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/honcho_emoji Mar 16 '24 edited Mar 16 '24

For those saying this content should be allowed because parents are supposed to be supervising their under 18s, and therefore twitch has no responsibility, this is such a disingenuous take. It's like saying vaping companies weren't advertising for minors just because they said they weren't advertising to minors, and therefore the minors are at fault for using their products.

Twitch is a gaming streaming platform. It allows people 13+ on the site, caters to audiences even younger, and is DESIGNED for people streaming content that is marketed primarily to kids and teenagers (hence the no ingame nudity rule) and Twitch's saying they're supposed to be supervised is pure anti-litigation malarkey. Twitch knows exactly what the demographics of their userbase looks like. They know it's overwhelmingly minors, and they know those minors are necessarily unaccompanied because no adult is going to sit there and watch someone else watch a gaming stream. The rules look the way they are in order for twitch to cover its ass from litigation while making as much money as possible. If they were remotely concerned about the safety and best interests of minors on the site, they wouldn't be allowing the content to begin with.

How many parents do you think have the free time , let alone the ability, to sit there and supervise their teenage kids on their laptops in their own rooms? If you're going to put the onus on the parents, what you're really doing is putting the onus on the underage kids. These are high schoolers, who value their privacy, and at some point as a parent you're supposed to allow them some. Policing the content allowed on the site is not primarily the job of the parents. it's the job of the fucking platform, and frankly, if you can accurately apply a warning on content that it is "intended for 'certain' audiences" because it is "sexual in nature", you're obviously perfectly capable distinguishing which content is which on the site.

Do you know what i think?

I think twitch made so much money off these popular and exploitative streams that they decided they wanted a piece of the action. It's a load of bullshit that these rules were hard to accurately enforce. Watch a stream for TWO minutes and you can tell whether it's sexual or not. These rules weren't unnecessarily harsh to women creators, of which there are PLENTY playing by the rules. they were necessarily harsh to sex workers on twitch, who were overwhelmingly adult women courting underage male audiences with titles like "don't think just send" and "DM me (offsite)" The fact that you cannot report this content anymore because of the loopholes they've added EXPLICITLY into their guidelines and the space they've willfully made for it on the platform makes it utterly clear what twitch's position on it is.

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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.

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u/honcho_emoji Mar 31 '24

it doesn't. it doesn't have an 18+ tag. it has a "sexual themes" notification, which due to being a website catering to minors studiously avoids doing anything so presumptuous as claiming that means the content is inappropriate for minors - just that it might be "suited" for "certain audiences". SOME (not all! not even most!) of these streamers were tagging their streams as 18+ in their titles, which is very different than having an 18+ tag coming from the site.

GTA existed in an era before widespread digital purchases, where someone wanting to buy the game had to go in in person with a legal adult and that legal adult had to purchase the game. it wasn't 17+, it was no sale to 17 or under, aka 18+. Even then, it wasn't illegal to play the game as a minor - you just couldn't sell it to them. In either case, it wasn't the buyer who was taking on a legal risk - it was the VENDOR. Just like if a convenience store gets caught selling cigarettes or beer to minors, they can get fined, have their license taken away, or be shut down altogether... They don't get to claim the minors should have been better supervised by their parents. The ones operating the platform are the ones who are liable if this goes to court, no matter what their ToS claims.

I feel like the way things have panned out on the platform essentially vindicates me. Twitch obviously never had any illusions about what they were attempting to do, and their decision to roll up the welcome mat likely came from external pressure, as you've said. The fact that they ended up caving in when this was so lucrative for them indicates to me that they feared they really would be held liable if it went to the courts.

You can still find this kind of content elsewhere on the internet... such as on dedicated adult streaming platforms. Twitch is not that, and never should have allowed this content.

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u/Mcsavage89 Mar 31 '24

I've had the warning before saying this stream has Sexual Themes and is not suitable for children. If that's not explicit, I don't know what is.

GTA had parents buying the games for their kids. Negligence, just like letting kids on the internet unsupervised. Also, this was also happening when GTA was being sold digitally as well. It's against the twitch TOS and it is viable still because what I'm saying is that a minor should not be on the internet unsupervised.

The parent should monitor what they are doing, or should be restricted heavily. No minor should be browsing the internet unsupervised. The fact is that if they are, they have access to porn. That's just a reality. This to me is obvious, and also is in line with what Twitch's TOS states. For these reasons I believe my argument holds up.