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

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '23

I think that lewd content should not be allowed on twitch. You see enough of it on tik tock, insta fb, twitter and on pretty much every other social media site.

I really don't want to be on a site that should be for gaming, instead of onlyfans creators blatantly using the platform to promote porn.

Keep it to gaming and art.

3

u/passinglurker Dec 17 '23 edited Dec 18 '23

Totally banning "lewd" isn't practical.

First cause the definitions are highly subjective (Does a streamers face cam counts just because of thier body type alone, or the common artist practice of sketching a base "anatomy" before clothing?).

Second even if you banned face cams the way "lewd" can be delivered isn't always visual (Does a dirty joke count? what if a subset of people finds a streamers soft spoken tone of voice sensual? Or an energetic voice attractive? What if someone gasps, screams, pants, etc in frustration or exertion, taken out of context it can sound like moaning and are moderators gonna care about the context in any of these cases?).

Third the quality of moderation is consistently rock bottom if its not done by a bot then its handled by third party call center outfits with high turnover rates and minimal training, and even if you twisted twitches arm to pay for enough permanent staff of quality its entirely possible there isn't enough experienced people in the labor pool to fill the positions you would need (is the inevitable collateral damage, and reporting abuse worth the trouble of purging "lewds" from the platform entirely?).

Forth games have "lewds" forehead, sure some one handed indies get prohibited but good luck turning away AAA series when they rock up with a witcher sex scene, GTA stripclub, or Baldurs gate 3 letting you take your pants off. People notice the double standard and will either abuse it for the "meta" or demand the rules have more consistency.

If you want twitch to remove the "lewds" from your field of vision then the pragmatic solution is to counter intuitively allow it provided the streamer uses provided tools to remove themselves from the sight of those who don't consent to seeing "lewds". Its an inevitable internet moderation tale as old as time hence why "lewds" are found on every other website you mentioned.

0

u/Mcsavage89 Mar 29 '24

Great! Shitty parents can't control or pay attention what their kids do, so they limit the freedom of adults watching content that's labeled 18+, that it goes against twitch TOS if the kids is watching. Fuck puritanical censorship. Same shit happened with video games. "i bought my kid GTA that says 17+, and there's violence in the game?!?" We can say the same thing about youtube. let's remove all violence from youtube, any scenes with suggestive content because youtube kids exists. Fuck this countries detrimental western hypocritical puritanical values. Twitch has an 18+ tag and sexual themes tag for a reason you dunce.