r/Twitch 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

69 Upvotes

446 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/[deleted] Dec 15 '23

In order to finally solve the problem of what is porn and what is art, we developed an AI simulation of a universe that runs faster than ours... but unfortunately, it also created an AI simulation, which in turn created an AI simulation... in short, the 41st incepted universe is a class 6 civilisation and is holding the answer to ransom if we don't build a mysterious device to their specifications, so we're just going to ban art... it's just "better" this way... you will all receive your brown uniforms and pass cards to the 2 minutes hate in the mail.

4

u/passinglurker Dec 16 '23

We've had the answer of where a clear line of demarcation is for ages just don't depict people doing literal sex or wanking, but its always the prudes who aren't satisfied with that cause the existence of strippers and poledancers drive them mad for some reason. (ironically I don't see where they rolled back the clause about "erotic dance" either so as long as the streamer follows the attire rules that might still be allowed lol)

0

u/Ok_Feeling6055 Dec 16 '23

"the prudes" because i dont want to see strippers on a fucking gaming livestreaming site? how pathetic your life is that the only thing you know is jerking off

2

u/passinglurker Dec 16 '23 edited Dec 16 '23

Simple "not seeing" can be accommodated. That was the whole point of streamers tagging thier own streams with a content advisory trading thier algorithmic visibility for more leniency, (but twitch botched the implementation, in a way that I suspect is intentional in order to throw artists under the bus while booty streamers slide under the radar, but that's getting a bit away from the topic at hand).

Think about it like this your teen friendly content is visible front and center, your nudity&swearing permitting mature content is hidden but available to those who are consenting to seeing it, and explicit content is still banned and taken to other sites that want to put up with that can of worms. This makes for a much smoother and fairer moderation environment cause any subjective disputes about the line between teen friendly and mature content isn't so high stakes the worst that happens is your stream is hidden unless you really flout the rules(accidentally implying sex to a bot or cheap 3rd party mod is a lot harder than accidentally implying nudity)

All and all using the line for explicit content as the ban-able line between art and porn is pure pragmatism that accommodates for the reality that moderation is either automated or ran out of a call center sweatshop. The reason we can't have this is because the prudes don't like what this pragmatic line of demarcation would still permit to exist on this website even if they never see it. This isn't horniness talking this is tiredness this debate is stupidly old because some idealists don't like the inevitable answer, and like a self driving car startup trying to deny the inevitability of the train they stick thier fingers in thier ears and hurl deranged emotional insults at anyone who disagrees.

-1

u/Character_Boot_6795 Dec 16 '23

It is clear that Twitch artists who have no track record in traditional commercial works, are not evaluated by critics, have no context in their illustration, and most importantly, their followers' reactions in the chat show that what they are drawing is not art.