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Twitch bans words “simp” and “virgin”
- aphextron 6y agoAt this point they should just whitelist like a children's MMO.
- mewpmewp2 6y agoThen it will be: "So I may please." Read first letters. Just a challenge to come up with combinations like that. This just feels like pr/political.move to just show they are doing something.
- jimmydorry 6y agoHaving consumed a lot of twitch content over COVID, this is 100% a rule to be selectively enforced to protect certain classes of streamers and remove the other "brand risk" kinds of streamers. This is already done with their arbitrary bans where "context matters", yet two streamers doing the same action can result in no punitive action for one and an indefinite ban for another.
- bawolff 6y agoI'm not familar with twitch, but that's how any sane discipline system works. Context always matters, regardless of whether its being a troll on the internet or if you're in court for murder charges and anything between. That's not to say rule makers can't abuse their discretion. They certainly can. But having discretion is not the same thing as abusing it.
- Google234 6y agoI think you missed the point. They use the pretext of context for selective and unfair enforcement
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- milesvp 6y agoAnd in other news twitch users pick some other random term to use pajoritively... Having maintained a list like this it’s amazing the words that get banned, and it’s a potential arms race. I’m not sure how you combat the kind of toxicity that I imagine twitch attracts, and I don’t envy the engineer that has to deal with it. As always when this topic comes up, I’m reminded to say, thanks Dang for all your efforts here.
- im3w1l 6y agoWell simp as a word kind of embeds an ideology that threatens twitch's profits. If twitch users started using cheapskate as the new pejorative maybe that wouldn't be the worst outcome ;)
- bawolff 6y agoWord blacklists are probably one of the worst examples of using a technical solution to try and solve a social problem. Language is full of redundencies. You'll never be able to ban the expression of an offensive idea by just banning words. There's infinite variations someone can use. You need the computer to understand context. Good luck with that without full-on strong AI.
- treeman79 6y agoIt’s low hanging fruit. Any developer can implement in under a day. Other solutions can take weeks to decades.
- Barrin92 6y agoI didn't really follow streaming closely, mostly I just used to watch Day9 because I was familiar with him from the early Starcraft days and a few other small streamers so I never really understood how toxic twitch is, but when I started to look at the popular categories honestly it was way worse than what I even thought. From people trying to trigger a woman who has tourettes to disguised n-word spam, it's way worse than even your average comment section. Not really sure how to fix it either. One big problem I think is this feature that streamers have figured out where you let viewers pay a few bucks of money and then they can use it for text-to-speech. It's basically designed to give trolls an outsized platform.
- Bakary 6y agoI am under the impression that the toxic userbase generates the most spending and engagement (not surprising if you think about it...) Therefore we are probably in feature-not-a-bug territory here.
- throwaway123409 6y agoI don’t think thats true. There’s people who have endless time (teenaged trolls) and there’s people who have endless money (lonely middle aged techies) The teenaged trolls (incels) provide the engagement, and the lonely middle aged techies (simps) provide the spending.
- bawolff 6y agoI don't know about twitch, but from my experience with other internet places, often the least mature people who you are sure must be some 15 year old asshole, turns out to be 40, and some of the most mature members turn out to be surprisingly young. I don't think we should assume all trolls all teens.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIt’s worth noting for comparison that many sports have a similar problem with their spectators - fans getting into fistfights and riots is far from unheard of.
- smabie 6y agoThey should just remove audio from the platform all together and "solve" the root of the problem.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoSome simpleton at Twitch is moving jerkily or spasmodically.
- redflame8 6y agoWhy is everyone so afraid to offend one another? Why do people get so offended over words by a stranger they’ve likely never met and never will meet
- bashwizard 6y agoWe're living in a snowflake society. Everyone gets offended by everything and nothing.
- olliej 6y agoAlternatively: people have finally said enough to having their ability to use the internet gated on their willingness to accept abuse from other users. Have you seen the response individuals get to calling out bullshit behavior? It takes guts to willingly put your name on any action to reduce the spread of abusive content. The people who do become victims of doxxing, swatting, unending abuse on all social media, including being sent porn, torture imagery, death threats, child pornography. Then someone say that they're the snowflake? They're not the babies having a tantrum over not being able to call people intentionally abusive names.
- broknbottle 6y agothis post offends me
- bawolff 6y agoBecause offending each other tends to make everyone angry and bitter. Being angry and bitter is generally not fun. Many online communities are joined with the intention to have fun, so it kind of defeats the point. Of course, that's not always the point. I doubt anyone joined 4chan due to its reputation for being a "nice" place.
- totony 6y ago>Because offending each other tends to make everyone angry and bitter. Not necessarily, you can get funny banter or a viewer-streamer interaction where all is made in good fun. The issue people are having is that twitch poorly understands or support this kind of nuance.
- OneGuy123 6y agoYour daily reminder that this will lead to more and more censorship: people will caught on an explode on some other part of the internet. But as long as it's not on their platform is all that matters. Incentives.
- TheOperator 6y agoThere is a direct financial incentive for twitch to encourage simping. No surprise that they're banning the word.
- anonunivgrad 6y agoA huge percent of Twitch revenue is from desperate young men obsessing over (and throwing money at) scantily dressed female streamers, so literally from simps. It makes sense that Twitch would ban people for mocking this pitiful behavior. Mocking is a good method of social norm enforcement, and every simp set straight is less money for Twitch.
- BlargMcLarg 6y agoDon't even need to be a scantily dressed female streamer these days. Just get a moving anime avatar and a voice changer. People are flocking to these new anime avatars that aren't even synced up properly (edit: talking about the trenders hopping on the train, not the Hololive cast). Many streamers either fall into collecting simps, or collecting simp-bashers. There are a few middleground streamers that make it without streaming popular things, but it is a little telling many rising talents are either glorified cam girls or loud, boisterous memers. If you don't fall into either of those extremes, you're fighting for a much smaller audience and it is very likely you'll hit a hard ceiling around 50-500 viewers with very few exceptions (especially people that don't have a huge legacy from the early 2010s).
- gary_0 6y agoCooking streams are going to have to think up new words to refer to certain kinds of olive oil.
- Bayart 6y agoIt seems Twitch doesn't want one of its core businesses (toned down cam girls) to be called what it is.
- ilaksh 6y agoMaybe try "desperado de zona amigos" or just desperado for short.
- Traster 6y agoFor those that actually read the article - they aren’t banning any words. They’re just updating their policy to recognise those are words that are often used to harass people. Harassing people is always against the ToS for these sites. I wonder if the people who constantly scream about oppression and free speech realise the damage they’re doing to their cause when they latch on to bad reporting like this.
- Olipro 6y ago"The best extra virgin olive oil I've ever tasted" Oh shit, why was I banned?
- UncleMeat 6y agoThe policy is against harassment, not a blanket ban of these words.
- haunter 6y agoThis is the company that removed the "blind playthrough" tag because that's ableist. Give an inch and they'll take a mile
- 574746754674 6y agoA lot of the men decried as "simps" are really mentally ill, socially isolated people caught in exploitative parasocial relationships. This documentary on parasocial relationships is a must watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3vD_CAYt4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3vD_CAYt4g People should be angry at the women exploiting these men for financial gain