5 Reasons to Use Twitch for Your Next Livestreamed Event
Unlike Zoom or other livestreaming platforms, Twitch is built for both broadcasting and interaction. That means you have more control over how you stream and who sees it. Here are some of the top features that set Twitch apart from other platforms.
One channel = one stream key = one broadcast
On Twitch, you stream to a specific channel. That channel is your space. No one can interrupt your live broadcast with their own video or audio. Anyone can watch the channel, but users need to be logged in to participate in chat — and they can only participate in chat under certain conditions that you set.
In contrast, anyone with a Zoom link can pop into a Zoom meeting and they’re considered an equal part of the meeting by default. Zoom was meant for meetings, not broadcasting, so it’s easier for bad actors to put their own images on the screen or briefly unmute to shout racial slurs (as recently happened to book author Dhonielle Clayton on a Zoom event for a high school).
Twitch also doesn’t cut you off the way Insta Live does. You can stream for hours and the Twitch video will remain on your profile for 14 days. You’ll have time to save the video or export it to a video-hosting site like YouTube.
Real-time chat moderation tools
Zoom and Instagram Live have few, if any real-time moderation tools. Yes, you can prevent Insta accounts from seeing your stream and you can mute Zoom participants or erase their messages from chat. But neither of these platforms is actually designed for real-time moderation of large audiences. I’ve handled anywhere from 10 to 10,000 people on Twitch; some of my colleagues do 30,000 without flinching.
The main difference is that Twitch moderation tools are proactive rather than reactive. You can ban a word from ever appearing in your chat, instead of waiting for someone to use the word and then removing the comment or the person after the damage is done.
Twitch has a few tools to let you do this. First is the built-in chat moderation feature: Automod. Automod has sliders and settings so you can have it allow generic profanity but go really hard on removing sexual content.
Automod holds messages for your human mods to review. This is to manage gray-area messages. “Hi bitch” might be a standard greeting among your friends or it might be a super offensive message from a random stranger. Automod lets you and your mods decide whether it’s allowed.
Twitch also lets you add words to your channel’s banned word list. If anyone types the words in chat, the message is removed automatically before you can even see it. You don’t have to read it in order to remove it; the bot does it for you.
There are community-created banned word lists floating around so you can ban every permutation of a word. Let’s say you wanted to ban the word “shark.” You’d add shark, sh@rk, 5h@rk, 5hark, shar|<, and so on. While it’s very difficult to ban every single possible combination, things like “5|-|4|2|<” don’t exactly register as shark (and you can ban |< or the person posting it anyway).
The counterpart is the allowed list. So if you are playing Stardew Valley and are getting tired of Automod holding messages about gardening with your hoe, you can specifically allow “hoe” to go through.
Besides Twitch’s onsite tools, there are two main chat bots for Twitch channels: Nightbot and Moobot. Some of the moderation features are redundant now that Twitch has developed more extension mod tools. Both bots let you add fun chat commands. If you were running a talk show interviewing authors, you might add the !author command to show a short blurb about the person or !show to explain the principle of the show. And yes, you can have timers and protection settings on commands so you don’t get 400 people spamming !author over and over.
Mod mode, god mode
Twitch mods are user-appointed patrollers of Twitch chat. I set the mods for my stream; you pick your own mods for your stream. By design, the moderation team for a Twitch channel is different from the broadcasting team. This gives the on-screen personalities the freedom to concentrate on their content. Or, in the case of bigger tournament broadcasts, it accounts for the fact the mod team might be half a world away from the event.
Mods are kind of like panel moderators and security rolled into one. A good mod for a small to midsize stream will handle repetitive chat questions (“What days do you usually stream?”), ban problematic users, and keep chat on-topic with friendly comments or questions.
Mods also get a special sword badge in chat to distinguish them from regular viewers. Having multiple active mods can preemptively discourage some low-effort trolls. There’s little point in bothering a chat with 30 viewers and 10 mods; the troll will be removed fast and their memory will disappear just as quick.
In March, Twitch rolled out a new Mod Mode to give your moderators all the relevant tools on one page. They can see messages held by Automod; they can add a new word to the banlist and ban people in chat; they can hit the panic button to severely limit chat restriction.
These tools are overkill for a casual gaming stream with 15 viewers. But for streams focusing on marginalized communities, these tools are necessary to keep you and your communities safe.
Panic mode
Okay, it’s not really called panic mode. But Twitch has a few settings that will severely limit chat participation in the event you find it’s getting too crazy to handle.
- Followers-only chat: People who click the heart button on your channel are your followers. You can time-gate follower-only chat so you have to follow the channel for 10 minutes (or 1 hour or 3 months) before the users are allowed to talk. This is a great way to discourage drive-by trolls, and most viewers are understanding about the 10-minute limit.
- Subscribers-only chat: Once you hit a certain number of hours, followers, and viewers, Twitch lets you become an Affiliate. Then, people can pay $5 per month to support your channel. Those are subscribers. Putting your chat into sub-only chat means that you’ll only have your most stalwart supporters able to talk. Alternatively, if you have no subs, it’s a good way to just shut down chat. Mods can still post in sub-only mode to trigger commands, ask follow-up questions, and give feedback.
- Emotes-only chat: This is a frankly silly mode that eliminates all text from chat. People can only use emotes. There is a huge Twitch culture around emotes, especially since Affiliates and Partners can create their own. If you don’t know your TTours from your PogChamps, you probably don’t want to use emote-only chat.
- Slow mode: Slow mode slows down the chat. You can stop spam attacks by making people wait 1 second (or 10 seconds or 1 minute…) between messages. Again, if you’re getting bombarded by drive-by troll attacks, setting chat to 10-minute intervals is a drastic measure to deter them.
All these modes can be turned on and off by mods at their discretion. You can tweak the chat settings during the broadcast to match whatever you need at that moment.
Broadcasting apps, widgets, alerts, and overlays
It’s possible to stream directly from your phone, if you want, like Zoom or Insta Live. But what sets Twitch apart is the ability to use broadcasting software with streaming-specific apps. That means you can have intro screens, camera overlays, slides with contact info or photos, and donation notifications. You can’t really fancy up a Zoom call or Insta Live; they use your camera directly. But with Twitch, you can easily drag a nice overlay onto your stream so your interview looks more like a show and less like a drunken Skype call.
There are additional widgets for accessibility, like real-time captioning. While real-time captioning technology is notoriously flawed, it’s better than nothing. Alternatively, you could get an ASL interpreter and drag and drop their camera into your overlay (which is also not possible with other streaming platforms).
Nothing is perfect
It’s taken years for Twitch to develop some of these tools. Mod mode only came out in March. Automod is still relatively new and undergoing refinement. And some features that people have wanted forever, like preempting people from even watching a stream, aren’t available yet. So Twitch isn’t going to solve 100% of your livestreaming problems. But it can take care of 95% of them and give you greater control over your online events.
Follow Laine’s Guide to Life for more articles on how to do things better, including whether you should cook with essential oils and six things to take off your resume right now.
