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Moderation on Twitch
On Twitch, you have several tools available with ways to moderate and safeguard chat messages , including but not limited to AutoMod, the ability to promote viewers to moderators who can help, and specific verifications viewers need to chat in your community.
Important: Moderators are a powerful force in your community. Choose them wisely.
How do you choose a moderator?
Your moderator(s) is one of the key members of your community that can play many valuable roles. Moderators can greet new and returning viewers, help engage your chat while you focus on the game, and, importantly, help keep your channel safe. When selecting a moderator, you are trusting them with a lot of responsibility and access to tools on your channel that other viewers cannot access, such as timing out and banning viewers when necessary. We recommend having at least one moderator when you begin streaming, and if you’re not sure who to ask, we recommend asking a friend or family member you trust. Sometimes, when creators get to know each other, they might become a mod for each other’s communities.
The role moderators take can be highly rewarding. They are typically the most recognized within the community, they have tools and access others do not, and they also have a chance to contribute insight that helps guide and shape your community.
It is essential to be transparent with your moderators and talk about the challenges they may also face, including not experiencing the content of your stream the same way they did before they became moderators. In most communities, there may be a discord channel or a group DM used to communicate these ground rules and a place to escalate any issues that need to be handled privately during or after a stream.
A Guide for Moderators
As Ezekiel_III once said, “Moderators are the lifeblood of Twitch.” Your hard work keeping communities safe during each stream ensures that Twitch remains an excellent place for streamers and their communities to grow.
The streamer and moderator partnership is one of the most crucial you’ll have on Twitch. We spoke with some experienced moderators on the service to collect a few of their top tips for successfully moderating chat:
- Get to know your community. Be a part of it. Get to know the people who are tuning in. Understand that you can help them and that you’re helping to build moments and memories that can last a lifetime. -0neAway
- Moderating is never a 1-person show. Like any other team activity, the better you coordinate and communicate with your fellow mods, the easier everyone’s work will be. Whether it’s three mods or 30, the closer you are as a team, the easier it’ll be to work together to solve any incidents that may occur. -Dombek
- Know the moderator tools available to you. If you’re not utilizing Mod View, you’re missing out on many of the tools Twitch gives you to help quickly moderate the chat. You may also have a moderator chat room on Discord to help communicate with fellow mods or a chatbot established by the streamer to help answer FAQs. Knowing and using these tools will help make your job easier and more enjoyable. -Doladdar
To help make being a mod easier, Twitch has built a dashboard just for you: Mod View. Mod View gives mods dedicated space to take action on messages flagged by AutoMod, view relevant user details, and much more. Now, mods can easily access all of their tools while the stream is live without losing sight of Chat or the video player.
Moderators can access their Mod View dashboard here . To learn more about Mod View, its settings, and how to use it, you can visit this Help Article .
For the latest feature updates and bug fixes, check out the What’s New feed . It can be found by clicking on the sparkles icon in the bottom left of Mod View, which will glow green when there are new updates.
“To foster a welcoming community, have no tolerance for harassment. When we encounter someone negative, we give a verbal warning. Then if they continue, we ban them.” - LoadingReadyRun
Community Safety
The Twitch Safety Center is your one-stop shop for information about keeping you and your community safe. You can find information about the Community Guidelines, account security, moderation tools, and more. No matter how you’d like to safeguard your channel, Twitch has tools for your channel. How you use these tools is entirely up to you.
Customize these tools in your channel’s Moderation Preferences and make a rule set that works best for you:
You can configure AutoMod by selecting one of four levels. These levels affect how aggressively AutoMod holds back messages it suspects are risky within four categories: discrimination, sexual content, hostility, and profanity. | |
You can limit the use of certain words or phrases in chat, or allow certain words to bypass AutoMod’s filters. When adding blocked terms, you can also use wildcards by adding a "*" onto your term. For example, adding "hate*"; to your blocked terms will also cause the terms "haters" and "hateful" to be blocked. You can also use this feature to filter any variant of a url. | |
You can automatically prohibit other users from posting URLs, in chat. Exemptions can be made for, your moderators, editors, and VIPs in your channel. | |
You can add in a short delay before non-mods will see sent chat messages, which allows messages that are timed out during the delay to be removed from chat without ever being seen. | |
You can choose to require viewers to have a verified email address and or phone number before participating in your chat. Viewers that do not meet your set requirement will be prompted to verify their account and will then additionally be subject to any time based requirements if set before being allowed to send a chat message. For example, you may choose to only require chatters who have been following your channel for less than 1 day to be subject to verification. You can also choose to exempt subscribers, VIPs, or moderators from verification requirements. | |
Chat Rules | Channel rules appear as a pop-up over the top of your chatroom to first-time viewers and require them to click Agree before they can type in the chat, ensuring that new viewers are aware of your rules and less likely to violate them. |
Moderators | Moderators are the sword to AutoMod’s shield. This role (which you can assign to other users) allows them to help keep your channel safe and friendly as you grow. Moderators are often viewers who have been with creators from the beginning, and can ban and timeout viewers in your chat, as well as enable various chat modes, delete individual messages, approve/deny messages held by AutoMod, and add blocked/permitted terms. You can mod a user by typing /mod {username} in your chat. |
These commands allow you to temporarily or permanently prevent a user from typing and sending messages in your chat. You can apply them at any time through typing commands right in chat or from the user card that opens when clicking a username in chat. Timeouts prevent users from sending messaging to your channel. By default, a timeout is 600 seconds (10 minutes), though you can set a custom timeout by using “/timeout {username} [seconds]” A ban prevents users from typing in, and from viewing your chat and list of non-moderator users in chat, for as long as they are banned. You can view and edit all the users banned in your channel in your Moderation Settings. | |
Sometimes chat can get a little hectic, especially when a lot of people are actively chatting. If chat is moving faster than your moderators can effectively manage, you and your moderators can activate chat modes with chat commands that filter certain users or messages.
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Moderator Tools in Chat | When enabled, this setting allows your moderators to view chat and ban history for users in your channel, as well as add comments on users and view comments from other moderators. |
Ban Evasion Detection relies on machine learning to flag “Possible” or “Likely” channel-ban evaders who enter your chat. |
AutoMod Settings
AutoMod uses machine learning and natural language processing algorithms to hold potentially inappropriate or offensive messages from the chat. The creator or a channel moderator can review them before appearing to other viewers in the chat. With AutoMod, creators can establish their reliable baseline for acceptable language and around-the-clock chat moderation to create a more positive experience for themselves and their communities.
What’s next?
To make sure Twitch’s Terms of Service and Community Guidelines are followed, our team of trained moderators are on the beat 24/7/365 to review every report. If you see people violating the guidelines or other bad behavior, or if someone is harassing you, please speak out and report it to Twitch so that action can be taken. Reporting someone will create a report that Twitch will review.
You can also block the user(s), even if they haven’t broken the Terms of Service but are being a nuisance, to stop seeing their messages and prevent them from messaging you.
Now that you’ve got the basics of what to look for in a moderator and a good idea about the terms moderators should know, it’s time to practice. Talk with your moderator(s), establish a plan and enjoy curating the community experience you’re striving to build. Check out some of the other articles on the Creator Camp, and don’t miss this conversation on Moderation Styles with some of your favorite creators.