They spent another 24 hours on Twitch, the latest in what has been designed to be one year agonizingly long for the company (and also everyone on Earth). Yesterday afternoon, Twitch celebrated a live town hall with the goal of illuminating recent changes and policies on DMCAs, sexual harassment, advertisements, and other active issues. However, after all of this, many streamers set their sights on a small portion of the two-hour presentation: Twitch’s decision to ban words like “simp,” “incel,” and “virgin,” at least when used in derogatory contexts. .
Towards the end of the town hall, Twitch CEO Sara Clemens delved deeper the new Twitch rules will go into effect next month. Clemens explained that one of the new rules prohibits “derogatory statements about sexual practices perceived by another person,” which includes “addressing another person negatively with sexually focused terms.”
“This policy is not permitted to use terms such as‘ simp ’,‘ incel ’or‘ virgin ’as an insult to refer negatively to another person’s sexual activity,” Clemens said. “In addition to the policy change, we also proactively deny emotes that include the term ‘simp.’ We remove them when notified and will continue to do so once the policy changes.”
In an email to Kotaku, Twitch clarified that “simp”, “incel” and “virgin” are not prohibited and will only incur sanctions when they “negatively relate to another person’s sexual practices”.
“Using these terms alone would not lead to the application, but we would take action if they were used repeatedly in a harassing manner,” a Twitch representative said. “We deny emotes related to these terms and remove them when they are reported to us. In general, we have a stricter policy on emotes because they can be used on Twitch, so we take more proactive steps to minimize the potential for harm.”
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At the beginning of the year, Kotaku discovered that Twitch had been removing “simp” emoticons since February, therefore, this is not entirely new. But this is a coding of an approach that has surprised many streamers because of who most often faces harassment (sexual or not) on the platform.
“Still, people can still walk into my chat and call me sluuuurs with little or no act,” Twitch partner PleasantlyTwstd said on Twitter.
“Where was all this outrage when black and female streamers complained about being harassed on Twitch?” said streamer and organizer DaPurpleSharpie. “Where was Twitch’s” WE NEED TO STOP THE HARASSMENT “position then?”
“Twitch talks a lot about inclusion, but it can’t ban the global word N figure,” said fellow Twitch Detune musician. “Instead, we have to write it ourselves to be modified. You all want to know how to do it. painful is to write the racial confusion you are he called and having to think about all the variations to get an automatic ban? “
“The use of the words ‘simp’, ‘virgin’ and ‘incel’ are now crimes prohibited on Twitch said the Twitch couple SeriouslyClara. “I’m glad the super-marginalized male demographic group is safe.”
Overall, Twitch presents itself as a company that develops new tools and features so streamers can maintain their own communities as they see fit, but the city council painted a less-than-encouraging picture of when and how it chooses. intervene. In the case of words like “simp,” Twitch chose to make a decision per everyone, and that is a mystical fact. There was no widespread demand for repression in terms that, when used negatively, refer largely to people being harassed. No one really asked for it. It came out of nowhere, with Twitch issuing a decree despite protests from streamers.
However, streamers have for years I have been asking for labels focused on specific identities (for black and trans television transmitters, among others). The idea is that these tags, like the Twitch “communities” feature that the tags replaced in 2018, would allow streamers to find others like them and viewers to discover new streamers that are part of these groups. This would create stronger communities not only within singular currents, but through various broadcasting channels. In the hostile Internet, such simple community building tools are essential for marginalized groups. And yet, during town hall, Twitch made another decision for streamers, despite what they have been asking for. Near the start of the broadcast, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear acknowledged the streamers campaign for years for a trans tag, but not to tell them there’s one on the way.
“While we were looking to launch new identity tags, like the trans tag, specifically, we ran into two issues: the first problem we encountered is that the use of tags can often lead to more harassment for streamers, especially in vulnerable identity groups “. He said. “We wanted to make sure we were trying to fix it so that people wouldn’t accidentally opt for this kind of harassment.”
The other issue, Shear noted, is that he doesn’t want Twitch staff to be “identity arbiters.” “If we’re out there choosing what labels deserve to have them, there’s always going to be someone who feels abandoned for it,” he said.
Shear went on to say that by 2021 some sort of label system would arrive that “allows for one’s own identity,” but stopped to explain what form it will take. Meanwhile, streamers are upset because this is where Twitch chose to draw the line.
“They waved by hand without implementing a trans label because … they don’t want to incite more hatred / harassment directed at trans people on the platform?” said Twitch partner and voice actor Negaoryx. “They now deal with that, Twitch. Moderate your platform. Enforce yours [terms of service] and deal with bullies! ”
“I have some kind of specific harassment for being bi using the LGBT + tag, but I have 100 times more LGBT + people as viewers who identify with me” said Novaleesi, a Twitch companion. “It’s worth it. The whole ‘weigh the reward’ discourse is silly. Give trans people the option to have a trans label.”
“Tags are enabled!” Twitch partner and founder of I Need Diverse Games Ask “Cypheroftyr,” DePass said. “Twitch can’t be the arbiter of a participation tag. It’s about harassment instead of not giving us identity tags. Or it’s back to the communities!”
Twitch has repeatedly said that harassment mitigation is a priority and, for the company’s credit, it strives harder than most. Its new rules target bullies in a suitably harsh manner, at least on paper (we’ll see how execution goes during the month of January), and during the town hall, the company mentioned that its trust and security team continues to grow. However, Twitch has a habit of slightly losing the brand in ways that are outrageous. He frequently does this by offering bandwidth aids for surface-level wounds, such as the word “simp,” telling streamers to ask for more systemic solutions than what they just want isn’t possible or poses too much risk. This makes an image of a company that believes it knows better than everyone else, even though the problems of thousands of eons continue to sink. Streamers naturally feel frustrated by this.
In a way, Twitch knows this better than its users; it regularly experiments with new features and collects data on an incredibly massive scale. But the data is never the full story, and until Twitch learns to really listen to his community and communicate his findings without looking contemptuous or sadly short-sighted, we will continue to end up again in this same place, just as we have countless times in the past. Maybe Twitch is just a simple punishment.