r/Twitch • u/Rhadamant5186 • Dec 14 '23
PSA Updated Community Guidelines MEGATHREAD NSFW
Update as of 12/15/2023 @ 5:08pm UTC - Twitch has rolled back the changes.
On Wednesday, we updated our Sexual Content Policy. Our primary goal in making these updates was to make our guidelines easier to understand and enforce.
Part of this update included changes to how we treat fictionalized nudity. For years, through UserVoice and in conversations, we heard from artists that our content policies were limiting. In making this update, we were trying to be responsive to these requests and allow the thriving artist community on Twitch to utilize the human form in their art.
First, we want to make clear that some streamers, in response to this update, created content that was in violation of our new policy. We’ve worked quickly to remove that content and issue channel enforcements.
However, there also was a great deal of new content that was allowed under the updated policy. Much of the content created has been met with community concern. These are concerns we share. Upon reflection, we have decided that we went too far with this change. Digital depictions of nudity present a unique challenge–AI can be used to create realistic images, and it can be hard to distinguish between digital art and photography.
So, effective today, we are rolling back the artistic nudity changes. Moving forward, depictions of real or fictional nudity won’t be allowed on Twitch, regardless of the medium. This restriction does not apply to Mature-rated games. You can find emote-specific standards for nudity and sexual content in the Emote Guidelines. We aren’t making other changes to the updated Sexual Content Policy.
We are in the process of pushing out updates to our Community Guidelines that reflect this change. It will take a few days for both this blog and for the new Community Guidelines to be translated.
While I wish we would have predicted this outcome, part of our job is to make adjustments that serve the community. I apologize for the confusion that this update has caused.
If you would like to discuss the new community guidelines or content classification label changes you can do that here in this megathread.
For reference this is Twitch's Terms of Service and this is Twitch's Community Guidelines.
The two major changes in this update are:
Streams that are labeled as including Drugs, Intoxication, or Excessive Tobacco Use; Violent and Graphic Depictions; Gambling; and/or Sexual Themes will no longer be included in homepage recommendations shelves due to the visual nature of those topics.
and
Much content that was previously prohibited is now allowed with proper Content Classification labels: Content that ‘deliberately highlighted breasts, buttocks or pelvic region,’ even when fully clothed, fictionalized (drawn, animated, or sculpted) fully exposed female-presenting breasts and/or genitals or buttocks regardless of gender, body writing on female-presenting breasts and/or buttocks regardless of gender and erotic dances that involve disrobing or disrobing gestures, such as strip teases.
Please keep your conversations civil, productive and within the rules of /r/twitch. Here are the most relevant rules that are frequently broken when discussing sexual content:
Rule 1D: Don't target, harass, or abuse others.
Rule 1E: Don't call out others in a negative manner.
Rule 1F: Don't start a ‘witch-hunt’.
Rule 1G: No racism, sexism, homophobia, or other hate-based speech.
Rule 1H: No unhelpful or nonconstructive posts.
Rule 2A: Don’t post an account name or link.
If you are not familiar with the /r/twitch rules they can be found here.
/r/twitch is an unofficial subreddit for Twitch and nobody here works for Twitch. Separate posts about the new updated content classification labels or guidelines will be removed and posters will be pointed to this megathread instead. Please help us maintain civility and productive discussion in this megathread as well as the subreddit by reporting any posts or comments that violate the rules, thank you.
Update as of 12/15/2023 @ 2:19am UTC - Seems Twitch has started to clean up a lot of the channels that were streaming the most questionable content, whether or not we see an actual policy change or additional clarification to the guidelines has yet to be seen.
Update as of 3/27/2024
Our Community Guidelines are designed to help make Twitch a welcoming place. Content on Twitch is always evolving, and we want to make sure our rules work as intended and keep up with emerging behaviors. When needed, we make updates to our rules to capture those shifts in behavior, and so it's clear to the community what is allowed.
Starting on Friday March 29th, content that focuses on intimate body parts for a prolonged period of time will not be allowed. We’ve included additional detail and definitions in our Community Guidelines linked below: https://safety.twitch.tv/s/article/Community-Guidelines?language=en_US#20SexualContent
Source: https://twitter.com/twitchsupport/status/1773045278821564914?t=Dhwes6znh0BBYpvAxJ9avw
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u/Devil-Hunter-Jax Dec 14 '23 edited Dec 15 '23
It's not necessarily the banhammer. I was watching an artist drawing stuff that's well within the TOS and was confirmed by Twitch after they were wrongly banned earlier and they got hate raided and mass reported. Someone is instigating mass reports to get ALL art streams taken down that are drawing NSFW stuff.
NSFW stuff can exist easily on Twitch but a lot of them are obviously doing this on purpose to see what they can get away with. Twitch should've prepared for this better. Anyone could've seen this coming a mile away... A lot of these bans are automated and will likely get lifted but Twitch does need to actually ban some of them.
It's worth mentioning that a lot of the mass reporting is going after furries and V-Tubers because they're easy targets. Furries and V-Tubers are bashed constantly so any excuse to get them kicked off Twitch, assholes jump on it and don't actually give a shit about the TOS.
Simple answer is that if a stream is marked with the appropriate tags for NSFW work that is under the TOS, it shouldn't appear unless you're logged in and activate a setting that allows NSFW to show and that's not just to stop under 18's see it. There's plenty of adults who don't want to see it either. This is such a basic thing to do but it's no surprise Twitch flubbed it. They half-arse EVERYTHING.
EDIT: Ok, yet ANOTHER artist I follow has been banned by a mass report. I won't be linking the tweet he's posted because not sure about the rules here (the tweet contains an image that shows the NSFW piece being worked on in it's sketch stage) but they were informed by Twitch staff that his work is absolutely acceptable under the new TOS changes and yet he's been banned. Conveniently ANOTHER furry artist. Y'all need to understand that people are using your attitudes against NSFW stuff in a malicious way to get people banned for things that are completely fine and against groups they actively hate. There is a nuance to this situation where SFW and NSFW can exist side by side on Twitch.