On August 13, 2021 I had the unfortunate experience of being part of not one but two hate raids that included racist messages and a follow bot of approximately 400 users during @KandidlyKayla's charity stream. Please read that again. A Twitch Partner, that had the front page slot from 12-2 pm EST, was hate raided twice during a CHARITY STREAM for Stand Up to Cancer. Although I know Twitch is well aware of the hate raids that have increased in numbers over the last 2 weeks. Especially with the recent #twitchdobetter started by @RekItRaven where if you search this handle on twitter you can see countless conversations about streamers and viewers being apart of hate raids on Twitch.

Hate raids and follow botting is not new in the Twitch community the Better Business Bureau has logged complaints from users of racially targeted incidents as early as 2018. This impacts people of color, LGBTQIA+, and so many other marginalized groups.

Speaking as a moderator and a woman of color, I was completely devastated that this happened. Twitch please take action in making the communities of your streamers safer. As a professional in the IT industry there are features that can be implemented to make your streamers, moderators, and viewers safer to minimize these awful experiences.

1. Introduce additional authentication processes when creating accounts
2. Log people's IP addresses to ensure they aren't creating numerous accounts for follow botting
3. Allow streamers to customize criteria on how long a follower's account has been created in order to follow
   • Implement customizable Terms of Following for streamers to put before a person follows a streamer
4. When a user is banned they should not be able to create or log into another account and follow again
   • Nor should they be able to send messages to the streamer or mods
   • Nor should they be able to continue watching the stream
5. Introduce universal slurs that are banned from Twitch
   • Currently streamers have to enter in these slurs in the mod view for the channel
6. Implement a better means to communicate feedback to report these incidents to Twitch
7. Implement ability for moderators to accept/deny raids in mod panel
8. Allow streamers to set the account age to allow people to chat on channel

Although there are even more options in securing accounts to lessen these awful events, this is a start to bettering the environment in the Twitch community. I hope this message is strongly received and considered and implemented as soon as possible.

My hope is with this petition many of the countless streamers and viewers that have been impacted can sign and have Twitch take action on the hate raids that are increasing in numbers everyday. If you sign this petition and you know a streamer that this has happened to please put their handle and date of occurrence.