Raids are a Twitch feature that forward a streamer’s current viewers to another stream, usually as a sign of support. Hate raids happen when this feature is used to flood a channel with a large volume of abusive messages and harassment. These days, a hate raid can use a ton of bot accounts and not even need the Raid feature. This type of harassment most commonly targets Black streamers, female streamers, queer streamers, and other marginalized streamers. 

So, your chat gets spammed with slurs or doxxed info, your new follower and hosting alerts blow up with bot accounts using offensive usernames, your text-to-speech donation or bits gets exploited to read more hate messages, and all the while, the hate raiders are recording you for your reaction.

This guide was created as a way to bring together the vast community knowledge and tools that have surfaced in response to the increasing hate raids on Twitch. Similar to other forms of online harassment, the most effective actions to take revolve around prevention, so this guide covers:

• How to set up your stream and settings to minimize the impact of a hate raid,
• What to do during a hate raid,
• And further safety steps to take after a hate raid.

There is no one right way to respond to harassment. Keeping a sense of self and agency can be one of the most important things to center in the face of ongoing harassment. So remember that you’re allowed to react to hate raids in any way that feels right to you. It’s OK to stop streaming, to keep streaming, to talk about it, to not talk about it, to feel angry, to feel numb, to feel scared, to feel anything at all. 

Remember: online harassment is not your fault.

Set Up Safe Scenes

Hate raids flood your alerts, including both sounds and visual notifications, and force usernames onto screen, inundating you and your audience with harassment, hate speech, and more. 

One way to mitigate this is to create a “safe scene” in your streaming software that doesn’t include any alerts or labels. Setting a hotkey then lets you switch to it quickly.

At minimum, any safe scene overlay should not include:

• New follower alerts
• Host alerts
• Most recent follower labels
• Host labels and other recent events listed on your overlay
• On-screen chat
• Emote walls
• Text-to-speech sources, especially for low cost alerts like bits

You might also consider excluding your webcam to give yourself a moment off-camera to react, adjust, or breathe.

Review Your Twitch Settings

Here are some settings we recommend you double-check or consider in preparation for a hate raid. (Last updated July 2022)

Account settings > Security & Privacy

• ON Block Whispers from Strangers
• ON Two Factor Authentication

Account settings > Notifications

• OFF “User Follow” notifications – Prevent hundreds of potential emails about new follows from bots.

Creator Dashboard > Settings > Stream

Raid options

• Allow all raids (not recommended when anticipating hate raids)
• Only allow raids from teammates and followed channels
• Block all raids

Creator Dashboard > Settings > Moderation

AutoMod Controls

• Review and update your blocked terms and phrases, and add any offensive terms or phrases you anticipate being used during a hate raid. You can set the privacy for each blocked term, letting you choose if you want your mods to be able to see it.

• More information on configuring AutoMod.

Suspicious Users Controls

• ON Ban Evasion Detection – Flag potential ban evaders. We recommend setting this to Level 2, which monitors for both “Possible and Likely Evaders.”
• Shared Ban Info – Automatically monitor or restrict accounts that are banned in channels you share ban info with.

Chat Options

• ON Block Hyperlinks – Only you, your moderators, admins, and VIPs would be able to post links. If you want to choose who can post links, you can leave this off and have a chatbot block links instead, which will give you and your mods the option to permit individuals to post them. Blocked links by AutoMod appear as ***.
• TOGGLE Non-Mod Chat Delay – Adds a short delay of up to 6 seconds to allow mods to see messages before the rest of chat. Any message that is timed out or banned during the delay prevents viewers from ever seeing it.
  • During a hate raid, turning this on will give your mods more time to keep up, so familiarize yourself with this setting now. You can get to this page quickly from normal view (click the cog and choose Manage Moderation Settings) or in Mod View (click on the three dots next to the AutoMod queue and choose AutoMod Settings, then <AutoMod).

Channel Privileges (inc. Chat Verification)

• ON Chat Verification – Turn on both Email and Phone verification to keep your chat as safe as possible. If you decide to have either of these off, there are additional options to tweak, e.g. non-verified accounts have to be over 6 months old before chatting. Exceptions are available for mods, VIPs and subs. Up to 5 accounts can be verified per phone number and banning one account will ban all the others.

• OFF Unban Requests – You can also set a cooldown period so a banned chatter will have to wait a certain length of time before appealing a ban. 
• ON Moderator tools in chat – Allows your moderators to view chat and ban history for users in your channel, and view and add comments on users.

Creator Dashboard > Viewer Rewards > Channel Points

If you have channel points enabled, they may allow a user to unlock rewards that can bypass chat restrictions, like sub-only mode. Check your rewards and how many points they require, since following alone will give someone 300 points.

Set Up Chatbots

Chatbots are not only a great way to moderate your chat and provide more interaction for your viewers, but they can also be powerful tools to help secure your chat during hate raids.

Here are the settings and tools included in some popular chatbots that can come in handy.

Cloudbot (Streamlabs)
In terms of chatbots, Cloudbot is one of the most effective at dealing with hate raids.

Cloudbot is Streamlabs’ chatbot, although it’s available to everyone whether you use Streamlabs OBS (SLOBS) or not. It’s customizable and has protections against excessive caps, symbols, emotes and paragraph length as well as a new Safe Mode designed specifically to deal with hate raids.

Sery_Bot
Sery_Bot can lock down your chat with a single command created specifically with hate raids in mind. When enabled it puts your channel in subscriber-only mode, clears chat and posts a message advising everyone of this.

StreamElements’ Chat Bot
StreamElements’ chatbot has similar functionality to Cloudbot, though without a comprehensive safe mode. However, mods can turn off its follower and host alerts from chat, or mute the bot altogether.

Nightbot
An advantage of Nightbot’s blacklist of words is that it can delete messages from users that have a banned word in the account name as well as the message itself. This is something that many other chatbots (as well as Twitch’s AutoMod) miss.

Pull It All Together: Stream Decks

With a stream deck, physical or virtual, you can further simplify the hate raid reaction protocol by programming all of the scenes, settings, and chat commands discussed above into a single safety button.

Stream decks are devices with varying numbers of buttons that are used by many streamers to control their streams. They can be customized to do things such as change scenes, launch media and perform chat commands. The Elgato Stream Deck is the most prominent product made specifically for streaming, but there are virtual and other creative alternatives using tablets or extra keyboards as well (see below). Elgato also has a free smartphone and tablet app that lets you use their stream deck features without the physical deck.

Here are some actions to consider for your safety button:

• Turn on follower- or sub-only mode (set follower mode to 24hrs or at least as long as you’re planning to stream)
• Clear chat
• Switch to a “safe” scene
• Disable alerts, inc. bits, text-to-speech and other sounds
• Turn off overlay labels for follows, hosts and other recent events
• Turn off your chatbot’s follower and host alerts
• Turn off the emote wall
• Turn off links
• Turn off on-screen chat
• Turn off your camera
• Enable uniquechat, emote-only or slow mode
• Turn off channel points
• Add a stream marker, so you can easily find the point the raid began in your VOD
• Open any necessary links, such as dashboards for bots or the Non-Mod Chat Delay setting
• Post a large number of emotes to move any offensive usernames/messages off screen, since clearing chat won’t work for viewers with the BTTV extension
• Post a message using /announce, letting viewers know they can text SUPPORT to 23368 (USA only) for confidential emotional support from the Hotline (Here is some sample language)
• Post a “Back soon” message or graphic
• Run an ad

Elgato Stream Deck Alternatives
If you don’t have a physical stream deck, there are creative alternatives as well. Some streamers use virtual stream decks with a tablet, smartphone, or spare keyboard. 

Loop In Your Moderators

Having people you trust to moderate your chat and other community spaces is essential. In all forms of online harassment, having that connection to others and a supportive team to back you up is the biggest game changer. 

Talk to your mods about

• What you’ve set up, and what will happen when certain commands or actions are activated
• How you want them to approach things, especially regarding warning signs, suspicious messages testing chat, or other red flags
• Whether or not those with editor privileges should delete VODs (especially in cases of doxxing)
• Double-checking that they have two-factor authentication on their own accounts to limit potential harm if their account is ever compromised
• Double-checking their access to any tools they need, including chatbots
• Security and safety in your other online community spaces. For example, make sure to proof your Discord server against hate raid spill over.
• Talk about how you can offer each other emotional support and other ways to create space for distraction, venting, comfort, indulgence, and togetherness. See our Ask for Back-up section for more ideas.

Get everyone familiar with relevant Twitch chat commands.

• /uniquechat /uniquechatoff
  Toggles uniquechat mode, designed to prevent users from spamming the same message. 
• /followers 1d /followersoff
  Toggles follower-only mode. In the example above, users must follow for one day before being able to chat. “1d” can be replaced with another number or another unit, including m = minutes, h = hours, d = days, w = weeks, mo = months
• /subscribers /subscribersoff
  Toggles sub-only mode
• /clear
  Purges chat, including any offensive usernames, though not for users with the BetterTTV (BTTV) extension
• /user [username]
  Brings up a user’s info about their history in your channel, even when they’re not present, and lets you take actions.
• /slow [seconds] = Turns on slow mode. One comment every X seconds per user (every 30 seconds if no time is stated)
• /slowoff = Turns slow mode off

A Quick Note on Banning vs Blocking

Anyone can block another user on Twitch by typing /block [username] in any channel, but blocking someone won’t prevent them from posting messages in your chat – your viewers will still be able to read their messages. For you it will appear as below, but will also show your message if they’re replying to one of your comments. If you click on the message it will appear in full, along with any future messages until you refresh the page.

Protect Your Discord 

Hate raids from Twitch can spill over into streamers’ Discord servers, especially if there are links to the Discord server available on Twitch or other platforms.

We created a server template designed to protect any community targeted by a hate raid. Feel free to copy it, change it as much as you’d like, and use it as if you’d made it yourself.

If you already have a server it’s probably not practical to invite your entire community to a new one. However, you can still use the template to compare the role and channel permissions, replicating the setup to make your current server more secure.

With Prepared Tools & Settings

1. Switch to a safe scene.
2. Toggle chat settings
   1. If you’re using Streamlabs OBS, select the shield icon 🛡️ in the SLOBS Mini Feed or on the Recent Events dashboard.
   2. Use your chatbot commands:
      1. Cloudbot: !safemode
      2. Sery_Bot: !hron or !hateraidon
      3. StreamElements: !bot mute or !module chatalerts disable
3. If needed, clear all messages and usernames from chat with /clear.
4. Check in with your mods to see if they have any updates, if there’s anything you missed, and to offer each other support.

Using only Twitch’s Settings and Tools

1. Enter /followers 1d or /subscribers mode
2. /clear your chat
3. Enter /slow mode
4. Turn off alerts
   • Follows
   • Hosts
   • Other sounds, inc. text-to-speech redemptions/rewards
5. Turn off overlay labels
   • Most recent follower
   • Recent events, inc.hosts
   • On-screen chat
6. Turn off chatbot alerts for follows and hosts
7. Turn off emote wall
8. Enable a mod delay of 4-6 seconds. There are a few ways to do this:
   • Creator Dashboard > Settings > Moderation > Chat Options > Non-Mod Chat Delay
   • OR Mod View > AutoMod Queue > AutoMod Settings
   • OR normal view > cog icon > Manage Moderation Settings

The above steps should be more than enough to return your stream to normal, but here are some further steps you can take:

• Enable /uniquechat to automatically block any spam
• Turn off your camera 
• Turn off channel points
• Add a /marker [optional description] to your VOD so you have a record of when the raid started
• Run an advertisement for a moment to breathe to yourself

After your stream has ended

Check in with your mods

• How is everyone feeling? What support can you offer each other?
• Report any accounts that you didn’t have time to during your stream
• Edit or delete VODs and clips containing the hate raid
• Remove, block and ban accounts using tools from CommanderRoot (see below)

Check in with friends

There is a chance that hate raiders may use your channel to discover or forward on hate raids to other streamers you host (or feature on your Streamer Shelf). Check in with friends you autohost or are considering hosting or raiding, especially smaller streamers. Let them know you were hate raided (and share this guide with them).

While you’re at it, consider asking for and accepting help and support from these peers. See the Ask for Back-up section for more ideas.

CommanderRoot’s Twitch Tools

CommanderRoot has created several powerful tools that help you manage your Twitch channel. It lets you deal with multiple accounts at once instead of one at a time, making removing followers and blocking/banning users much less of a headache. 

Follower remover
This lets you remove followers in bulk. When you remove a follower, you’re given the option to block them at the same time to prevent them from refollowing. You can also export filtered results which you can then copy to the chat ban manager.

There are several filters you can search by, including:

• Follow date, letting you isolate a batch of recent follows
• Account creation date, to catch newly created accounts
• Minutes between account creation and follow, which is a common red flag 
• Username, for follows by many similarly named accounts

Chat ban manager

Add or remove bans for multiple accounts at a time. Filters include username, ban reason, and the mod that carried out the ban. You can export the ban list to a CSV file.

Due to a Twitch bug, it’s not possible to fetch the full ban list if it contains more than 6,200 accounts.

Blocklist manager

Add or remove bans for multiple accounts at a time. There’s also an option to block known bot accounts. You can filter by username and export all or some as a CSV file.

Ask your mods to help

Each of these tools has the following sentence right above the filter results section: “If you want to let someone else do it for you, you can send them this link.”

If you click on the word “link” it will generate a unique link that can be shared with your mods and allow them to access that particular tool for your channel.

Ask for back-up

No one should have to go through this alone. Reach out to friends, colleagues, family, or other supportive people in your life for help. Asking for and accepting help is not a sign of weakness but rather an opportunity to connect.

Because the situation of harassment is so multifaceted, there might not be “perfect” people in your life who can understand the situation fully, offer the right support, and know exactly how to respond. That’s okay. Think of it more as a team effort; there are so many different ways to show love and care, and everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. 

Take a moment to think about who in your life would be great at 

• Distracting you with a laugh or something else to take your mind off of the stress
• Bringing you comfort items or food
• Helping you with the mundane tasks of living (groceries, picking up medication, cleaning, etc)
• Listening and empathizing with your stories and feelings in the moment
• Strategizing and making a plan
• Helping you feel safe and secure
• Offering moments or opportunities to unplug or get away from being online

Self care

The following is from our Digital Online Safety Guide Speak Up & Stay Safe(r)

Being targeted online can make things feel completely out of control. But two things you can control – really important things anyone who has experienced it will tell you – are how you treat yourself and how you respond to the harassment.

You will hear a lot of advice about whether or not to engage with your harassers. There’s no right answer – it depends entirely on what’s most important to you. If your No. 1 priority is to stay as safe as possible, both physically and emotionally, it’s often best not to engage. But if you find that you’re willing to risk more harassment in order to directly address your harassers and call them out, that’s also a valid choice. You may also find that the most important thing to you is to expose the harassment you’re being subjected to and/or the people who are perpetrating it, in which case retweeting it, emailing it to reporters, bloggers or activists, or otherwise signal-boosting the attacks against you can be the way to go.

Regardless of what you choose to do about your harassers, also consider what comforts you most when you’re upset, angry or triggered, and do the best you can to plan for it. Will you want to be alone or see friends? Will you want your favorite bubble bath on hand, or your favorite flavor of ice cream? Will it feel good to exercise, or to build something with your hands, or to punch or kick things? Can you save a rainy-day fund so you can get some bodywork? Can a friend be on-call to come to do childcare for an hour or two so you can just take a deep breath?

It’s so important to take care of yourself, even if that just means going to bed and pulling the covers over your head and crying. You’re going to have feelings. It’s ok to honor them rather than deny them. Whatever you can do to give yourself space to have them and take care of them will make you more resilient in the long run.

Bystanders & Fear of Becoming Targeted

One of the ripple effects of widespread and disproportionately targeted harassment is that it also serves to silence and intimidate the whole community watching. When someone is hate raided, it’s almost never just about that individual; it’s also about sending a message to their whole community & anyone like them that they are unwelcome and unsafe on Twitch or in games. Even if you haven’t been hate raided, watching it happen to your peers can be incredibly stressful and scary. You might feel like you’re waiting for the roulette to land on you. 

Validate whatever you might be feeling; this is a real part of the landscape of online harassment. Reach out for support around these feelings & take care of yourself in all of the ways outlined above in the guide, as much as you would if you had already been hate raided.

How to deal with feeling overwhelmed

Remember it’s always okay to step away and get a moment to breathe when you need to. You don’t have to respond right now. You don’t have to look at it right now. You don’t have to do anything about it right now.

Try out some coping strategies that can get you to the next moment:

Self Soothing: comfort your senses with things that are calming and pleasant.
Comfort food, music, candles

Distractions: take your mind away from the distress.
TV, reading, laughing with friends

Mindfulness: sit in your feelings and validate whatever comes up.
Taking a walk, meditation, breathing exercises

Emotional Awareness: identify and externalize your feelings
Journaling, letting out a yell, venting to someone

More Tools & Info

Twitch Extension IP Leak

There has been an issue with Twitch extensions leaking IP addresses. Malicious users will go to a channel and attempt to provoke people to click on their name and visit their channel in order to report them. The extensions installed on their channels then grab your IP address. CommanderRoot has created some browser extensions that can disable all Twitch extensions by default, or just some.

Make sure you allow exceptions for useful extensions, such as Stream Closed Captioner (Stream CC).

Swastika Detection

ImStillJohnny created a tool that allowed them to identify Twitch users with swastikas for avatars that you can ban using the list they compiled here.

Identifying Bot Accounts

AlphaDuplo created Twitch Insights which can help identify bots, showing how many channels they’re currently in. Just type in a username into the search box and see if it’s listed.

Further Reading

• Hate Raid Response, founded by JustMeEmilyP, has even more advice and alternatives for staying safe on Twitch, providing information on a wide range of tools and bots.
• Handling a Hate Raid – by KingArgaroth, an experienced moderator – provides tips and advice on how to deal with raids and harassment on Twitch.
• Take This is a non-profit decreasing stigma and increasing support for mental health in games, providing resources, guidelines, and training.
  • Streamer Support for Hate Raids 
  • Support lines 
  • Directory of Geek Therapists
• Feminist Frequency’s guide to protecting yourself from online harassment.
• PEN America’s Online Harassment Field Manual

Info from Twitch

• Safety Center
• Moderation & Safety
• Managing Harassment on Twitch
• How to Manage Harassment in Chat
• Combating Targeted Attacks 
• How to Handle Viewership Botting and Fake Engagement
• Securing your Chat with Phone and Email Verification 
• How to Use AutoMod
• Community Guidelines
• Off-Service Conduct Policy

Credits

Thank you to the following streamers who offered their insight, direct experience, and review to this resource.

Kimchica

Twilightfangs

Paticakz

Sajie87

AndyMacster

KarimCheese

Lokemon

Kiki_Healz

CaityCat