

That includes an open and ongoing dialogue about creator safety. You’re asking us to do better, and we know we need to do more to address these issues.

We’ve seen a lot of conversation about botting, hate raids, and other forms of harassment targeting marginalized creators. Often, these bot accounts have variations of similar names, and come in large numbers. This is when a user comes in with bot accounts and overwhelms the chat with abhorrent, abusive messages and imagery. However, hate raids are the opposite of this. Usually, it is supposed to be a positive thing. When a streamer ends their broadcast, they can send over their viewers to another channel, increasing that person’s viewership numbers and introducing communities to one another. Raids are one of the most defining features of Twitch. This advice includes things you can do directly through Twitch to protect yourself (along with the pros and cons), programmes you can install on your PC for your safety, and custom plug-ins made by talented individual creators in response to hate raids to help quickly deal with a tough situation. Therefore, if you’re currently dealing with hate raids – or want to prevent them from happening in the future – we've rounded up some tools and tips to help protect your online safety.

Whilst Twitch has responded to the incidents by saying it is working on a fix, it doesn’t look like a solution is coming imminently. Hate raids are becoming more frequent on Twitch, making streaming exceedingly difficult and stressful for numerous creators out there – especially those from marginalised communities.
