7 ms·

Twitch already has a flagging system for "mature" content, and they ban anything with actual nudity pretty aggressively. It sounds like this is actually a call

Twitch already has a flagging system for "mature" content, and they ban anything with actual nudity pretty aggressively. It sounds like this is actually a call to police the use of sex appeal by streamers, which seems like a difficult thing to judge in general and I'm not sure how they could actually achieve such a thing.

omegaworks 9y ago
It's probably blowback from American Vandal.
Waterluvian 9y ago
Yeah it gets into the hyper subjective realm of what is acceptable or not. If I sexually identify as a CAS aircraft, will they ban DCS A-10 Simulator as sexual content? On the other hand, they're a company so they're perfectly allowed to decide where they draw the line and enforce that. I just hope we don't accidentally cause a regression with women in gaming by accidentally enforcing a dress code that mostly impacts women.
- knowaveragejoe 9y ago
  I'm left wondering how they would actually scale any sort of enforcement like that. Look at reports people submit?
- ben_w 9y ago
  > If I sexually identify as a CAS aircraft, will they ban DCS A-10 Simulator as sexual content? I don’t know if this is a joke, but that is a thing that happens. Given how long I was blind to my own (relatively straightforward) bisexuality, I think the real answer is that people in charge literally cannot conceive of sexuality that far away from their worldview.
  - ericnyamu 9y ago
    Stop this bullshit. God created male or female.the more you understand this the better.so now that you think you are both male and female,are you going to fuck yourself and have kids?
  - wisty 9y ago
    For a less silly and inflammatory example, how about feet? Because there certainly are foot fetishists out there.
    - unobtaniumstool 9y ago
      That's a pretty classic example really. I know Flickr had some awkward interactions with a foot fetishist community that took up residence there, because they didn't reeeally post anything that violated the terms of service, they were just kind of creepy about it.
    - LinuxBender 9y ago
      There are people sexually aroused by eyes as well.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > I just hope we don't accidentally cause a regression with women in gaming by accidentally enforcing a dress code that mostly impacts women. See the recent Naomi Wu controversy.
ryanlol 9y ago
Yeah, this is just what angry nerds on reddit have been pushing for a while because they’re upset that pretty women are earning a decent living by playing games online.
NathanKP 9y ago
Yeah I don't really understand who is complaining. You have to go pretty out of your way to find these "sexual streamers" and they have pretty low viewer count to be honest. If you stick to browsing Twitch by game you almost never see them, and the top game streams have 10k-20k viewers at all times. You have to specifically go to the IRL section of Twitch to find camgirl style streams, and most of these "sexual streamers" have under 1k viewers. It's hardly a mainstream part of Twitch, and is something you have to specifically hunt down.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ktta 9y ago
  I think the problem is about brand image. All it takes is one person pointing out to an advertiser their ad beside these streamers. Of course, there's the other image problem with gaming competitions etc. who will hesitate a bit if Twitch was conducive to this behavior.
  - heartbreak 9y ago
    Because we all know advertising and scantily clad women do not mix. With less snark, advertising as an industry is famous for “sex sells”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_advertising
    - ktta 9y ago
      Well sure sex is a great way to sell products, but for Twitch it will be terrible. They are selling a brand and a platform. That's all they have, because the tech is not too hard to replicate. That, and existing users, which I'll get to now. Twitch already has a reputation with gamers/streamers of becoming something close to a camsite slowly(while it seems hyperbolic, sentiments of most of people there usually are too), contrary to what it was meant to be - a purely game streaming centered site. Apart from infuriating other usual steamers on the site who will lose viewers to the 'sexual content' steamers (and will result in general discontentment). These streamers will most likely leave to YouTube Gaming or something else. If that doesn't happen, there are long term ramifications to consider. Say Twitch accepts that section of streamers and continues with MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY labels etc. Now obviously those videos won't be monetized so they are more of an expense now. Then, if they become a significant part of the website, they'll get questions from upper management. Despite silicon valley considering itself 'progressive', none of them will be okay with this (see patreon). Then comes the next step: Gaming competitions and other engagements. If a gaming competition accepts Twitch as a sponsor, people will see it as if the events agree with that part of Twitch, which is a no-no because those events have kids' parents to consider (remember, you still can't swear in most similar events and hosts get fined if they do). While this may seem like a weak argument, a weak enough link to sex industry is enough for investors to pull out. That's because they fear the occasional articles from The Daily Beast and The New Yorker about the effects of Twitch on teenagers' sexuality and the world in general. Now say one of those lead to someone from the NYT or Bloomberg looking for a story, you've got investors making calls who read a lengthy piece about how Twitch is preying on adolescent kids. Do you think this is too outlandish? Look at YouTube's 'weird videos aimed at kids' problem and how many people it is hiring and time it is investing to solve that problem. Twitch is more at risk since it is a newer brand still at the 'first impression' stage for many. And boy you don't want to get that wrong. Ask parents if they are okay with letting their kids have (paid!) membership on Twich after that news gets out. Parents are a huge effect on revenue of services their kids use.
ben_jones 9y ago
Devil's advocate: a small portion of streamers use their sexuality to solicit large donations from individuals who cannot afford such donations. Sure you can't police it, but it kind of underpins the site when every popular game has multiple people using this strategy for personal profit. It's highly visible, everybody knows about it. Shouldn't it at least be talked about?
- neaanopri 9y ago
  To Devil's Advocate the Devil's Advocate: This isn't a "sexualized streaming" issue, this is an issue of people donating money they don't have or can't afford. Outside of a personally invasive police state, I don't see a way of stopping this beyond some sort of flags for people who donate too much, similar to how gambling addiction is dealt with.
- zaroth 9y ago
  > solicit large donations from individuals who cannot afford such donations. This makes no sense. Either Dad should take back the credit card or adults can make their own decisions. Either way, I can’t see how that would have anything to do with the person streaming the video asking for cash! I mean, argue that cute girls have it easy getting cash for titilating their viewers. Argue that Twitch isn’t for tits. But arguing that boobs made someone spend money they couldn’t afford is just debasing to men everywhere.
  - lotyrin 9y ago
    People don't exist in such clean categories, there is a spectrum on which everyone lies w.r.t. their abilities of self awareness and self control and their knowledge of their present and future situations, and therefore their ability to act within their own best interests. Communities which seek to maximize future outcomes for their members necessarily seek to aid them by limiting harmful actions. Where the lines are drawn, how the limits are enacted, and whether or not something is harmful is of course a matter of opinion.
    - zaroth 9y ago
jchw 9y ago
>and they ban anything with actual nudity pretty aggressively. Framing it as if they only ban aggressively for actual nudity is unfair. They ban aggressively on all kinds of fronts, including very subjective criteria, they just do it very inconsistently. For all I care, they can do whatever they want. But I do feel like they are hard to take seriously until they decide to apply their rules equally. They do not. They have egregiously played favorites in a way that is surprising for such a big and respected entity as Twitch. The thing that sucks is, the irresponsible ways that Twitch and YouTube behave hurts everyone, because they try to sell ads on content they know advertisers wouldn't like, and when advertisers wise up they overreact and become adverse to supporting small content creators. They would rather have "safe," big content creators instead, where they can feel like they're getting their money's worth.
- r00fus 9y ago
  > But I do feel like they are hard to take seriously until they decide to apply their rules equally. They do not. Any examples that can help me understand? Perhaps the advertising angle goes hand in hand with the above inequality. Ads are essentially buying real-estate in your brain. One way is to have exclusives (i.e., buying out the room), another is Yelp-style (pay-to-play).
  - sAvi0r 9y ago
    Debate with Pink Sparkles - Twitch Boobie Streamers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7ZbIpT2PXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7ZbIpT2PXg (24:00) Twitch Booby Streamers - A Crisis of Culture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySypTRw8AvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySypTRw8AvY (50:06) If you've got the time, the above two videos are a great rundown of the current 'sexual streaming' situation on twitch by one of the first ever professional streamers. He can be a bit edgy at times, and there's swearing in the video if that's not your thing, but he has a solid, well thought-out opinion when it comes to most things. The whole situation is a mess, with crazy misogynist incel types on one side and Twitch on the other just sort of ignoring complaints and being complicit in the mass harassment of some of the women on their platform. If you want some examples of their inconsistent application of the rules, you could check out many of the things LegendaryLea was given short temporary bans for, then compare it to e.g. the stream IamSSunny was permanently banned for, which was later arbitrarily reduced to a temporary ban - driving home just how inconsistent they are with their own rules. Mildly NSFW though, so I won't post any direct examples here.
tomc1985 9y ago
Watching the world drift further and further towards moral prudery is so disheartening, especially when so much social progress was made on this front during the 60s and 70s. Society is so cyclical :/
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  Agreed. I feel like I don't recognize liberalism in the kinds of things that people advocate for these days.
  - jhanschoo 9y ago
    I actually don't associate this with liberalism. To me this seems an extension of the "real gamers" phenomenon, where certain gamers think that gaming and streaming should correspond to some good-at-the-game, purely-about-the-game ideal, which the sex appeal streams clearly do not fall into.
- lawnchair_larry 9y ago
  I'm not sure where you got the ideal that moral prudery is involved here, but it has nothing to do with that. The people who want "twitch girls" off the site do not have any objections to cam girls. The problem is that they're hijacking a service that was built for and by a specific community. Twitch has a large number of sex workers who are just using it as a conduit to find "customers" and are not contributing to the community, but detracting from it. There are other sites dedicated to that. This is especially problematic for female streamers who are community members and get constantly harassed with "tits or gtfo" or worse. They struggle to be taken seriously as gamers due to the cheap antics and "accidental wardrobe malfunctions" employed by the other women on the site, and are punished for it in terms of number of viewers.
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    My age group (and younger) seems to be trending towards a more conservative-yet-inclusive set of morals. This new stink about camgirl streamers is just one facet of something wider and more encompassing. Or maybe I'm just pissed that people are growing up and favoring more family-friendly stuff.
vultour 9y ago
You mean how they hand out 24 hour bans to women for "accidentaly" showing genitals, meanwhile other streamers are getting permanently banned left and right for much smaller infractions?

omegaworks 9y ago

It's probably blowback from American Vandal.

Waterluvian 9y ago

Yeah it gets into the hyper subjective realm of what is acceptable or not. If I sexually identify as a CAS aircraft, will they ban DCS A-10 Simulator as sexual content? On the other hand, they're a company so they're perfectly allowed to decide where they draw the line and enforce that. I just hope we don't accidentally cause a regression with women in gaming by accidentally enforcing a dress code that mostly impacts women.

knowaveragejoe 9y ago
I'm left wondering how they would actually scale any sort of enforcement like that. Look at reports people submit?
ben_w 9y ago
> If I sexually identify as a CAS aircraft, will they ban DCS A-10 Simulator as sexual content? I don’t know if this is a joke, but that is a thing that happens. Given how long I was blind to my own (relatively straightforward) bisexuality, I think the real answer is that people in charge literally cannot conceive of sexuality that far away from their worldview.
- ericnyamu 9y ago
  Stop this bullshit. God created male or female.the more you understand this the better.so now that you think you are both male and female,are you going to fuck yourself and have kids?
- wisty 9y ago
  For a less silly and inflammatory example, how about feet? Because there certainly are foot fetishists out there.
  - unobtaniumstool 9y ago
    That's a pretty classic example really. I know Flickr had some awkward interactions with a foot fetishist community that took up residence there, because they didn't reeeally post anything that violated the terms of service, they were just kind of creepy about it.
  - LinuxBender 9y ago
    There are people sexually aroused by eyes as well.
pjc50 9y ago
> I just hope we don't accidentally cause a regression with women in gaming by accidentally enforcing a dress code that mostly impacts women. See the recent Naomi Wu controversy.

ryanlol 9y ago

Yeah, this is just what angry nerds on reddit have been pushing for a while because they’re upset that pretty women are earning a decent living by playing games online.

NathanKP 9y ago

Yeah I don't really understand who is complaining. You have to go pretty out of your way to find these "sexual streamers" and they have pretty low viewer count to be honest. If you stick to browsing Twitch by game you almost never see them, and the top game streams have 10k-20k viewers at all times. You have to specifically go to the IRL section of Twitch to find camgirl style streams, and most of these "sexual streamers" have under 1k viewers. It's hardly a mainstream part of Twitch, and is something you have to specifically hunt down.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ktta 9y ago
I think the problem is about brand image. All it takes is one person pointing out to an advertiser their ad beside these streamers. Of course, there's the other image problem with gaming competitions etc. who will hesitate a bit if Twitch was conducive to this behavior.
- heartbreak 9y ago
  Because we all know advertising and scantily clad women do not mix. With less snark, advertising as an industry is famous for “sex sells”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_advertising
  - ktta 9y ago
    Well sure sex is a great way to sell products, but for Twitch it will be terrible. They are selling a brand and a platform. That's all they have, because the tech is not too hard to replicate. That, and existing users, which I'll get to now. Twitch already has a reputation with gamers/streamers of becoming something close to a camsite slowly(while it seems hyperbolic, sentiments of most of people there usually are too), contrary to what it was meant to be - a purely game streaming centered site. Apart from infuriating other usual steamers on the site who will lose viewers to the 'sexual content' steamers (and will result in general discontentment). These streamers will most likely leave to YouTube Gaming or something else. If that doesn't happen, there are long term ramifications to consider. Say Twitch accepts that section of streamers and continues with MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY labels etc. Now obviously those videos won't be monetized so they are more of an expense now. Then, if they become a significant part of the website, they'll get questions from upper management. Despite silicon valley considering itself 'progressive', none of them will be okay with this (see patreon). Then comes the next step: Gaming competitions and other engagements. If a gaming competition accepts Twitch as a sponsor, people will see it as if the events agree with that part of Twitch, which is a no-no because those events have kids' parents to consider (remember, you still can't swear in most similar events and hosts get fined if they do). While this may seem like a weak argument, a weak enough link to sex industry is enough for investors to pull out. That's because they fear the occasional articles from The Daily Beast and The New Yorker about the effects of Twitch on teenagers' sexuality and the world in general. Now say one of those lead to someone from the NYT or Bloomberg looking for a story, you've got investors making calls who read a lengthy piece about how Twitch is preying on adolescent kids. Do you think this is too outlandish? Look at YouTube's 'weird videos aimed at kids' problem and how many people it is hiring and time it is investing to solve that problem. Twitch is more at risk since it is a newer brand still at the 'first impression' stage for many. And boy you don't want to get that wrong. Ask parents if they are okay with letting their kids have (paid!) membership on Twich after that news gets out. Parents are a huge effect on revenue of services their kids use.

ben_jones 9y ago

Devil's advocate: a small portion of streamers use their sexuality to solicit large donations from individuals who cannot afford such donations. Sure you can't police it, but it kind of underpins the site when every popular game has multiple people using this strategy for personal profit. It's highly visible, everybody knows about it. Shouldn't it at least be talked about?

neaanopri 9y ago
To Devil's Advocate the Devil's Advocate: This isn't a "sexualized streaming" issue, this is an issue of people donating money they don't have or can't afford. Outside of a personally invasive police state, I don't see a way of stopping this beyond some sort of flags for people who donate too much, similar to how gambling addiction is dealt with.
zaroth 9y ago
> solicit large donations from individuals who cannot afford such donations. This makes no sense. Either Dad should take back the credit card or adults can make their own decisions. Either way, I can’t see how that would have anything to do with the person streaming the video asking for cash! I mean, argue that cute girls have it easy getting cash for titilating their viewers. Argue that Twitch isn’t for tits. But arguing that boobs made someone spend money they couldn’t afford is just debasing to men everywhere.
- lotyrin 9y ago
  People don't exist in such clean categories, there is a spectrum on which everyone lies w.r.t. their abilities of self awareness and self control and their knowledge of their present and future situations, and therefore their ability to act within their own best interests. Communities which seek to maximize future outcomes for their members necessarily seek to aid them by limiting harmful actions. Where the lines are drawn, how the limits are enacted, and whether or not something is harmful is of course a matter of opinion.
  - zaroth 9y ago

jchw 9y ago

>and they ban anything with actual nudity pretty aggressively. Framing it as if they only ban aggressively for actual nudity is unfair. They ban aggressively on all kinds of fronts, including very subjective criteria, they just do it very inconsistently. For all I care, they can do whatever they want. But I do feel like they are hard to take seriously until they decide to apply their rules equally. They do not. They have egregiously played favorites in a way that is surprising for such a big and respected entity as Twitch. The thing that sucks is, the irresponsible ways that Twitch and YouTube behave hurts everyone, because they try to sell ads on content they know advertisers wouldn't like, and when advertisers wise up they overreact and become adverse to supporting small content creators. They would rather have "safe," big content creators instead, where they can feel like they're getting their money's worth.

r00fus 9y ago
> But I do feel like they are hard to take seriously until they decide to apply their rules equally. They do not. Any examples that can help me understand? Perhaps the advertising angle goes hand in hand with the above inequality. Ads are essentially buying real-estate in your brain. One way is to have exclusives (i.e., buying out the room), another is Yelp-style (pay-to-play).
- sAvi0r 9y ago
  Debate with Pink Sparkles - Twitch Boobie Streamers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7ZbIpT2PXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7ZbIpT2PXg (24:00) Twitch Booby Streamers - A Crisis of Culture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySypTRw8AvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySypTRw8AvY (50:06) If you've got the time, the above two videos are a great rundown of the current 'sexual streaming' situation on twitch by one of the first ever professional streamers. He can be a bit edgy at times, and there's swearing in the video if that's not your thing, but he has a solid, well thought-out opinion when it comes to most things. The whole situation is a mess, with crazy misogynist incel types on one side and Twitch on the other just sort of ignoring complaints and being complicit in the mass harassment of some of the women on their platform. If you want some examples of their inconsistent application of the rules, you could check out many of the things LegendaryLea was given short temporary bans for, then compare it to e.g. the stream IamSSunny was permanently banned for, which was later arbitrarily reduced to a temporary ban - driving home just how inconsistent they are with their own rules. Mildly NSFW though, so I won't post any direct examples here.

tomc1985 9y ago

Watching the world drift further and further towards moral prudery is so disheartening, especially when so much social progress was made on this front during the 60s and 70s. Society is so cyclical :/

hackinthebochs 9y ago
Agreed. I feel like I don't recognize liberalism in the kinds of things that people advocate for these days.
- jhanschoo 9y ago
  I actually don't associate this with liberalism. To me this seems an extension of the "real gamers" phenomenon, where certain gamers think that gaming and streaming should correspond to some good-at-the-game, purely-about-the-game ideal, which the sex appeal streams clearly do not fall into.
lawnchair_larry 9y ago
I'm not sure where you got the ideal that moral prudery is involved here, but it has nothing to do with that. The people who want "twitch girls" off the site do not have any objections to cam girls. The problem is that they're hijacking a service that was built for and by a specific community. Twitch has a large number of sex workers who are just using it as a conduit to find "customers" and are not contributing to the community, but detracting from it. There are other sites dedicated to that. This is especially problematic for female streamers who are community members and get constantly harassed with "tits or gtfo" or worse. They struggle to be taken seriously as gamers due to the cheap antics and "accidental wardrobe malfunctions" employed by the other women on the site, and are punished for it in terms of number of viewers.
- tomc1985 9y ago
  My age group (and younger) seems to be trending towards a more conservative-yet-inclusive set of morals. This new stink about camgirl streamers is just one facet of something wider and more encompassing. Or maybe I'm just pissed that people are growing up and favoring more family-friendly stuff.

vultour 9y ago

You mean how they hand out 24 hour bans to women for "accidentaly" showing genitals, meanwhile other streamers are getting permanently banned left and right for much smaller infractions?