Streaming outfit, Twitch TV, in yet another modification to its policies, is restricting sexually suggestive content on its platform.
The streaming service will no longer accept livestreams that spend an extended amount of time showcasing covered personal body parts as of this Friday. They include, as specified in its amended community guidelines, the “buttocks, groin, or breasts.”
If that sounds specific, that’s because Twitch has become a very popular place to watch livestreams of everything from video games to ASMR. However, there has been tension with certain creators who have embraced mildly sexual content, like streaming from hot tubs or wearing skimpy clothing.
“We constantly want to create a friendly environment on Twitch. Since online behavior can change over time, we constantly review our policies to make sure they’re understandable and practical,” a Twitch representative said in an email on Wednesday. “Today’s update was meant to clarify what’s allowed on Twitch while giving our community time to adjust and ask questions before enforcement begins.”
The e-commerce behemoth Amazon owns Twitch TV, and in recent months, it has made multiple changes to its standards in an attempt to find the ideal balance for what kinds of sexualized content are acceptable.
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When the corporation chose to allow artistic and digital renderings of fictitious nudity in December, it caused confusion. However, two days after announcing the new policy, the company reversed it.
CEO Dan Clancy stated that users had voiced concerns about the kind of content that would be allowed and that some streamers had responded to the news with video that violates the policy in a business blog post on the sudden reversal.
After careful consideration, we have determined that this change was excessive,” Clancy stated. “AI can be used to create realistic images, and it can be difficult to distinguish between digital art and photography. This presents a unique challenge for digital depictions of nudity.”
But even after the rollback, a contentious trend known as “topless meta” persisted: streamers would pretend to be nude on camera by hiding their body parts with black censor bars and other things.
Even though that workaround was appropriately classified as “sexual themes” and didn’t technically break any Twitch rules at the time, the trend forced Twitch to release another update to their policies in early January, which forbade streamers from implying that they might be fully or partially nude and made it clear that female-presenting streamers could only display cleavage as long as it was obvious what they were wearing.
Twitch TV has grown to be one of the largest livestreaming services worldwide since its 2011 start. Known mostly for its gaming and esports communities, the platform’s streamers have amassed substantial followings by doing things like having ordinary conversations, preparing food, and creating ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, content.
Additionally, some prostitutes have utilized the site to interact with visitors who might buy their more graphic material on other websites like OnlyFans. (Although those streamers aren’t allowed to connect directly to that kind of video, they are allowed to link to their own websites, which take viewers there.)
However, studies have demonstrated that, regardless of whether they fill specific sexual niches, female livestreamers are typically more sexualized.
The peer-reviewed journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications published research this month that examined roughly 2,000 well-known video clips that were gathered in 2022 from Twitch’s video game and real-world directories.
It was discovered that, in comparison to male streamers, women on the platform sexualized themselves more frequently and intensely. This was evidenced by the fact that they were more likely to dress provocatively, point the camera toward sexualized body parts, and strike poses that were likely to be perceived as sensual or overtly sexual.
The bulk of entries in the “ASMR” and “Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches” categories—which had the greatest number of sexualized streams—were also contributed by women.
According to the researchers, the fact that female Twitch TV streamers still make up a small percentage of the platform’s creators encourages some degree of self-sexualization in order to compete with male streamers in a “profoundly masculinized environment.”
“This creates an antagonistic, male-dominated atmosphere where hate speech directed towards women is propagated, encompassing intimidation, derogatory evaluations of their abilities, and suggestive remarks about their physical appearance,” the report stated.
Twitch allows some latitude to various material categories as long as they are adequately classified as having “sexual themes,” which means they won’t be promoted on Twitch TV ‘s homepage, even though nudity and sexually explicit activities are absolutely prohibited.
The list of activities that satisfy the criterion includes dancing sensually, dressing in BDSM-related clothing without having intercourse, and having non-educational conversations about sexual experiences or subjects.
