This article covers the chat moderation tools available to moderators during a livestream or real time broadcast. These tools allow you to manage audience behaviour, review flagged content, and keep the chat experience positive for everyone watching.

All moderation controls are accessed by hovering over a message in the chat and clicking the “...” button that appears in the upper right corner of that message.

NOTE: If you click the ... button and the menu cuts off so you cannot see all the options, click the blue Open in New Tab button in the top right of the Messages panel. This will open the admin chat in a new tab where the full menu will be accessible.

Banning is only available to moderators. When you ban an audience member, all of their future messages will be hidden from everyone else in the chat for the remainder of that broadcast or livestream.

NOTE: A ban only applies to the specific broadcast or livestream where it is issued. If the same audience member is disruptive in a future broadcast, you will need to ban them again from that chat.

When you apply a regular ban, the banned audience member will immediately know they have been banned. Each time they try to send a message, they will see a red error reading Message Failed Unauthorized.

When you apply a shadow ban, the audience member is not made aware that anything has happened. Their messages will appear to be sent normally from their point of view, but no one else in the chat will see them. Shadow banning is the better option when you want to remove someone’s ability to participate without drawing attention to the situation.

To ban an audience member, hover over any of their messages, click ..., and select either Ban or Shadow Ban.

To reverse a ban, hover over a message from that audience member, click ..., and select Unban.

Audience members have the ability to flag messages they find inappropriate.

When a message is flagged, it appears in the Inbox tab of the Moderation panel on the right-hand side of your dashboard.

To review a flagged message, click the ... button next to it in the Inbox. You will have three options: Delete Message, Channel Ban User, and Mark Reviewed.

If the flagged comment is too long, click the comment itself (not the three dots) to open a pop-up of the comment in full.

Removes the message from the chat entirely. The message will disappear for all audience members, and a placeholder reading “This message was deleted” will appear in its place in the chat stream.

This works the same as a regular ban. The audience member will receive a red Message Failed Unauthorized error each time they attempt to send a future message.

If you decide the message does not warrant deletion or a ban, you can simply mark it as reviewed to move it out of the Inbox without taking further action.

Once you take any of these actions, the message moves from the Inbox tab to the Reviewed tab.

In the Reviewed tab, deleted messages will appear with a strikethrough, and banned audience members’ names will also appear with a strikethrough. You can click the ... button next to any item in the Reviewed tab to undo a moderation action in order to restore a message or unban an audience member.

Pinning allows you to place a specific message at the top of the audience-facing chat, where it will remain visible as other messages scroll past. This is useful for sharing important information — such as a link, a welcome message, or an announcement — during a broadcast.

To pin a message, hover over it, click ..., and select Pin. A pinned message will display an orange pin icon next to it in the audience-facing chat.

A few things to be aware of:

NOTE: Muting is a feature available to audience members, not to moderators. It is included here for your awareness, as audience members may ask you about it.

Audience members can mute each other. When someone mutes another audience member, all of that person’s messages — past and future — will be hidden from them for all future broadcasts and livestreams, not just the current one.

There is currently no way to unmute someone once they have been muted, even if the mute was accidental.

Audience members cannot mute moderators. Even if the option appears, moderator messages will always remain visible.

Some audience members using older versions of the Safari browser may encounter the following error in the chat: “Error: a.at is not a function.” If an audience member reports this error, the quickest fix is to ask them to switch to a different browser such as Chrome or Firefox. Updating their operating system will also resolve the issue as it will install the most recent version of Safari, but this can take a couple of hours and is not a practical solution during a live broadcast.

After your event, you can download a full transcript of your livestream chat directly from the Live Chat Management page. Click the Download Chat Transcript button to export your chat log as a text file.

The transcript includes all messages with the sender’s name and timestamp. Messages that were deleted from the chat are noted in the transcript — the sender and time are preserved, but the original message content is not retained.