Stricter rules will soon apply regarding chat and the use of certain terms on the streaming service Twitch. This effort aims to protect specific user groups that, according to Twitch, face frequent attacks, such as women, members of the LGBTQIA+ or BIPoC community. The rules affect both streamers and viewers.
What are the new rules? The new rules are explicitly intended to reduce harassment, hate speech, and sexual harassment on Twitch. To this end, Twitch is tightening the existing behavior guidelines.
They now explicitly include behavior in the mentioned cases, as affected users are disproportionately often victims of insults or harassment. According to the official statement, the drafting took several months.
What penalties are there? Depending on the severity of the offense, penalties range from a temporary channel ban to permanent bans. The latter can even be imposed on the first violation in particularly severe cases.
Twitch aims to consider the context. In communities where a little “good-natured banter” is part of the game, that should accordingly influence the evaluation. Furthermore, the severity of the penalty is relevant if the user has previously received penalties and how many reports are filed by users or moderators.
Penalties for Hate Speech and Sexual Harassment
This is now prohibited: In the blog post, Twitch provides some examples of content that is explicitly prohibited and will be punished. This applies to messages in chat, private messages, as well as content shown in streams:
- The assertion that the victim of a well-documented, brutal tragedy has merely faked it or is lying
- Encouragement of DDoS, hacking, doxing, or swatting actions against other individuals
- Incitement to malicious attacks on another person’s social media profiles outside of Twitch
- Emotes are an important part of our communication, but they can also be used maliciously. Therefore, this policy applies to emote combinations, even if used in chat without additional text.
- Displaying the Confederate flag is prohibited due to its historical and symbolic connection to slavery and white racist groups in the USA.
- Repeated remarks about a person’s perceived attractiveness are prohibited, even if they may seem positive or flattering to you, if there are indications that they are unwelcome (i.e., you were asked to stop, you will be temporarily or permanently banned from the channel).
- Lewd or explicit remarks about a person’s sexuality or appearance are prohibited. Note that we make no exceptions for public figures.
- Sending unwanted/uninvited links to nude images or videos is prohibited.
Twitch relies on users to make use of the reporting function to report such misconduct. You can find the complete behavior guidelines (via Twitch) and further explanations about the new rules on the official Twitch blog (via Twitch).
When does it apply? The new rules will take effect from January 21, 2021, and only for content published after that date. Twitch will not retroactively penalize any content such as clips created before that date.
Sexism and Harassment on Twitch
The new rules aim, among other things, to protect women who have been targeted on Twitch for quite some time. In October 2020, for example, the largest female streamer, Pokimane, complained that she is tired of being sexualized by “perverse losers”.
The problem appears to happen more frequently for women on Twitch. According to an insider report there’s even internal sexism at Twitch. It was reported that some men allegedly tried to get rid of the streamer Kaceytron.
Some streamers respond to harassment with sharp comebacks. The streamer PaladinAmber, for example, mocks rude viewers who want to get at her by directly addressing them and showing how out of place their behavior is.
