Twitch Bans Blackface, Confederate Flag, Unwanted Sexual Comments
Twitch is making some meaningful rule changes to its streaming platform, it appears. The company published a blog post on Wednesday titled "Introducing Our New Hateful Conduct & Harassment Policy." The post goes into detail about new expansive policy changes, which include banning blackface, Confederate flags, and claiming victims of tragedies are lying. The new Twitch policy will go into effect starting January 22, though only new content will be evaluated under the new guidelines.
According to Twitch, the reasons for updating its policies are the intention to "better protect the community." However, Twitch also says that it's not intending to be punitive in doing so. That's why Twitch is providing the new policy over a month ahead of when it goes into effect, as well as why previously published streams and clips won't be judged by the new policy. Streamers will be able to grow accommodated to the new rules without facing immediate punishment, but will also have no excuse once the rules go live.
As for what better protecting the community means, as well as why it's important to deal with now, Twitch explains how many people on Twitch, "particularly women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, Black, Indigenous, and people of color," have negative experiences up to and including harassment and abuse on the Twitch platform. Twitch says that this is unacceptable, that it "threatens the long term viability of streaming as a career" and harms the Twitch community, too.
Twitch breaks down its new policy plans into three specific areas: harassment, hateful conduct, and sexual harassment. What's key to understand though, regardless of the subject, Twitch says it's evaluating each case based on its individual merits. Twitch says it believes that the new policy will help provide more consistency across all areas and reduce subjectivity in the review process, as contradictory as that may sound.
Harassment is said to encompass targeted attacks "designed to disrupt, harm, or hijack" either a stream or a community. Specific examples that will be punished more heavily included encouraging DDoS attacks, swatting, or doxxing, malicious raids both on-site and off-site, as well as calling a victim of a "well-documented" violent tragedy a liar or a crisis actor. Hateful Conduct is an extension of harassment in Twitch's eyes. It's just attached to identity characteristics like race, gender, nationality, or disability. Examples now explicitly prohibited include black/brown/yellow/redface, the Confederate flag, as well as emote combinations used with clear malicious intention.
Lastly, Twitch describes its new policy surrounding Sexual Harassment, which has always been prohibited. Twitch is expanding its previous sexual harassment policy to be more encompassing, as well as to lower the tolerance levels for punishable actions. New specific policy changes include making lewd or explicit comments about someone's sexuality or appearance, sending unsolicited nude images or videos, and repeated comments on someone's attractiveness so long as it's been previously decried.
Twitch's new policy is certainly stricter in many ways, but it's also designed in a way for streamers to protect themselves. Using time-outs, channel bans, or even just telling viewers what is or isn't okay can now be used to establish larger and more impactful punishments from Twitch. And hopefully, that enables streamers to use Twitch in much more meaningful ways.
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