Streamlabs Announces Safe Mode to Protect Against Hate Raids
In light of Twitch’s silence on hate raids and other harassment against streamers, streaming software creator Streamlabs has announced its own measures to protect content creators. Called Safe Mode, the setting will adjust a streamer’s chat and clear any queued alerts in order to prevent a streamer from being spammed with fake followers and receiving hateful messages in chat. The mode is available today for all Streamlabs users and works with Cloudbot, Streamlabs’ Twitch chat bot.
Today, we're proud to introduce Safe Mode, a new feature that helps prevent harassment, hateful messages, and chat spam from appearing on your live stream.
Click the link below to learn how you can guard your stream against harmful content: https://t.co/yWyiJwKVi0 pic.twitter.com/GccUVLBaao
— Streamlabs (@streamlabs) September 1, 2021
Safe Mode arrives as Twitch, the largest streaming platform, is rapidly losing high-profile streamers and gaining a lot of bad press for its lack of moderation and prevention against hate raids. Over the last several weeks, many content creators, particularly marginalized creators, have been the recipients of hate raids, where spammers fill their alerts queue, chat, and messages with sexist, racist, and rude comments and insulting usernames.
Twitch has yet to implement significant features to minimize or prevent hate raids and similar harassing actions, leading many to question the platform’s future and whether it’s truly listening to the creators who make the company millions every year.
Safe Mode is available within the Streamlabs client and can be activated while a streamer is live. One way streamers get spammed is with fake or hateful usernames that cause their alerts to go off constantly, annoying viewers and potentially broadcasting rude messages to the streamer and their audience. Upon activation, Safe Mode will disable follower alerts, clear all recent events, and clear any queued follower, host, or raid alerts.
If the streamer also has Cloudbot enabled, Safe Mode will restrict chat to emote only and either follower-only or sub-only mode, preventing hate raiders from filling chat with harassing messages. Finally, Safe Mode will disable chat alerts for followers and clear chat history, preventing raiders and spammers from using followers’ messages against the streamer. The Streamlabs website has details on how to enable Safe Mode within the client.
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