5-6 months into the COVID pandemic, I began streaming full time. My channel grew a lot, and I was asked by a few members to let them be mod, I figured "why not?" I made a few Mod.
As I got to know one person, we began playing games & I started noticing unsavory, toxic behaviors in-game, so I began to withdraw/stop playing with them. I Uninstalled the only game we played and they withdrew for a while.
At one point, this user said he'd lost access to his account. I took mod off of him, and decided to hold onto it until he cleared it up. Before this, they'd come back to say things like "if someone comes in named like me, ban them". Once, someone did, and it was a racist version of their username at that time, saying "black lives don't matter". They also "came back" just as I had been follow-botted for the first time, DM'd me and somehow knew that the follow-botter was "Using a BotNet, making it impossible to ban this user or stop". To which, I was very suspicious and banned them, as I had had enough of their unsavory, and odd behavior.
I also began noticing that their identity/username would fluctuate between a username calling them an "e-girl", and between their usual. When I asked them about it, they said "I do this to catch perverts/pedophiles".
Later, they were no longer a moderator and very unhappy about it, I assume, and they began follow-botting to 1000's a day, making harassing usernames to say horrible things that they couldn't say in chat, since I'd just ban them instantly. The worst was when they'd follow-botted, Pinged/spammed EVERYONE in my Discord spoilers of a game i was playing and to say awful, hateful/racist messages. Luckily, we were able to lock down who it was and remove the user/messages/spam. From there, I'd had him blocked(but can still see his username to this day, just to keep track of what he's operating under).
Now at this point, no IP ban(?) And he began becoming more aggressive, as is his follow-bots and hate-raid/harassment bombing. There seems to be no end in sight, except when he'd take breaks or be busy(?). Luckily, nowadays Twitch has the "suspicious user," or "possible ban/suspension evader" features which are great. I have everything in place to counter any kinds of those kinds of actions, nowadays, and I figured I'd share what I have to do and need to have ready to counter anything like this:
1)Follow a& Sub-Only Chat is ready to be flipped; Follow-Only on by default. If you are follow-botted/hate-raided, turn on Sub Only Chat and wait to turn it back off for a while.
2)Have your "Alerts" and "Events" in a separate Group in your OBS so you can EASILY mute them.
3)Have your Chat Bot Announcements(specifically the New Follow Announcements) off. So your chat isn't flooded with Announcements.
4)Install Follower Remover CommanderRoot extension. You can remove followers between timeframe X and timeframe Y by copying/pasting start/end times of the follow-bot/attacks, easily remove the follows and block the users. It even lets you know if they're already marked as suspicious or possible bot accounts.
5)Turn on Phone Verification/Email Verification. These measures ARE annoying for new followers & not great for most new people to Twitch who aren't keen to, but to be honest, if they won't verify, then they probably can't because A)it would result in them not being able to sneak back in on another user to continue malicious activity. Or B)who cares? If a user isn't verifying who they are, then they may have something to hide, and/or you likely don't want them around. They also aren't that serious about being on Twitch if so, and this measure is VERY positive for that reason.
6)DO NOT leave your Discord wide open for all to join! Make it so only Mods and yourself can share a link/invite code. This is so you can monitor incoming traffic, watch for sketchy content/users and keep those kind of users discouraged.
7)Be VERY careful. Dont keep your guard too high, but don't let it down either.. This user continually pops in on a different account, and wants for certain moments to make stabs & start up the cycle again, and it's important to watch for trends.
There's no end in sight to my repeat-harassment. Just happened again tonight. I hope Twitch starts actively looking into cases like this. I reported so much, I blocked so much, I've banned so much...it feels powerless sometimes and its terrifying to think how petty, small and unhappy people can be. I'm so tired of being griefed, but luckily my beautiful Mental Health Awareness community and myself ARE something that I love/enjoy, SO MUCH MORE than I have a problem with being harassed by someone so unhappy. It is creepy how obsessed someone can be with trying to make you miserable, or have you quit streaming because THEY are miserable or can't themselves, but it's really just that simple...they're miserable, unhappy people who have to act out towards you to feel good about themselves.
5-6 months into the COVID pandemic, I began streaming full time. My channel grew a lot, and I was asked by a few members to let them be mod, I figured "why not?" I made a few Mod.
As I got to know one person, we began playing games & I started noticing unsavory, toxic behaviors in-game, so I began to withdraw/stop playing with them. I Uninstalled the only game we played and they withdrew for a while.
At one point, this user said he'd lost access to his account. I took mod off of him, and decided to hold onto it until he cleared it up. Before this, they'd come back to say things like "if someone comes in named like me, ban them". Once, someone did, and it was a racist version of their username at that time, saying "black lives don't matter". They also "came back" just as I had been follow-botted for the first time, DM'd me and somehow knew that the follow-botter was "Using a BotNet, making it impossible to ban this user or stop". To which, I was very suspicious and banned them, as I had had enough of their unsavory, and odd behavior.
I also began noticing that their identity/username would fluctuate between a username calling them an "e-girl", and between their usual. When I asked them about it, they said "I do this to catch perverts/pedophiles".
Later, they were no longer a moderator and very unhappy about it, I assume, and they began follow-botting to 1000's a day, making harassing usernames to say horrible things that they couldn't say in chat, since I'd just ban them instantly. The worst was when they'd follow-botted, Pinged/spammed EVERYONE in my Discord spoilers of a game i was playing and to say awful, hateful/racist messages. Luckily, we were able to lock down who it was and remove the user/messages/spam. From there, I'd had him blocked(but can still see his username to this day, just to keep track of what he's operating under).
Now at this point, no IP ban(?) And he began becoming more aggressive, as is his follow-bots and hate-raid/harassment bombing. There seems to be no end in sight, except when he'd take breaks or be busy(?). Luckily, nowadays Twitch has the "suspicious user," or "possible ban/suspension evader" features which are great. I have everything in place to counter any kinds of those kinds of actions, nowadays, and I figured I'd share what I have to do and need to have ready to counter anything like this:
1)Follow a& Sub-Only Chat is ready to be flipped; Follow-Only on by default. If you are follow-botted/hate-raided, turn on Sub Only Chat and wait to turn it back off for a while.
2)Have your "Alerts" and "Events" in a separate Group in your OBS so you can EASILY mute them.
3)Have your Chat Bot Announcements(specifically the New Follow Announcements) off. So your chat isn't flooded with Announcements.
4)Install Follower Remover CommanderRoot extension. You can remove followers between timeframe X and timeframe Y by copying/pasting start/end times of the follow-bot/attacks, easily remove the follows and block the users. It even lets you know if they're already marked as suspicious or possible bot accounts.
5)Turn on Phone Verification/Email Verification. These measures ARE annoying for new followers & not great for most new people to Twitch who aren't keen to, but to be honest, if they won't verify, then they probably can't because A)it would result in them not being able to sneak back in on another user to continue malicious activity. Or B)who cares? If a user isn't verifying who they are, then they may have something to hide, and/or you likely don't want them around. They also aren't that serious about being on Twitch if so, and this measure is VERY positive for that reason.
6)DO NOT leave your Discord wide open for all to join! Make it so only Mods and yourself can share a link/invite code. This is so you can monitor incoming traffic, watch for sketchy content/users and keep those kind of users discouraged.
7)Be VERY careful. Dont keep your guard too high, but don't let it down either.. This user continually pops in on a different account, and wants for certain moments to make stabs & start up the cycle again, and it's important to watch for trends.
There's no end in sight to my repeat-harassment. Just happened again tonight. I hope Twitch starts actively looking into cases like this. I reported so much, I blocked so much, I've banned so much...it feels powerless sometimes and its terrifying to think how petty, small and unhappy people can be. I'm so tired of being griefed, but luckily my beautiful Mental Health Awareness community and myself ARE something that I love/enjoy, SO MUCH MORE than I have a problem with being harassed by someone so unhappy. It is creepy how obsessed someone can be with trying to make you miserable, or have you quit streaming because THEY are miserable or can't themselves, but it's really just that simple...they're miserable, unhappy people who have to act out towards you to feel good about themselves.
Keep on keeping on.