a Follow button to the viewer card in chat. Specifically the class "tw-bottom-0 viewer-card_actions". For non-techs, the Viewer Card is the pop-up that happens when you click someone's name in chat.

A good amount of streamers like to shout out people in their chat who also stream, or based on a chat discussion, you may want to follow someone who is participating in chat. It's a poor choice of design flow that a button exists to "Add Friend" but not to Follow them. It would be much easier to have a button right there in the Viewer Card instead of having to click their name, click their name in the Viewer Card to get to their page, then click the follow button there as their host stream is loading and battling for your bandwidth.

Pretty please, with sugar and cherries and minimal dev effort. Thank you.

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 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.

Currently, the only way to view people banned from the channel is the channel settings. I think it would be very useful to have some kind of moderator dashboard which displays it as well.

Each entry on the ban list should include: date, current username, mod who performed the action and a space for adding the reason of the ban (editable by the mod and channel editors). It could also be useful if the entry listed up to 5 recent messages by that person posted before getting banned.
The list itself should be searchable by username.
When a user gets unbanned, the entry should stay on the list with some kind of indication that the user is not banned anymore. Additionally, it would be convenient if the unbanning was noted in the entry if the user gets banned again but search feature itself (listing both cases) would be good enough in that situation.

Currently, many channels create lists outside of Twitch to keep track of the bans but with the name change feature being released and no way of checking previous username of the person, it may become more difficult. Ban lists are important to avoid accidental bans and to be able to clear the situation when people ask to be unbanned.

In your own TOS you allow:
Building construction sets (Lego, Erector sets, Mega Bloks, K'nex, Duplo, etc) or model kits (Warhammer, Gundam, and etc)

You do not, however, allow:
Toy assembly

How do you know that the Gundams etc. Will not be used as toys once they are done? How can you be sure they will not be gifted to a family member and that they will use them as toys.

Toy assembly should be allowed.

You do not allow: Unboxing
But yet many people do unboxing streams (primarly "big streamers")

You do not allow: Playing puzzles
But you allow Writing on the same directory.

You allow: Construction, home building and renovation
You do not allow: Assembling furniture or Decorating your house. Do these 2, fall under IRL then? If not, consider allowing those as they should fall under the same category as home building or renovation.

You allow: Licensed Tattooing in a safe, professional environment
You do not allow: Piercings. Why is that, if done in a safe, professional environment, it should be allowed. They usually do this at the tattoo parlor.

You need to review your TOS regarding Creative. You also need to review your IRL TOS. And review your site as a whole. Because the above written "Rules" do not make sense.

In light of recent events in which two individuals have been harassing and cyberstalking a number of Twitch streamers, myself included, it would be helpful to filter out alternative forms of profanity along with formats of phone numbers.

Specifically, I suggest the following be filtered/prohibited in username creation:

• bltch (with an "L" instead of an "i")
• wh0re (with a "0" instead of an "o")
• ########## (the typical format of including phone numbers in a username)

All three of these techniques have been used by internet trolls when creating multiple accounts to harass streamers and post their personal information. Please consider filtering out these techniques to deter further accounts being made in this manner.

This is simply a copy paste of a reply from a recent reddit post on the subject. It's un edited for this purpose but it gets the point across. (Seeing as there are already 2 people asking for nudity, I figured the counter needed a spot)

I'm a Creative streamer. Long before Creative was a thing. I don't want nudity as part of broadcasts. Why? Several reasons. I run a business. Customers come to my channel to see my work, and one of the problems with nudity is that I don't want my business to be associated with it - Be it fine arts or hentai.

That brings up the second reason why I don't want nudity. What is art, and what is porn? There's no hard line, and just because something isn't porn or distasteful to you, doesn't mean it isn't for others. I believe that hentai for instance, is porn. But ask any person who draws hentai, and they'll say it isn't. That it's art (The two are not mutually exclusive).

third reason why I believe there shouldn't be nudity (Read: genitalia). It's an open category with many different streams and people. While GTA is a category with just that one game, and that one audience - It's an 18+ game, in an 18+ category. Creative isn't 18+, and it shouldn't be. There's no good way to allow children browsing Creative with, or without their parents, when there are people drawing dicks in there. (And setting channels to "mature" doesn't do jack)

Fourth reason, which is more of a counter argument to the idea that Twitch allows plenty nudity already: They don't. Plenty of games are banned from Twitch for the one reason that they display genitalia in one way or another - Recently Genital Jousting, which is a cartoony, and rather funny game in my opinion, about dick-jousting. There's a world of difference between a game character performing a lap-dance more or less clothed, and clearly displayed genitalia. (For the record, I don't think these games should be banned necessarily. They should simply have their own 18+ section - And one could possibly make an 18+ Creative section) An addition to this: Twitch does punish streamers who linger on sexual things in games. It can occur, but it canot be the focus of the broadcast.

Fifth reason. There's no real good way to moderate this. Even without nudity allowed we've seen countless examples of people crossing the line, be it artful drawing or straight up porn, that have allowed to stream for hours before being shut down. There's no incentive at Twitch to have an admin browsing Creative constantly, verifying that all broadcasts that display genitalia are not crossing whatever arbitrary line Twitch would have to set on "What's porn?"

Lastly. The idea that allowing nudity would help Creative grow has no real validity. What ever audience may be gained from it, would likely be trumped by the loss of younger audiences and sensitive people who choose to not browse the category, because it shows content they're not comfortable with. This doesn't need to be an ongoing discussion. Twitch is a private company, and they have a relatively strict policy on genitalia (Unlike Youtube that allows for videos of births and Genital Jousting for instance). Can nudity be allowed in a way that isn't detrimental? Possibly. Is it worth it to invest the resources so a handful of artist get to do that one painting they want to do? Probably not. There are so many things to do in art. If you can't do nudity on stream, it's not that big of a deal, in my honest opinion.

There are art streaming services that allow for nudity, so it's not like there's no place to broadcast this type of content. If anything, I think it's important that we retain a place where nudity isn't part of the Creative process, for the sake of the younger audience, and the more sensitive audience.

The amount of risky content on JTV back when I broadcasted on there was actually enough to make me not want to share my broadcast with people I knew - It had much looser content guidelines, and as a result, it ended up being something I for instance wouldn't want to show my parents, because you never knew when a cam girl was building up an audience she'd then move over to an actual camsite (They did this a lot), or just straight up porn streams. (Porn streams could run for hours as long as they didn't hit frontpage, so if viewer numbers got too high, the broadcaster would put on a weird clown video or something to make part of the audience leave - The lengths people would go just to broadcast porn was stupid - The issue was well known by one of the mods I spoke with at the time) - I don't want Twitch to risk this being anywhere near a possibility to become the norm on their site.

Allowing nudity could potentially make it difficult to secure licensing for shows like Bob Ross The Joy of Painting, and the various Food shows. There are likely going to be more of these things in the future, and if nudity has any detrimental effect on securing a deal for these marathons, it's doing much more harm than good.

The Twitch community is composed of people from around the world, coming from unique political backgrounds and cultures.

Prohibiting games enforces a specific view of the world to the Twitch community as to what is acceptable or not, censoring content with valuable gameplay and cultural content in the process.

As of this writing, the list of prohibited games are either due to violence, sex, or any game with the "Adults Only (AO)" ESRB rating. While this could be argued to be a good thing for kids, Twitch has already a "Mature Content" flag in its channel settings for this specific case.

Responsible adults however are not allowed to take the matter into their own hands and are forced to stream and listen to content that do not fully match their own values. This is in my opinion unacceptable since it hinders the creativity of the video game art form and its economics.

This is not just limited to the entertainment factor of violent and sexual content, but also derivative content that could not exist without those elements. For example, Manhunt 2 contains in my opinion a very strong anti-violence message in its endings depending on the player's actions throughout the game, but said message does not make much sense without the censored content. Similarly, HuniePop can in my opinion empower shy people to reach out for real life relationships through the tips given by the characters and by gamifying their fear, but would have a lot less impact to them without the naughty rewards.

Regardless of whether you agree with these opinions or not, the point is that even the most insipid-looking game can have a positive effect to various people, and blocking such games would prevent people from benefiting from them.

Please allow responsible adults on Twitch to enjoy the content that they want freely.