Streaming Safely
If you decide that streaming is right for you, then we want to help keep you safe whilst doing that.
Absolutely anyone can watch your stream! This means it is a great way to meet people and have fun, but it also means there is a risk of people joining with the intent of causing upset.
This page explains everything you need to know for making sure your streams are well moderated and safe, so your stream is a positive, welcoming space.
Setting up automod
Twitch comes with ways to safeguard and moderate chat messages:
In addition to Twitch's methods, there are a variety of bots that offer extra safety features and moderation.
If you go into your Creator Dashboard you can also add a list of banned words that you want to atuomatically block. As well as stopping swear words you can also set this up to stop people being spammy or scammy, e.g. to stop people coming to your stream just to try and sell their services to your viewers, you could add the words "portfolio", "overlay", "designer" to the banned words list.
You can read more tips about setting up your Twitch chat safely >here<
Adding Twitch stream rules
If you make rules that people must follow when watching your stream in advance, setting this clear expectation means it is more likely your Twitch chat will be a positive space. You can set Twitch chat rules by going to ‘Settings’ > ‘Channels & Videos’ then adding rules from there.
You can make the rules whatever you like, but here are some basic rules that could be a good starting point:
-
Be kind
-
Respect other humans
-
Try to include everyone
-
No bullying, sexism, racism, homophobia or other hate-based chat
-
We are a PG stream, please try not to swear or say things that are not family friendly
It is your stream, so you can set rules that work for you.
If you plan on swearing and playing older age rating games, please make this clear by setting an age recommendation on your stream.
Adding moderators
It is really helpful to have moderators supporting your stream - meaning you can focus on gaming while they deal with any issues that could arise in the Twitch chat! Here is a guide on setting up moderators: https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/guide-to-building-a-moderation-team?language=en_US#:~:text=Moderators
And here is some separate advice for moderators themselves:
https://s4b0t4g3fire.medium.com/a-thorough-guide-to-being-a-twitch-moderator-d765f6758bb7
Making your games safe
When you are playing games online, there is a risk of people saying and doing things that are inappropriate or against Twitch's Terms of Service. We have some recommendations to ensure this does not happen:
-
If you are playing a game that has voice chat or text chat, disable this feature unless you are only playing with people you know and trust. If you still want to use text chat, you can add something to your stream so your viewers cannot see the chat, while you still can.
-
We recommend not playing games that offer input from viewers, unless it is 'closed input' (such as multiple choice questions). Open input such as being able to draw drawings and write messages can mean potentially explicit/ inappropriate things are shown on stream!
Other considerations
Disable hyperlinks
This is a simple checkbox where you can decide whether to allow hyperlinks or block them from working in your channel chat.
Twitch recommends that you switch this off in case of trolls or spam. People can use links to send download links with viruses or as 'IP grabbers', so it can be better to be safe than sorry!
Enable Email verification
Twitch recommends that this is switched on in order to block trolls, bots and spammers. Email verifications means that Twitch viewers must verify their email before being able to use their chat.