Twitch expands its ban on swatting and doxxing

Twitch, like YouTube, has an “off-service conduct” policy, where it can and will take action against you on its own platform for things you do elsewhere. These policies cover particularly heinous acts like sexual assault, using deadly violence, ascribing to a known hate group, and possessing child sexual exploitation material.

At last weekend’s TwitchCon, Twitch added two more acts to this policy: swatting and doxxing.

Those additions were a long time coming, considering how often some streamers are now being swatted. To be clear, though, Twitch has banned doxxing and swatting on its own platform for years. This new update allows it to take action against people it discovers have doxxed or swatted someone IRL or on another part of the internet.

Twitch specified that for an incident to count as doxxing, someone would have to reveal another person’s mailing address, home address, work/school addresses, physical location, sensitive financial information, and/or government IDs. (Under that rule, SSSniperwolf‘s recent visit to Jacksfilms‘ house would count as doxxing, but it seems like YouTube‘s policies aren’t as stringent as Twitch’s…)

Also at TwitchCon, Twitch announced it’ll soon let streamers and mods send warnings to chatters who are being disruptive. Those chatters will have to click a box acknowledging they’ve been warned before they can type again.

Twitch made some other non-safety-related announcements, including revealing that it’s dropping its no-simulcasting-allowed rule and will let streamers mirror their Twitch broadcasts anywhere they please.