Setting Up Moderation for Your Twitch Channel

Moderation is key to successfully managing your Twitch community and maintaining compliance with Twitch Community Guidelines. It’s also a critical element to preserving a safe chat experience during busy events. The various tools and options we provide to help you efficiently and effectively moderate your channel, are explained below, including features such as AutoMod, restricting hyperlinks, and chat rules. This guide represents Best Practices for channel moderation on Twitch.

Index (click to jump):


 * AutoMod
 * Other Important Chat Moderation Settings
 * Block Hyperlinks
 * Requiring Verified Email to Speak
 * Chat Rules
 * Chat Delay
 * Banned Chatters
 * Chat Moderation Commands
 * Managing Channel Mods
 * Privacy Settings

AutoMod
Recommendation for new broadcasters & event channels: Level 2

AutoMod is an automated method of catching potentially risky messages in chat so they can be reviewed by a channel moderator before appearing to others. When a user sends a message that AutoMod flags as potentially inappropriate, the message is held pending approval or denial by your moderators. These settings also apply to feed comments and comments on VODs. Learn more about AutoMod in this help article.

AutoMod can be set to one of five levels. These settings can only be changed by the broadcaster. The level selected should reflect the intended audience of the event.

To set AutoMod, go to the Settings page, accessed by clicking the dropdown arrow next to the channel name on the top bar. Then click over to Channel & Videos and scroll down to Chat Options.


 * Level 0: Removes Globally Banned Words (unless opted out of as described below)
 * Level 1: Only remove hate speech.
 * Level 2 (Recommended): Also remove sexually explicit language and abusive language.
 * Level 3: Remove even more hate speech and sex words.
 * Level 4: All of the above, plus profanity and mild trash talk.

You can manually add phrases to the channel’s Blocked Terms and Permitted Terms list. Messages containing a Blocked Term will be stopped by AutoMod, while Permitted Terms will always be allowed through AutoMod. The Permitted Terms list can be useful if there are specific phrases that are repeatedly caught by AutoMod as inappropriate when they are not, such as less-common names. Leave the “Opt out of commonly blocked terms” box unchecked to ensure you are protected by Twitch’s Globally Banned Words list. It will allow you to choose if you want these words to be let through or if indeed you want them to remain blocked on your channel. You can learn more about Blocked and Permitted Terms in the blog post.

Block Hyperlinks
Recommendation for new broadcasters & event channels: On

Check this setting to ensure links are blocked in your channel. Only the channel owner, channel moderators, Twitch staff and admins can post links with this setting enabled. For finer control over links, the use of a chatbot, such as Ohbot, is recommended.

Requiring Verified Email to Speak
Recommendation for new broadcasters & event channels: On

Twitch can prevent users from posting in your chat that do not have a verified email address. This is essential to reduce spam and harassment and is strongly recommended.

This can be enabled from the Channel & Videos settings page under Chat Options. More information can be found in this help article.

Chat Rules
Recommendation for new broadcasters & event channels: A greeting and some basic rules!

You can create a custom set of rules for the channel to educate new viewers on what behavior is expected in your chat. First-time chatters will have to agree to the chat rules before they can post. A recommended rules post is included in the example below.

Settings for Chat Rules can be found on the Channel & Videos settings page under Chat Options. You can read more about Chat Rules in this blog post.

Chat Delay
Recommendation for new broadcasters & event channels: 2 Seconds

A short delay should be added to chat messages appearing in your channel, giving chat moderators and bots a chance to remove them before viewers can see the message. The recommended setting is 2 seconds, as this allows moderation without a noticeable impact on the viewer experience.

This setting can be enabled on the Channel & Video settings page under Chat Options. More information can be found in this blog post.

Banned Chatters
This is a list of the users that have been permanently banned from chatting in your channel. Hovering over a permanently banned user’s username will display who banned the user and when. To unban someone, as a channel owner or as a moderator, go to your chat and type: /unban

Chat Moderation Commands
Additional chat settings can be set and managed in real-time via chat commands. This includes setting chat to follower or subscriber only mode, emote only mode, slow mode, and much more. Some moderation actions, such as /clear, are only available through chat commands.

For a full list of chat moderator commands and how to use them, click here.

Managing Channel Mods
Recommendation for new broadcasters & event channels: Add a few channel moderators right away! It’s always a good idea to have a moderator in chat when you’re broadcasting.

Even with all of the tools above, there is still a need for a human to moderate your channel. It is impossible for a bot or an automated system to catch everything or to be 100% accurate. However, selecting the wrong channel mods can be just as detrimental to a viewer’s chat experience as not having any at all. It’s good to get familiar with the basic chat commands list.


 * Pick someone reliable. When you make someone a moderator of your channel, you are showing your community that you trust this person.
 * Communication is key. As a channel owner you will want to expect a certain behaviour in your chat. You and your mods should be on the same page about what type of environment you are wanting to achieve within your community and have mods who are open to evolving their skills to your needs. With the Twitch Desktop App you can have a dedicated room in your own Twitch server to coordinate with your mod team.
 * Moderation bots. AutoMod and live human mods can do great work, but to have a fully dynamic chat experience, there are Moderation bots that can fill in the extra gaps. It is ideal if one or more of your moderators can operate one of these bots to keep it calibrated for your specific needs. It can catch words, symbols, caps, message length, etc. These can be necessary while dealing with a very fast chat when human moderators would have a difficult time keeping up, or to discourage malicious raids.

To mod a user and add them as a moderator, go to the channel’s page and use the command: /mod You can use /mods to see a full list of the modded users in the channel and check the viewer list to see what mods are currently in the chat. You can read more about building a moderation team here.

Prevent YouTube Exporting
Recommendation for new broadcasters & event channels: On

By default, any Twitch user can export your VODs to YouTube. If you want to restrict this activity, you can toggle Prevent youtube exporting in the Security & Privacy tab, under Privacy.

Block Messages/Whispers from Strangers
Recommendation for new broadcasters & event channels: On

Checking either of these two settings will let you block incoming messages and whispers from users you don’t follow. This setting can be found in the Security & Privacy tab of the settings page, under Privacy. We strongly recommend this is turned on when running large events.