Twitch Overhauls Its Streaming Guidelines, Wants Sexual And Hateful Content Left At The Door

To advance progress on its goal of making its community a welcoming one, Twitch this week rolled out an updated set of guidelines – some of which are are throwing some fans into rage mode. If this were an infomercial, it’d have to begin with, “Forget everything you know about slipcovers Twitch streaming!”, because many are finding themselves perplexed with the overhaul.

In a feel-good blog post, Twitch makes it crystal-clear that it wants its community to be welcoming, and a safe one for all ages. Put simply, “Hate simply has no place in the Twitch community”, and the company is going to pretty fair lengths to make sure hate is blown to bits.

Twitch unleashed a box of complications with its latest move

To that end, the company “will now consider verifiable hateful or harassing conduct that takes place off-Twitch when making moderation decisions for actions that occur on Twitch”. In effect, if you stream on some other service, like YouTube, or post to services like Twitter, attitudes and behavior could impact your standing with Twitch.

For what’s ultimately the company of a simple web service, this kind of thorough user monitoring has proven concerning to many. Few would argue that there’s definitely some behavior that shouldn’t be on Twitch, but people throwing obscenities around isn’t likely the greatest concern to most adults.

If you’re a parent, this move by Twitch is one that’s sure to be appreciated. However, many have suggested that an ultimate fix is to simply add an 18+ section, which ties into another thing Twitch is clamping down on: scantily clad hosts. If you can’t wear your outfit at most malls, restaurants, or on the street, wearing it on Twitch could cause the company to pull a mighty ban hammer out of its nether regions.

Twitch isn’t autonomously run, and these enforced rules didn’t come out of thin air. Clearly, some people at Twitch want a more Disney-like ecosystem than one that lets its audiences decide how to steer the platform. If Twitch doesn’t want 18+ gaming content, some other company sure does. That might not matter to the Amazon-backed company, though, which clearly sees this route as the safest one of the health of its overall business. Many users seem to disagree, so it shouldn’t take long before we find out if this move has helped, or hurt the streaming giant.