Twitch has a history of confusing policies, confusing enforcement of those policies, and even more confusing policy updates (that are occasionally walked back within hours of being debuted). But over the last year, it’s put effort into clarifying its policies around things like nudity, violent and sexual content, deepfakes, swatting/doxxing, and even simulcasting, so streamers have a better idea of what’s allowed and what isn’t.
Now, it’s rolled out an update for its sexual harassment policy that’s aimed at making the rules “easier to understand.”
“In order for our sexual harassment policy to be effective, we need a shared understanding of what sexual harassment is and how it shows up,” Twitch said in a company blog post. “To remove ambiguity, we’ve added additional language about what we prohibit, and more clearly defined what we consider sexual harassment. This core definition serves as the baseline, and better establishes our expectations around behavior.”
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The platform clarifies that all of these behaviors are violations of its sexual harassment policy:
- “unwanted comments–including comments made using emojis/emotes–regarding someone’s appearance or body”
- sexual requests or advances
- sexual objectification
- “negative statements or attacks related to a person’s perceived sexual behaviors or activities, regardless of their gender”
- and “the recording or sharing of non-consensual intimate images or videos under any circumstances.” (It also says that with nonconsensual imagery/videos, it “may report such content to law enforcement.”)
In tandem with this policy update, Twitch is updating its AutoMod to add a category that will automatically filter messages that “could be considered sexual harassment.” AutoMod will block the messages before they show up in chat, but streamers and mods will still be able to see them, and can either choose to just delete them, or to report them to Twitch so the platform can consider taking action against the chatter.
“As we said last year, we want to be as open as possible about how we enforce our Community Guidelines and ensure that enforcements are accurate and fair,” Twitch said. It said that when messages are reported for sexual harassment, its mods will “look at a range of signals […] to confirm that comments are unwanted and aren’t consensual.”
Twitch’s decision to enforce more stringent, nuanced examination of reported content is because “we recognize that in the past, we may have inadvertently enforced against mutual, consensual comments among community members,” Twitch says. “That said, there are some behaviors, like expressing a desire to commit sexual violence, that are never allowed, regardless of these signals.”
This update comes after it was revealed that the reason for Dr Disrespect‘s permaban from Twitch was because he sent inappropriate messages to a minor using the platform’s DM system. Twitch apparently found out about the messages when the minor’s account reported them.
