Hate raids have been a growing issue on Twitch these past few weeks, and they show no sign of slowing down. It has gotten to the point where many marginalised streamers do not feel safe on the platform, as they run the risk of spending hours contending with a chat full of racist, homophobic and transphobic abuse. Some have even reported being doxed during these raids.
However, streamer sistakaren has shared some information she learned from a hate raid that targeted her this week. In a clip shared to Twitter, she reveals what streamers and moderators should be on the lookout for, to try and predict when a hate raid is about to come their way.
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Firstly, sistakaren says that her chat is set to followers-only mode, which somewhat slows down abusers as they cannot immediately start spamming chat. She notes that just before the raid started, she got a follow from an account called creatineoverdose, who then sent bizarre messages into chat. If it appears that an account is sending strange messages in an attempt to see what will get through your chat's filter, it's advisable to ban them quickly. Sistakaren also highlights that the account creatineoverdose has been linked to a number of raids, and should therefore be banned.
As the raid starts, the follow bot being used causes the stream's FPS to drop dramatically. Sistakaren immediately jumps to action upon noticing this, putting the chat in emote-only mode so abusive text messages would not come through. She also mutes follow alerts so the bot used in the raid can't spam over the stream, causing the lag.
Even with these measures, sistakaren notes that the bots could adapt to emote-only. She therefore advises you have 24-hour follower mode on, requiring anyone who wants to use chat to wait a whole day, potentially dissuading abusers.
Of course, nothing can substitute actual action from Twitch. The platform has acknowledged that it "needs to do more" to protect streamers from these raids, and that it will launch a "channel-level ban evasion detection and account verification improvements later this year."
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