On December 13th, 2023 Twitch heralded a massive change to its content policy for streamers. Moving forward, if properly tagged, the platform would allow for "artistic nudity" in its Art tab and streaming category. In its initial statement about its policy regarding artistic nudity, Twitch vice president of customer trust Angela Hession stated "We have received consistent feedback from streamers... that it can be difficult to know how their content will be interpreted." The original policy stated:
Previously prohibited but now Allowed With Label:
Content that ‘deliberately highlighted breasts, buttocks or pelvic region,’ even when fully clothed. Streamers found it difficult to determine what was prohibited and what was allowed and often evaluating whether or not a stream violated this portion of the policy was subjective. In addition, the former Sexually Suggestive Content policy was out of line with industry standards and resulted in female-presenting streamers being disproportionately penalized.
Fictionalized (drawn, animated, or sculpted) fully exposed female-presenting breasts and/or genitals or buttocks regardless of gender. There is a thriving artist community on Twitch, and this policy was overly punitive and did not reflect the impact of the content.
Body writing on female-presenting breasts and/or buttocks regardless of gender. The Twitch Attire Policy already allows body art on breasts and buttocks, so this change makes these policies consistent.
Erotic dances that involve disrobing or disrobing gestures, such as strip teases.
So, it sounded like a victory for adult content creators and those in the adult art community, which was kind of cool to see. And then, in pure Twitch fashion, its leadership announced this policy change, did not properly equip its moderation and safety teams with the tools to enforce this change, and the entire art portal got inundated with porn. Obviously, for those with half a brain, artistic nudity is not softcore porn or hardcore pornography, but Twitch simply did not respond quick enough after making this announcement to enforce that point of differentiation. As a result, and possibly due to other factors, Twitch completely walked their artistic nudity policy. Twitch announced on December 15th, 2023, about two days after the initial announcement about the policy change:
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.
Honestly, Twitch not even bothering to find a way to filter or moderate those that wanted to follow their initially announced "artistic nudity" policy versus that wanted to use the TOS change to make porn is a bummer. However, there's likely another reason why they walked all of this back. Twitch's leadership for what feels like the past five years have repeatedly shot from the hip when trying the waters with new policy changes. Every time they have tried to rock the boat even slightly, they have been met with backlash, which results in them needing to change things either all the way back to something entirely different.
Also, I bet the issue with Twitch is that advertisers and their owner, Amazon, put their foot down after the TOS announcement and can almost guarantee Twitch's management did not pass it by them even the slightest bit. Repeatedly, it seems like the Twitch leadership doesn't actually talk to their ad and streaming partners or Amazon overlords before trying new policy changes.
Personally, despite what all of the toxic bad actors on the internet might tell you, I think there's way more distressing content that requires a huge public outcry than nude boobs or depictions of genitalia on Twitch. But if Twitch wanted to go that route, they likely would need to create an entirely different platform and I would also hazard to guess that there's no way Amazon wants to go that route.
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