Helm › Helm University › Track 8 › Lesson 8.1
Lesson 8.1Who can go live, and what is not required
The gate is narrower than you would guess in one direction and much wider in another.
Prefer to listen? This is the same lesson, word for word. The text below is the transcript.
This lesson prepares you to: Say whether you can broadcast, and name the four things Helm does not check that you might expect it to.
The gate
To open a live stream on Helm you need a creator profile and one of these:
- An account with a creator, influencer or admin role, or
- A kid or teen account whose parent has switched on family Live.
Anything else is refused with Studio is for creators. A minor without that parental switch is refused with a different message that names the reason: Your parent has not enabled family Live.
Minors who can broadcast are held to a stricter setting than they can change. A kid or teen stream is forced to family only visibility by the server whatever the app sends, and they cannot open a crew only room.
Four things Helm does not check
This is the part worth reading carefully, because the absence of these is a real property of the product rather than an oversight you should route around.
| Not required to go live | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Identity verification | No KYC gate on broadcasting at all |
| Admin approval | Seller vetting gates selling, not broadcasting |
| Shop verification | An unverified shop can run a shopping show |
| A working payout connection | You can sell to nobody, expensively |
The fourth one will cost you a show
Nothing stops you going live, flipping into shopping mode, staging fifty products and pinning them, with a Stripe connection that is not finished. Your viewers will see everything. Every single one who taps buy will be turned away with This seller cannot accept orders right now.
Check your payout state before a show, not after. Track 1 lesson 1.3 covers the four states it moves through and which one you need.
Going live needs a creator profile. Selling needs an approved shop and a ready payout account. They are checked in completely different places.
Two different permissions
Being able to broadcast and being able to sell are separate things granted by separate processes. You can have either without the other. A creator with no shop can go live and never sell anything. A seller who never became a creator cannot open a stream at all.
Your stream key is shown once
When your stream is created you are given a key, and only the hashed version is stored. Helm cannot show it to you again and cannot recover it. Save it when you see it.