Hate raids are yet another symptom of the systemically racist, sexist, queerphobic, oppressive culture we live in. They are a tool used primarily to silence and intimidate streamers, and we have seen how they are unfairly and disproportionately targeted at Black women, queer, and BIPOC streamers.
Raids are a Twitch feature that forward a streamer’s current viewers to another stream, usually as a sign of support. Hate raids happen when this feature is used to flood a channel with a large volume of abusive messages and harassment. These days, a hate raid can use a ton of bot accounts and not even need the Raid feature. This type of harassment most commonly targets Black streamers, female streamers, queer streamers, and other marginalized streamers.
So, your chat gets spammed with slurs or doxxed info, your new follower and hosting alerts blow up with bot accounts using offensive usernames, your text-to-speech donation or bits gets exploited to read more hate messages, and all the while, the hate raiders are recording you for your reaction.
This guide was created as a way to bring together the vast community knowledge and tools that have surfaced in response to the increasing hate raids on Twitch. Similar to other forms of online harassment, the most effective actions to take revolve around prevention, so this guide covers:
- How to set up your stream and settings to minimize the impact of a hate raid,
- What to do during a hate raid,
- And further safety steps to take after a hate raid.
There is no one right way to respond to harassment. Keeping a sense of self and agency can be one of the most important things to center in the face of ongoing harassment. So remember that you’re allowed to react to hate raids in any way that feels right to you. It’s OK to stop streaming, to keep streaming, to talk about it, to not talk about it, to feel angry, to feel numb, to feel scared, to feel anything at all.
Remember: online harassment is not your fault.
What’s a hate raid?
Raids are a Twitch feature that forward a streamer’s current viewers to another stream, usually as a sign of support. Hate raids happen when this feature is used to flood a channel with a large volume of abusive messages and harassment. Often, this involves large numbers of bot accounts and most commonly targets Black streamers, female streamers, queer streamers, and other marginalized streamers.
So, your chat gets spammed with slurs or doxxed info, your new follower and hosting alerts blow up with bot accounts using offensive usernames, your text-to-speech donation or bits gets exploited to read more hate messages, and all the while the hate raiders are recording you for your reaction.
