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Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

151 points by danso 5y ago

logicslave 5y ago
My real question is all the young men that will have to marry all these women exposing themselves online for money. Three times in the past week I drove by a car where a girl put her venmo on the window. On dating apps its now common for girls to have a venmo in their profile. This culture is far more widespread than just twitch.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- s5300 5y ago
  I'm missing your question. Who is forcing anybody to marry who?
void_mint 5y ago
Twitch continues to pretend hot tub streams aren't intentionally sexually suggestive. What a joke. HN doesn't really do memes, but I made this because it seems relevant: https://imgflip.com/i/5ah3b7 https://imgflip.com/i/5ah3b7
- nichochar 5y ago
  They probably have ridiculously good engagement. Very tough for twitch to give that up more than likely.
  - void_mint 5y ago
    The joke is asserting that hot tub streams aren't sexually suggestive. The twitch community seems to love them, so of course Twitch will fight tooth and nail to keep them. But to suggest that they aren't sexually suggestive (and by proxy against Twitch ToS) is an absolute joke. They look like clowns.
    - robbrown451 5y ago
      They don't say that. Did you actually read what they wrote? It is very nuanced. Their rule is that it can't be "overtly or explicitly sexually suggestive", and they acknowledge that it lies on a spectrum. They have to draw the line somewhere. To some people, for instance the Amish or fundamentalism Muslims, the line is very different from that of typical Westerners.
      - void_mint 5y ago
        > There has been confusion around whether streams from hot tubs are permissible under our current policies, and we understand why our rules as written have contributed to that confusion. Under our current Nudity & Attire and Sexually Suggestive Content policies, streamers may appear in swimwear in contextually appropriate situations (at the beach, in a hot tub, for example), and we allow creative expression like body writing and body painting, provided the streamer has appropriate coverage as outlined by our attire policy. Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch. I again ask, is wearing a bikini, facing away from a camera and touching your toes for $5 not a sexual service?
        robbrown451 5y ago
        Did you ask that before? What is your point? Surely you recognize that these things lie on a spectrum. Is charging admission for beach volleyball a sexual service? No matter your level of prudishness, you will be able to find something that is right in the gray area.
        void_mint 5y ago
        > Is charging admission for beach volleyball a sexual service? This question actually perfectly articulates the difference. When you pay $5 to watch a beach volleyball tournament, you're paying for volleyball, and may as a side effect experience content that _some_ may find sexual. By Twitch's ToS, this should totally be allowed. As for my example, is there a nonsexual reason to pay a woman 5 dollars to bend over in front of you? What is it?
  - newacct583 5y ago
    Engagement doesn't pay the bills. In fact advertisers don't want to pay for this and don't want their advertising shown on these streams. Ultimately that's what the new policy is about. They're adding a new category so that advertisers can filter these things out.
    - Null-Set 5y ago
      It does pay the bills when it comes in the form of bits donations and subscriptions.
- Zoo3y 5y ago
  Twitch put it succinctly here: >Prohibiting every form of content that could be interpreted as suggestive would also result in far more restrictions on the video games and premium content that we currently allow, especially considering the ways that female characters are sometimes objectified or presented in a sexualized manner.
- Jonanin 5y ago
  I didn't know there were so many outraged prudes on twitch. Why should twitch have a sexually suggestive content rule in the first place? This rule actually seems reasonable: > Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch. I don't see what the huge issue with showing off your own sexiness is. Sheesh!
  - void_mint 5y ago
    > I didn't know there were so many outraged prudes on twitch. Why should twitch have a sexually suggestive content rule in the first place? If you're asserting that thinking hot tub streams break ToS, and Twitch's selective enforcement of that ToS causes problems very frequently on their platform, makes me an "outraged prude", well I'm sorry friend. Gaslighting an entire community doesn't seem like a good idea to me. > Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch. Is wearing a bikini, facing away from a camera and touching your toes for $5 not sexually explicit? > I don't see what the huge issue with showing off your own sexiness is. Sheesh! The issue is inconsistency. I think they should update the ToS to support these streamers - they're some of the biggest streamers on the platform. To suggest that those streamers are not being sexually suggestive is, again, an absolute joke. Twitch themselves made the determination that sexually suggestive content is not welcome on their platform, not me.
  - deanclatworthy 5y ago
    Because there are other places for that. Many people browse twitch at work (let’s not debate that) and don’t want to see that kind of content. Or on machines visible at home around other family members. These women have every right to do as they please, and most likely will continue to push the boundaries of twitch’s tolerance. I suspect we will have car washing streams or sauna streams next to get around the rule. But I don’t want to see it.
    - notJim 5y ago
      Wouldn't a simple solution be to allow people to disable or hide NSFW streams? Reddit and Twitter both have this, IIRC.
- Causality1 5y ago
  It's the same unholy transformation every company goes through. Creating a company from nothing usually takes heart and soul. Once a company is established you stop needing the true believers. You stop needing the love. Love and maximizing profits are not compatible. I'll bet if you had data on the number of Twitch t-shirts sold over the last five years it would be a steady decline. Almost any company built on appealing to a specific demographic will choose to genericize itself if it can. It makes a lot of money but I find it terribly sad.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  >Twitch continues to pretend hot tub streams aren't intentionally sexually suggestive. What a joke. What do you want Twitch to do? Ban women from wearing anything than a Burqa? Or ban Twitch streamers from going to the beach?
  - void_mint 5y ago
    What a truly excellent strawman. Do you see no middle ground between obviously sexual content and a Burqa? Is there no middle ground between writing someone's name on your breasts for $5 and going to the beach to swim?
    - nemothekid 5y ago
      >Is there no middle ground What is that middle ground? Do you codify and say women can't write things on their chest? What about in a video game? Should streaming Cyberpunk 2077 be banned - it clearly has sexual content? I'm not making a straw man - I'm trying to point out your essentially saying "they should ban content I don't like", which means Twitch will apply the rules in anyway you fit - another complaint you have brought up. Again, are you saying streamers shouldn't be allowed to go to the beach? Or are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to wear bikinis? And if another streamer watches a YouTube video that has a woman at the beach should they be banned?
      - void_mint 5y ago
        > Again, are you saying streamers shouldn't be allowed to go to the beach? Or are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to wear bikinis? And if another streamer watches a YouTube video that has a woman at the beach should they be banned? You should consider reading my post.
an_opabinia 5y ago
> especially considering the ways that female characters are sometimes objectified or presented in a sexualized manner Probably the most interesting and persuasive case they have. What if a human being dressed like League's Evelynn, a succubus? Would they be banned from Twitch? No, of course not. Would it be sexually suggestive? They've illuminated how disingenuous of a question that is, because Evelynn is a character in a game people stream.
- tschwimmer 5y ago
  A perhaps relevant anecdote: I interviewed at Twitch many years back and it happened to be on Halloween. My recruiter was dressed up as some league of legends character - perhaps Ahri (she had a tail and animal ears). It was not strictly western business casual but clearly it was not notably outside Twitch’s cultural norms.
parsimo2010 5y ago
They claim that they only prohibit things that are intentionally suggestive, but every streamer is afraid to accidentally show their feet because they get a ban. Twitch has inconsistencies in the way they apply their policies, and they sometimes don’t even tell a streamer why they got a ban. Creating a beach and hot tub category is the least of their worries. But at least it makes it easier for me to intentionally find attractive women in swimsuits who are streaming their sexiness unintentionally, and filter them out when I’m not looking for it.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  every streamer? Hard disagree, I see feet commonly and never never even heard of this.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    I've seen multiple streamers, especially women, who are playing games or normal twitch things and end up modifying their behavior because of fear of this rule. A whole bunch of twitch streamers are wearing slippers in case their feet end up on camera for a second. The whole rule started because people were monetizing feet content which obviously leans lewd, but the poor rule targeting has ended up with all kinds of weird consequences.
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      I watch an aussie food streamer, she's always barefoot in summer. She's been streaming for around 3 years, the only problems she had were related to excessive swearing. Not even spanking her partner was a problem.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
      Part of it is less fear of Twitch themselves but how some of the more toxic people in the audience react. Sadly if a woman does something like simply stand up and walk across the room showing their rear in an utterly ordinary way, some folks will not just say nasty stuff, they'll publish the clip on reddit subs like /r/LiveStreamFail and try to drive up a mob behind it. Then said streamer increasingly has this mob of viewers that's a combination of horney enthusiasm or hate watchers, neither of which they wanted in most cases. Sweet Anita has had some great discussions on this. She has Tourettes, including ticks that violate the ToS, but has successfully negotiated things with twitch to make that ok. So Twitch isn't straight up incapable of nuance here, they're just being inconsistent and incompetent.
autocorr 5y ago
> Community and advertiser feedback made clear that we need to offer more ways to control the content that’s recommended as well as where ads appear. So, we’re introducing a new category: Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches. If you have chosen swimwear that is allowed under the “Swim and Beaches” contextual exception to our standard Nudity and Attire policy, you should stream into the Pools, Hot Tubs and Beaches category. People set up kiddy-pools in their room with a bit of water to get this "contextual exception" for the express purpose of streaming suggestive content. Why not just remove the exception and let people stream sexually suggestive content and make a separate category for that without a ridiculous "beaches and pools" euphemism?
- wincy 5y ago
  Last time I was looking through streams I saw a woman in a bikini in a kiddie pool riding on a giant inflatable hot dog. I think her normal stream is painting herself with body paints? It’s hard to avoid and that plus the super coarse language make it seem insane to me that people let their kids watch Twitch streams. I’m sure there’s good content somewhere but it’s just not for me, if I want that stuff I’ll just go to Pornhub. Feels more honest.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    You're missing the point of Twitch and also its culture. Twitch is closer to cable TV than anything else, even the terminology is the same, with 'channels'. Except that anyone can create a channel and stream it within the rules. The fact that there's some content you don't like on other channels being does not mean you shouldn't watch the streamers that you like. Just like there's a wide variety in content thats broadcast on TV channels at different times of the day. There is even a Science and Technology channel with some developers streaming their coding. There are some game developers that only code their game while streaming the IDE. Here's Stephen Wolfram streaming right now. https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram Why should a Wolfram viewer care if there is some risque content on other categories? Even if you're looking around after the stream, you can just scroll past it like you do on Netflix. I personally mostly watch only the few streamers that I have followed. I rarely come across the streamers mentioned in the article except when there's some Twitch drama that I hear about on Reddit or from friends.
didibus 5y ago
> Sexually suggestive content–and where to draw the line–is an area that is particularly complex to assess, as sexual suggestiveness is a spectrum that involves some degree of personal interpretation of where the line falls This is just in general why I have an issue with prudeness in our society. I have no idea where prudeness comes from, is it innate to some people? Is it a taught trait? But it seems to cause so much discord and disagreement yet is inherently safe and peaceful.
- robbrown451 5y ago
  Probably it comes from the fact that humans are so naturally attracted to things sexual in nature, that without controls the whole world would look like the seediest red light district you can imagine. With everyone competing to be more and more extreme to get attention.
  - msbarnett 5y ago
    citation needed
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Let's imagine this is true - so what? Would people be unhappy? Would someone die? would people have less issues with their personal lives is sex expression wasn;t at troubles as it is?
    - robbrown451 5y ago
      I think it is a matter of preferences. More people would prefer it not be that way than would prefer it be that way. Probably people raising kids especially would rather not have explicit sexual stuff so in-your-face as it would likely be if we didn't have rules and societal standards about such things. I'm personally glad that my seven year old can use a computer and the web without being utterly bombarded with the type of stuff you'll see if you, say, stop over to the Pirate Bay or 4-chan or something. Then again, I'm glad I don't live in Victorian times where it is scandalous if a woman shows a little ankle. That doesn't mean people would die or that some arbitrary percentage of the population would cross some arbitrary level of unhappiness if it were your way. The world isn't so black and white. You presumably have different preferences. But you don't get to impose yours on the world just because you think they are better or more free or meet whatever ideals you have. We all kinda get to weigh in, and some sort of compromise is reached.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
The context here is that one of the most prolific twitch streamers recently had her advertising cut with no warning. (They still run ads on her stream, but she doesn’t get any of the proceeds, if I understand it.) Lots of these streamers have an Onlyfans link in their Twitter bio, though, and they make it pretty obvious that you should join “to see the good stuff.” https://twitter.com/amouranth/status/1395192511958851585?s=21 https://twitter.com/amouranth/status/1395192511958851585?s=2... Someone put it like “she’s doing the equivalent of holding a finger in front of your face and saying ‘not touching you! Not touching you!’ for a no-touching policy.”
- Afforess 5y ago
  > (They still run ads on her stream, but she doesn’t get any of the proceeds, if I understand it.) In what universe is this an acceptable outcome for a TOS violation?
  - mcherm 5y ago
    It wasn't a TOS violation until today's announcement... at the time her revenue stream was cut off her content was in compliance with the letter (if not the spirit) of twitch's published policy.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    >In what universe is this an acceptable outcome for a TOS violation? in the universe where it's unlikely for small streamers to successfully sue twitch for stealing revenue. It's an egregious abuse but its one that has to be first arbitrated and then sued over and its unlikely to succeed so no one has really done it.
- notJim 5y ago
  I'm not sure why it's relevant that they have OnlyFans links, unless Amazon's position is that no one who has an OnlyFans or who makes adult content on other platforms is allowed on Twitch. > “she’s doing the equivalent of holding a finger in front of your face and saying ‘not touching you! Not touching you!’ for a no-touching policy.” In other words, she's in compliance with the policy?
theonlyklas 5y ago
Go outside and touch grass instead of watching these streams or caring about them. It's 10x more fulfilling and productive.
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  And risk seeing someone in a bikini? No thanks.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  Grass usually doesn't make people horny.
- sol_invictus 5y ago
  ”I don’t need your fantasy women!” - William T. Riker
eertami 5y ago
So no changes really, except they've made it a distinct category so that people can find this content easily without leaving the site and going to something like booba.tv for discovery (nsfw I guess, it is curated links to "sexually suggestive" twitch streamers).
- mcherm 5y ago
  > So no changes really, except they've made it a distinct category so that people can find this content easily Making it a distinct category also means that both advertisers and viewers can AVOID the content easily.
emilfihlman 5y ago
Nobody cares about hottub streamers. We care about your idiotic double standards and banning of streamers.
29athrowaway 5y ago
tl;dr: no ban. new category (pools, hot tubs and beaches). The revenue model of hot tub streamers is herding simps and sending them to their onlyfans via one level of indirection like twitter.
fasteddie31003 5y ago
It's a slippery slope. There are a lot of things that are intentionally sexual suggestive in society that we don't bat an eye at such as makeup, push-up bras, and yoga pants. When will they start banning these things?
jedberg 5y ago
I never used Twitch before the pandemic -- watching people play games was never really my thing. But then I discovered the entire second use of Twitch, streaming music. Since March 2020, it's been possible to find someone streaming music at pretty much any time of day. One day I was watching around 2am Pacific time, and the stream ended. I was looking for another one when I saw someone in the music category with 13,000 viewers (most DJs don't crack 1000). So I went to check it out. It was a hot tub streamer holding a guitar while she thanked people for their tips and subs. In the 10 minutes I watched, she never once played anything. I was fascinated by the fact that she had so many people basically just watching her in a hot tub and giving her money. She wasn't doing anything compelling. To each their own, but I had no idea there were so many people on the internet willing to pay for such a thing.
- poyu 5y ago
  > I was fascinated by the fact that she had so many people basically just watching her in a hot tub and giving her money. She wasn't doing anything compelling. Wait until you learn about VTubers.
  - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
    I mean don't they do the same thing as most people on twitch (video games) just with a fake avatar? Honestly I still remember when face cam was rare and you had no idea what most streamers looked like.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    I just Googled that. I'm equally fascinated.
    - Balgair 5y ago
      On one hand, it seems like people that watch trains. I've no idea why people like to watch trains, but I'm sure I have equally strange interests compared to them. On the other hand, some of these stans are paying a lot of cold hard cash to these streamers, just to get a shout-out, maybe, and that is clearly insane. I've no idea what to make of the whole situation and perhaps I should just go look at some other corner of the web.
gabereiser 5y ago
Hasn’t the business model been either top-notch gaming or this, the soft core porn niche? I mean, most women streaming on twitch are using their looks and body for viewership. It’s the oldest play in the book. It’s all over YouTube as well (show a girl in a thong, get a million views). Twitch should just create a NSFW/Verified 18+ section and be done with it. I think the real issue is with advertisers. They don’t want to be associated with porn or even suggestive content. Twitch won’t police their platform so people are going to continue meeting the “bare minimum” definition and argue they are following the rules.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  > I mean, most women streaming on twitch are using their looks and body for viewership. It’s the oldest play in the book This is the real sticking point. If they came down hard against titty streamers they would be destroying a large portion of their own viewer base. Not to mention how bad it would look from a "Twitch is being sexist" viewpoint. Top male streamers would continue to do extremely well, male streamers would be unaffected almost entirely ( I bet some stream shirtless or whatever sometimes and might get in trouble from that ) But lets be real, such a crackdown would basically only effect women.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    Also any policy like that would hit women who are into positive body expression, without trying to use it as a popularity tool. I.e. they'd have to figure out how to tell apart those who work on being suggestive for money and that who just enjoy being suggestive in life. Kind of like the repeating issue for https://mobile.twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg https://mobile.twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg who as far as I can tell is strongly in the second category. But that's in the mind reading area - they just can't do it reliably.
    - bluefirebrand 5y ago
      > they'd have to figure out how to tell apart those who work on being suggestive for money and that who just enjoy being suggestive in life I don't think they'd bother trying to tell them apart. The issue Twitch wants to police here isn't the willingness or coercion, it's the suggestiveness behaviour entirely.
rayrag 5y ago
> So, we’re introducing a new category: Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches. So in one word - Softporn.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Well you can show tits on the beach but not on Twitch/youtube/etc,
  - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    This is false. Youtube allows showing tits.
gary_0 5y ago
Aside from the "I know it when I see it"[0] angle, here are my thoughts. Long, long ago, I dabbled in content hosting, and still sometimes daydream about doing business along those lines. When it comes to the thought of my hypothetical service hosting purely sexual content it's not due to any puritanism that I'd prefer that my platform have rules against it. Sexual content (ie. porn) brings with it regulatory burdens, potential public scrutiny, a large revenue stream that might end up incentivizing product development detrimental to the service's original purpose, and from a marketing perspective it might cause the public to associate your service with certain kinds of content (see: Tumblr) which limits your growth options. It seems to me that Twitch so far isn't seeing the drawbacks I just listed when it comes to hot tub streams, hence their response. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
- throway98752343 5y ago
  The test of "the people who like that kind of thing also like this" could also apply here to decide whether a stream is sexual or not. Recommendation engines cut both ways.
- rgoulter 5y ago
  Yeah. The post makes much more sense to me in terms of arguing that it doesn't go against regulations / rules of their payment processors, etc. It seems they've had trouble in the past trying to draw lines around sexual activity. It's a safe bet that if hot tub streams got banned, all the involved streamers would still keep toeing the line as far as they can. Drawing a broad line & cordoning it off seems reasonable. Though I wonder if there remains an incentive for pushing boundaries in 'just chatting'.
  - chevill 5y ago
    >Though I wonder if there remains an incentive for pushing boundaries in 'just chatting'. I don't know about pushing boundaries but there will still certainly be lots of intentionally sexualized content in the just chatting category, it will just be milder than the new category on average.
nickysielicki 5y ago
These streams are closer to pornography than most people realize. There's a reason that these streams get so much attention: 14 year old young men love watching video games, so they go to sites where they can watch video games. If you start serving softcore pornography on the same website, well gee wiz, who could have guessed that it would be pretty lucrative? You don't have to be a prude to have a problem with this. It's not a matter of stigmatizing sex work or being anti-women, it's about profiting by serving porn-lite on the same site where children are likely to be. I don't personally care, but I'm floored that a company like Twitch/Amazon, with hundreds of people in HR and PR, would not play it safe and just ban it.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Given the sheer amounts of money being flung at streamers of all stripes by their audience directly I doubt the majority of the audience is 14!
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    That doesn't follow; maybe the oldest 10% of people are 90% of donations.
    - thewakalix 5y ago
      See: “whales”.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      And maybe they’re not, I made no statement of fact just doubt the characterisation of Twitch being full of 14 year olds.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  Twitch has no spine. If it was up to Amazon they'd probably ban it though.
  - 5y ago
nprz 5y ago
> being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules Phew! Glad I'll still be able to host my twitch stream!
Manuel_D 5y ago
I think there's a significant amount of nuance in this situation. On the one hand, I don't object to people steaming and monetizing suggestive (or even explicit) content. These content creators should be able to produce and monetize this content without stigma. On the other hand, I do think the juxtaposition of this content with the rest of Twitch content is problematic. I think putting this content in the same category as gaming content unintentionally conveys the message, "Men garner popularity by exhibiting their skills, women garner popularity by exhibiting their bodies." I suspect this juxtaposition of the most popular male streamers' content with that of some of the most popular women's content on the platform and exposing this young people ends up fostering non-productive attitudes among boys and young men. Other women on the platform have complained about their audiences pressuring them into producing similar content. I've also heard from women and girls that it's off-putting to see the prevalence of women in bikinis, not playing any games, on a platform that ostensibly about gaming. I think Twitch is in the right to see this as a problem. But what's the solution here? On the one hand, I think it's giving these streamers the short end of the stick to have ambiguous policies and issue unexpected demonetizations or bans. Maybe a more effective approach would be to have stronger separation between "just chatting" content and gaming content, to retain this content but mitigate the problem of that juxtaposition. I suspect this is what the "Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches" category will probably be, but maybe it'd be better to spin this off into sister platform that isn't explicitly tied into gaming.
- KapKap55 5y ago
  Twitch does not see it as a problem. Advertisers (the actual important group in this discussion) and the gaming side of the Twitch community do care, for different reasons. This situation has been ongoing for awhile with individuals pushing the boundary of sexual content, but this response from Twitch only occurred after a partner who creates this type of content pissed off Twitch's advertisers.
  - sleepybrett 5y ago
    Twitch does see a problem. In the past they have handed out bans for people streaming in low cut blouses. Yet somehow now women in bikinis dry-humping pool toys in a portable hot tub set up in their living rooms is cool. Like facebook or twitter they just need to have CONSISTENT AND CONSISTENTLY APPLIED rules. I can make a judgement on your platform when those two things are happening.
goatcode 5y ago
Bring back the Thot Audit.
Ekaros 5y ago
Twitch is truly a mess... The enforcement is all over the place... Not that Youtube isn't also "interesting" in some content moderation. Outright nudity is possible with thin veil of "educational" content. I wish the platforms just applied rules equally and had clear rules. And not punish past content with new rules. But maybe that is too much to ask these days...
system2 5y ago
Hah every girl streaming in tubs have pornhub channels as well as onlyfans. If we know it, twitch knows it too. This is such a bullshit post.
smbv 5y ago
> Second, while we have guidelines about sexually suggestive content, being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules, and Twitch will not take enforcement action against women, or anyone on our service, for their perceived attractiveness. I can't believe that this has to be spelled out.
throwkeep 5y ago
Here's the new category: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Pools%2C%20Hot%20Tubs%2C%20and%20Beaches https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Pools%2C%20Hot%20Tubs%2...
thinkingemote 5y ago
The main thing is these are not "hot tubs" they are indoors, in a normal room, an apartment, in a kiddies play pool, with kiddies inflatable equipment. The water is, additionally, cold and a few inches deep. No-one in the world does this type of activity privately or in public. It's so obviously soft core pornography and way away from the sensible "appropriate behaviour and clothing rules" that it's absurd. Now there is the debate about sexuality and sex work. This is not applicable here. Amazon's Twitch is saying it's not sex work. One sure fire thought experiment is that, if it's not porn, would you be okay with a 13 yr old (the age limit on twitch) doing it? To give credit to Amazon's Twitch they are dammned whatever they do.
- soared 5y ago
  Twitch is certainly aware of your argument because it’s true. Twitch doesn’t think there are actually hot tubs in peoples living rooms. They know it’s basically soft core porn. They’re definitely not going to call it that. But they’ll separate it out from the rest of their content and let users and advertisers opt out of it.
  - degenerate 5y ago
    I think this is the best option, at least for now. Shove all of these streamers into one category so they are now compete against each other. Previously, you could choose any game or category and scroll down until you inevitably found a streamer in a bikini. Now the entire category is bikinis, so there is a lot less uniqueness to their stream. It's a good solution to a problem that might go away on its own with the new rule.
- ilaksh 5y ago
  Well, the one I was just watching was definitely hot water and pretty deep. PCgamer is at this moment streaming Geralt taking a bath in the Hot Tubs category. Lol.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "if it's not porn, would you be okay with a 13 yr old (the age limit on twitch) doing it?" That's about the age people discover porn, so the test doesn't work.
grodes 5y ago
man throwing money to hot tub: . twitch: I like money
tibbydudeza 5y ago
I really don't get it. What is the joy of watching a girl in a bathing costume sitting on a inflatable horse in a kiddy pool showing off her behind every now and again ???. Most of the chat are about as dumb as bricks so you can't be there for the conversation.
- serf 5y ago
  >What is the joy of watching a girl in a bathing costume sitting on a inflatable horse in a kiddy pool showing off her behind every now and again ???. sex sells. people like looking at other people half-nude and becoming aroused; it's about as simple a marketing tactic that exists.
  - tibbydudeza 5y ago
    Thinking about it more - it is most likely just very lonely men that is seeking a connection to an attractive women - It reminds of Japan and their hostess clubs - no sex just companionship and chatting for an hour at a price.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  There are as many Rule 34 categories as humanity has dreams, and no one has solved that problem at humankind scale. > I really don't get it. What is the joy You're asking why one specific instance of Rule 34 exists. It's because all instances of Rule 34 exist, and this one just happens to have become popular on Twitch. Rule 34, while distressing, is unfortunately a very real aspect of the human race at scale; it essentially says that if you can imagine something, it will be found erotic by someone, no matter how much it is or isn't erotic to you. I think it was first invented in the time of Usenet, when people would create ever-more-specific newsgroup hierarchies, but I'm honestly not sure. When we democratized content creation, we made it possible for niche fetishes to be discoverable, to form communities, and to financially support content creators. For example, "1800s-era bathing costumes" is absolutely a niche that some subset of humanity will pay money to see more of. There are much more specific, weird, and uncomfortable niches. (We're lucky that this one is so boring and dull, relatively speaking, because it's possible to discuss it without squick.) It's not about "getting" why it's erotic to some and not others. That's between you and your own erotic desires or lack thereof for any given content. It's about the greater question of how and when society will come to terms with erotic content appearing in "general content" pools on platforms that co-mingle all user-created content without human curation. In this case, Twitch openly admits that they haven't solved that problem: > This is not intended to be our long-term solution to improve brand targeting capabilities and increase personalization in our recommendations. It does, however, solve a few issues for all audiences in the near term. But they do clearly understand that, even within the bounds of "no nudity or sex", it's still very possible for content to be erotic to some and uninteresting/offensive to others. I am very curious to see what their next steps will be after this temporary patch, because there's no way to categorize or exclude all Rule 34 content on any content platform where users can upload content without human review and classification, and I don't think that Twitch's short-term compromise today will be a viable long-term solution.
tibbydudeza 5y ago
As long as they shove all those pool streamers into that specific category and don't show it at all on their main recommendation screen than I will be happy.
tareqak 5y ago
> We recently suspended advertising on some channels that were flagged by the majority of our advertiser base and failed to notify them. Our creators rely on us, and we should have alerted affected streamers to this change before it happened–it was a mistake not to do so. We’re working with individual creators to address their specific situations and restore ads where appropriate. What do others here think about Twitch’s behavior here? Should there be SLAs for actions taken on an account and notification of the account holder of said action?
loudandskittish 5y ago
What I don't understand is why people care so much...
david-cako 5y ago
Nice, it's good that they're bringing clarity since there's so much of this sort of content now. Hopefully Twitch becomes more consistent and transparent with how they enforce content policies moving forward. There's very unclear feedback or warnings provided to streamers, and there seems to be quite a bit of nepotism. All sorts of streamers from all different communities can corroborate this.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
It’s a tricky issue because it pits the capitalistic tendencies of wanting to make as much money as possible against the ethical tendencies of trying not to contribute to most girls’ body issues. These are the types of conversations people are having around the data showing a steady decrease in women’s subjective well being over the last many decades: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp09-11bk.pdf https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp09-11bk.pdf
dsr_ 5y ago
Tide and Coke and GM would definitely advertise on PornHub if they didn't know that a vocal chunk of their consumers would actively protest, and stop buying those products. But advertising on a website that is oriented towards Let's Play and educational lectures and video games? Of course! Twitch just needs to make the sexual content deniable and findable at the same time... which they have just done.
fierro 5y ago
being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules
cratermoon 5y ago
FOSTA/SESTA strikes again https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27059300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27059300
jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
The next looming issue for Twitch is the Slots/Video Poker streamers. Similar to swim suits, I don't think gambling as a whole should be totally against ToS. There are some great poker streamers, and there've been some quite successful charity drives around casino games. But there's also one big streamer, famous with the CoD audience, that lately has been playing video poker on one of those bitcoin casino sites. He has swings of up to $100k in a single night. His audience slants young and there's typically about 40k people watching him. That... makes me a bit uncomfortable. I'm far from someone that wants a nanny state, but I'm squeamish about the idea of say a 20 year old kid watching this behavior as a role model, trying to emulate it, and losing a non trivial amount of money at a point in their life where that would have a huge lasting impact. This streamer can only do this because he's insanely rich so even $100k is just play money.
- throway98752343 5y ago
  A test I like to use to isolate my concerns is replacement. Replace "actual money" with "fake money" in this casino example. Is the streamer playing poker entertaining, or are people watching because of the high-stakes gambling? Replace "woman" for "man" in these tub streams. Are people watching for the games or the streamer's personality, or for their body? I'd go so far as to say you should be able to replace within any protected class with minimal effect on viewership. If that's not true, there's some bias being expressed.
  - prnyjn 5y ago
    This is a great way to think through and analyse this. Did you come up with it by yourself, or did you read about it somewhere?
    - throway98752343 5y ago
      Myself, but I can't be the first.
- 0xy 5y ago
  The ship has sailed on that, given EA and Activision have already pioneered slot machines for kids known as loot boxes.
marsven_422 5y ago
This is why I teach my son's the difference between a quality women and trash.
ibaikov 5y ago
Introduce a new category: a little bit suggestive but still within our rules and guidelines
bo3OU 5y ago
Twitch is open for 13 years old people, as a streamer (I don't remember who) said, what if a 13-year-old started a hot tub stream? Will it be sexually suggestive content or is it a 13 years old kid having innocent fun ?
DeathlyRage 5y ago
this is what twitch has become RIP, https://www.twitch.tv/exohydrax https://www.twitch.tv/exohydrax
DeathlyRage 5y ago
This is what twitch has become RIP. https://www.twitch.tv/exohydrax https://www.twitch.tv/exohydrax

151 points by danso 5y ago

My real question is all the young men that will have to marry all these women exposing themselves online for money. Three times in the past week I drove by a car where a girl put her venmo on the window. On dating apps its now common for girls to have a venmo in their profile. This culture is far more widespread than just twitch.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
s5300 5y ago
I'm missing your question. Who is forcing anybody to marry who?

void_mint 5y ago

Twitch continues to pretend hot tub streams aren't intentionally sexually suggestive. What a joke. HN doesn't really do memes, but I made this because it seems relevant: https://imgflip.com/i/5ah3b7 https://imgflip.com/i/5ah3b7

nichochar 5y ago
They probably have ridiculously good engagement. Very tough for twitch to give that up more than likely.
- void_mint 5y ago
  The joke is asserting that hot tub streams aren't sexually suggestive. The twitch community seems to love them, so of course Twitch will fight tooth and nail to keep them. But to suggest that they aren't sexually suggestive (and by proxy against Twitch ToS) is an absolute joke. They look like clowns.
  - robbrown451 5y ago
    They don't say that. Did you actually read what they wrote? It is very nuanced. Their rule is that it can't be "overtly or explicitly sexually suggestive", and they acknowledge that it lies on a spectrum. They have to draw the line somewhere. To some people, for instance the Amish or fundamentalism Muslims, the line is very different from that of typical Westerners.
    - void_mint 5y ago
      > There has been confusion around whether streams from hot tubs are permissible under our current policies, and we understand why our rules as written have contributed to that confusion. Under our current Nudity & Attire and Sexually Suggestive Content policies, streamers may appear in swimwear in contextually appropriate situations (at the beach, in a hot tub, for example), and we allow creative expression like body writing and body painting, provided the streamer has appropriate coverage as outlined by our attire policy. Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch. I again ask, is wearing a bikini, facing away from a camera and touching your toes for $5 not a sexual service?
      - robbrown451 5y ago
        Did you ask that before? What is your point? Surely you recognize that these things lie on a spectrum. Is charging admission for beach volleyball a sexual service? No matter your level of prudishness, you will be able to find something that is right in the gray area.
        void_mint 5y ago
        > Is charging admission for beach volleyball a sexual service? This question actually perfectly articulates the difference. When you pay $5 to watch a beach volleyball tournament, you're paying for volleyball, and may as a side effect experience content that _some_ may find sexual. By Twitch's ToS, this should totally be allowed. As for my example, is there a nonsexual reason to pay a woman 5 dollars to bend over in front of you? What is it?
- newacct583 5y ago
  Engagement doesn't pay the bills. In fact advertisers don't want to pay for this and don't want their advertising shown on these streams. Ultimately that's what the new policy is about. They're adding a new category so that advertisers can filter these things out.
  - Null-Set 5y ago
    It does pay the bills when it comes in the form of bits donations and subscriptions.
Zoo3y 5y ago
Twitch put it succinctly here: >Prohibiting every form of content that could be interpreted as suggestive would also result in far more restrictions on the video games and premium content that we currently allow, especially considering the ways that female characters are sometimes objectified or presented in a sexualized manner.
Jonanin 5y ago
I didn't know there were so many outraged prudes on twitch. Why should twitch have a sexually suggestive content rule in the first place? This rule actually seems reasonable: > Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch. I don't see what the huge issue with showing off your own sexiness is. Sheesh!
- void_mint 5y ago
  > I didn't know there were so many outraged prudes on twitch. Why should twitch have a sexually suggestive content rule in the first place? If you're asserting that thinking hot tub streams break ToS, and Twitch's selective enforcement of that ToS causes problems very frequently on their platform, makes me an "outraged prude", well I'm sorry friend. Gaslighting an entire community doesn't seem like a good idea to me. > Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch. Is wearing a bikini, facing away from a camera and touching your toes for $5 not sexually explicit? > I don't see what the huge issue with showing off your own sexiness is. Sheesh! The issue is inconsistency. I think they should update the ToS to support these streamers - they're some of the biggest streamers on the platform. To suggest that those streamers are not being sexually suggestive is, again, an absolute joke. Twitch themselves made the determination that sexually suggestive content is not welcome on their platform, not me.
- deanclatworthy 5y ago
  Because there are other places for that. Many people browse twitch at work (let’s not debate that) and don’t want to see that kind of content. Or on machines visible at home around other family members. These women have every right to do as they please, and most likely will continue to push the boundaries of twitch’s tolerance. I suspect we will have car washing streams or sauna streams next to get around the rule. But I don’t want to see it.
  - notJim 5y ago
    Wouldn't a simple solution be to allow people to disable or hide NSFW streams? Reddit and Twitter both have this, IIRC.
Causality1 5y ago
It's the same unholy transformation every company goes through. Creating a company from nothing usually takes heart and soul. Once a company is established you stop needing the true believers. You stop needing the love. Love and maximizing profits are not compatible. I'll bet if you had data on the number of Twitch t-shirts sold over the last five years it would be a steady decline. Almost any company built on appealing to a specific demographic will choose to genericize itself if it can. It makes a lot of money but I find it terribly sad.
nemothekid 5y ago
>Twitch continues to pretend hot tub streams aren't intentionally sexually suggestive. What a joke. What do you want Twitch to do? Ban women from wearing anything than a Burqa? Or ban Twitch streamers from going to the beach?
- void_mint 5y ago
  What a truly excellent strawman. Do you see no middle ground between obviously sexual content and a Burqa? Is there no middle ground between writing someone's name on your breasts for $5 and going to the beach to swim?
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    >Is there no middle ground What is that middle ground? Do you codify and say women can't write things on their chest? What about in a video game? Should streaming Cyberpunk 2077 be banned - it clearly has sexual content? I'm not making a straw man - I'm trying to point out your essentially saying "they should ban content I don't like", which means Twitch will apply the rules in anyway you fit - another complaint you have brought up. Again, are you saying streamers shouldn't be allowed to go to the beach? Or are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to wear bikinis? And if another streamer watches a YouTube video that has a woman at the beach should they be banned?
    - void_mint 5y ago
      > Again, are you saying streamers shouldn't be allowed to go to the beach? Or are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to wear bikinis? And if another streamer watches a YouTube video that has a woman at the beach should they be banned? You should consider reading my post.

an_opabinia 5y ago

> especially considering the ways that female characters are sometimes objectified or presented in a sexualized manner Probably the most interesting and persuasive case they have. What if a human being dressed like League's Evelynn, a succubus? Would they be banned from Twitch? No, of course not. Would it be sexually suggestive? They've illuminated how disingenuous of a question that is, because Evelynn is a character in a game people stream.

tschwimmer 5y ago
A perhaps relevant anecdote: I interviewed at Twitch many years back and it happened to be on Halloween. My recruiter was dressed up as some league of legends character - perhaps Ahri (she had a tail and animal ears). It was not strictly western business casual but clearly it was not notably outside Twitch’s cultural norms.

parsimo2010 5y ago

They claim that they only prohibit things that are intentionally suggestive, but every streamer is afraid to accidentally show their feet because they get a ban. Twitch has inconsistencies in the way they apply their policies, and they sometimes don’t even tell a streamer why they got a ban. Creating a beach and hot tub category is the least of their worries. But at least it makes it easier for me to intentionally find attractive women in swimsuits who are streaming their sexiness unintentionally, and filter them out when I’m not looking for it.

Semaphor 5y ago
every streamer? Hard disagree, I see feet commonly and never never even heard of this.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  I've seen multiple streamers, especially women, who are playing games or normal twitch things and end up modifying their behavior because of fear of this rule. A whole bunch of twitch streamers are wearing slippers in case their feet end up on camera for a second. The whole rule started because people were monetizing feet content which obviously leans lewd, but the poor rule targeting has ended up with all kinds of weird consequences.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    I watch an aussie food streamer, she's always barefoot in summer. She's been streaming for around 3 years, the only problems she had were related to excessive swearing. Not even spanking her partner was a problem.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    Part of it is less fear of Twitch themselves but how some of the more toxic people in the audience react. Sadly if a woman does something like simply stand up and walk across the room showing their rear in an utterly ordinary way, some folks will not just say nasty stuff, they'll publish the clip on reddit subs like /r/LiveStreamFail and try to drive up a mob behind it. Then said streamer increasingly has this mob of viewers that's a combination of horney enthusiasm or hate watchers, neither of which they wanted in most cases. Sweet Anita has had some great discussions on this. She has Tourettes, including ticks that violate the ToS, but has successfully negotiated things with twitch to make that ok. So Twitch isn't straight up incapable of nuance here, they're just being inconsistent and incompetent.

autocorr 5y ago

> Community and advertiser feedback made clear that we need to offer more ways to control the content that’s recommended as well as where ads appear. So, we’re introducing a new category: Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches. If you have chosen swimwear that is allowed under the “Swim and Beaches” contextual exception to our standard Nudity and Attire policy, you should stream into the Pools, Hot Tubs and Beaches category. People set up kiddy-pools in their room with a bit of water to get this "contextual exception" for the express purpose of streaming suggestive content. Why not just remove the exception and let people stream sexually suggestive content and make a separate category for that without a ridiculous "beaches and pools" euphemism?

wincy 5y ago
Last time I was looking through streams I saw a woman in a bikini in a kiddie pool riding on a giant inflatable hot dog. I think her normal stream is painting herself with body paints? It’s hard to avoid and that plus the super coarse language make it seem insane to me that people let their kids watch Twitch streams. I’m sure there’s good content somewhere but it’s just not for me, if I want that stuff I’ll just go to Pornhub. Feels more honest.
- belltaco 5y ago
  You're missing the point of Twitch and also its culture. Twitch is closer to cable TV than anything else, even the terminology is the same, with 'channels'. Except that anyone can create a channel and stream it within the rules. The fact that there's some content you don't like on other channels being does not mean you shouldn't watch the streamers that you like. Just like there's a wide variety in content thats broadcast on TV channels at different times of the day. There is even a Science and Technology channel with some developers streaming their coding. There are some game developers that only code their game while streaming the IDE. Here's Stephen Wolfram streaming right now. https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram Why should a Wolfram viewer care if there is some risque content on other categories? Even if you're looking around after the stream, you can just scroll past it like you do on Netflix. I personally mostly watch only the few streamers that I have followed. I rarely come across the streamers mentioned in the article except when there's some Twitch drama that I hear about on Reddit or from friends.

didibus 5y ago

> Sexually suggestive content–and where to draw the line–is an area that is particularly complex to assess, as sexual suggestiveness is a spectrum that involves some degree of personal interpretation of where the line falls This is just in general why I have an issue with prudeness in our society. I have no idea where prudeness comes from, is it innate to some people? Is it a taught trait? But it seems to cause so much discord and disagreement yet is inherently safe and peaceful.

robbrown451 5y ago
Probably it comes from the fact that humans are so naturally attracted to things sexual in nature, that without controls the whole world would look like the seediest red light district you can imagine. With everyone competing to be more and more extreme to get attention.
- msbarnett 5y ago
  citation needed
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Let's imagine this is true - so what? Would people be unhappy? Would someone die? would people have less issues with their personal lives is sex expression wasn;t at troubles as it is?
  - robbrown451 5y ago
    I think it is a matter of preferences. More people would prefer it not be that way than would prefer it be that way. Probably people raising kids especially would rather not have explicit sexual stuff so in-your-face as it would likely be if we didn't have rules and societal standards about such things. I'm personally glad that my seven year old can use a computer and the web without being utterly bombarded with the type of stuff you'll see if you, say, stop over to the Pirate Bay or 4-chan or something. Then again, I'm glad I don't live in Victorian times where it is scandalous if a woman shows a little ankle. That doesn't mean people would die or that some arbitrary percentage of the population would cross some arbitrary level of unhappiness if it were your way. The world isn't so black and white. You presumably have different preferences. But you don't get to impose yours on the world just because you think they are better or more free or meet whatever ideals you have. We all kinda get to weigh in, and some sort of compromise is reached.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

The context here is that one of the most prolific twitch streamers recently had her advertising cut with no warning. (They still run ads on her stream, but she doesn’t get any of the proceeds, if I understand it.) Lots of these streamers have an Onlyfans link in their Twitter bio, though, and they make it pretty obvious that you should join “to see the good stuff.” https://twitter.com/amouranth/status/1395192511958851585?s=21 https://twitter.com/amouranth/status/1395192511958851585?s=2... Someone put it like “she’s doing the equivalent of holding a finger in front of your face and saying ‘not touching you! Not touching you!’ for a no-touching policy.”

Afforess 5y ago
> (They still run ads on her stream, but she doesn’t get any of the proceeds, if I understand it.) In what universe is this an acceptable outcome for a TOS violation?
- mcherm 5y ago
  It wasn't a TOS violation until today's announcement... at the time her revenue stream was cut off her content was in compliance with the letter (if not the spirit) of twitch's published policy.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  >In what universe is this an acceptable outcome for a TOS violation? in the universe where it's unlikely for small streamers to successfully sue twitch for stealing revenue. It's an egregious abuse but its one that has to be first arbitrated and then sued over and its unlikely to succeed so no one has really done it.
notJim 5y ago
I'm not sure why it's relevant that they have OnlyFans links, unless Amazon's position is that no one who has an OnlyFans or who makes adult content on other platforms is allowed on Twitch. > “she’s doing the equivalent of holding a finger in front of your face and saying ‘not touching you! Not touching you!’ for a no-touching policy.” In other words, she's in compliance with the policy?

theonlyklas 5y ago

Go outside and touch grass instead of watching these streams or caring about them. It's 10x more fulfilling and productive.

cool_dude85 5y ago
And risk seeing someone in a bikini? No thanks.
speedgoose 5y ago
Grass usually doesn't make people horny.
sol_invictus 5y ago
”I don’t need your fantasy women!” - William T. Riker

eertami 5y ago

So no changes really, except they've made it a distinct category so that people can find this content easily without leaving the site and going to something like booba.tv for discovery (nsfw I guess, it is curated links to "sexually suggestive" twitch streamers).

mcherm 5y ago
> So no changes really, except they've made it a distinct category so that people can find this content easily Making it a distinct category also means that both advertisers and viewers can AVOID the content easily.

emilfihlman 5y ago

Nobody cares about hottub streamers. We care about your idiotic double standards and banning of streamers.

29athrowaway 5y ago

tl;dr: no ban. new category (pools, hot tubs and beaches). The revenue model of hot tub streamers is herding simps and sending them to their onlyfans via one level of indirection like twitter.

fasteddie31003 5y ago

It's a slippery slope. There are a lot of things that are intentionally sexual suggestive in society that we don't bat an eye at such as makeup, push-up bras, and yoga pants. When will they start banning these things?

jedberg 5y ago

I never used Twitch before the pandemic -- watching people play games was never really my thing. But then I discovered the entire second use of Twitch, streaming music. Since March 2020, it's been possible to find someone streaming music at pretty much any time of day. One day I was watching around 2am Pacific time, and the stream ended. I was looking for another one when I saw someone in the music category with 13,000 viewers (most DJs don't crack 1000). So I went to check it out. It was a hot tub streamer holding a guitar while she thanked people for their tips and subs. In the 10 minutes I watched, she never once played anything. I was fascinated by the fact that she had so many people basically just watching her in a hot tub and giving her money. She wasn't doing anything compelling. To each their own, but I had no idea there were so many people on the internet willing to pay for such a thing.

poyu 5y ago
> I was fascinated by the fact that she had so many people basically just watching her in a hot tub and giving her money. She wasn't doing anything compelling. Wait until you learn about VTubers.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  I mean don't they do the same thing as most people on twitch (video games) just with a fake avatar? Honestly I still remember when face cam was rare and you had no idea what most streamers looked like.
- jedberg 5y ago
  I just Googled that. I'm equally fascinated.
  - Balgair 5y ago
    On one hand, it seems like people that watch trains. I've no idea why people like to watch trains, but I'm sure I have equally strange interests compared to them. On the other hand, some of these stans are paying a lot of cold hard cash to these streamers, just to get a shout-out, maybe, and that is clearly insane. I've no idea what to make of the whole situation and perhaps I should just go look at some other corner of the web.

gabereiser 5y ago

Hasn’t the business model been either top-notch gaming or this, the soft core porn niche? I mean, most women streaming on twitch are using their looks and body for viewership. It’s the oldest play in the book. It’s all over YouTube as well (show a girl in a thong, get a million views). Twitch should just create a NSFW/Verified 18+ section and be done with it. I think the real issue is with advertisers. They don’t want to be associated with porn or even suggestive content. Twitch won’t police their platform so people are going to continue meeting the “bare minimum” definition and argue they are following the rules.

bluefirebrand 5y ago
> I mean, most women streaming on twitch are using their looks and body for viewership. It’s the oldest play in the book This is the real sticking point. If they came down hard against titty streamers they would be destroying a large portion of their own viewer base. Not to mention how bad it would look from a "Twitch is being sexist" viewpoint. Top male streamers would continue to do extremely well, male streamers would be unaffected almost entirely ( I bet some stream shirtless or whatever sometimes and might get in trouble from that ) But lets be real, such a crackdown would basically only effect women.
- viraptor 5y ago
  Also any policy like that would hit women who are into positive body expression, without trying to use it as a popularity tool. I.e. they'd have to figure out how to tell apart those who work on being suggestive for money and that who just enjoy being suggestive in life. Kind of like the repeating issue for https://mobile.twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg https://mobile.twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg who as far as I can tell is strongly in the second category. But that's in the mind reading area - they just can't do it reliably.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    > they'd have to figure out how to tell apart those who work on being suggestive for money and that who just enjoy being suggestive in life I don't think they'd bother trying to tell them apart. The issue Twitch wants to police here isn't the willingness or coercion, it's the suggestiveness behaviour entirely.

rayrag 5y ago

> So, we’re introducing a new category: Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches. So in one word - Softporn.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Well you can show tits on the beach but not on Twitch/youtube/etc,
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  This is false. Youtube allows showing tits.

gary_0 5y ago

Aside from the "I know it when I see it"[0] angle, here are my thoughts. Long, long ago, I dabbled in content hosting, and still sometimes daydream about doing business along those lines. When it comes to the thought of my hypothetical service hosting purely sexual content it's not due to any puritanism that I'd prefer that my platform have rules against it. Sexual content (ie. porn) brings with it regulatory burdens, potential public scrutiny, a large revenue stream that might end up incentivizing product development detrimental to the service's original purpose, and from a marketing perspective it might cause the public to associate your service with certain kinds of content (see: Tumblr) which limits your growth options. It seems to me that Twitch so far isn't seeing the drawbacks I just listed when it comes to hot tub streams, hence their response. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

throway98752343 5y ago
The test of "the people who like that kind of thing also like this" could also apply here to decide whether a stream is sexual or not. Recommendation engines cut both ways.
rgoulter 5y ago
Yeah. The post makes much more sense to me in terms of arguing that it doesn't go against regulations / rules of their payment processors, etc. It seems they've had trouble in the past trying to draw lines around sexual activity. It's a safe bet that if hot tub streams got banned, all the involved streamers would still keep toeing the line as far as they can. Drawing a broad line & cordoning it off seems reasonable. Though I wonder if there remains an incentive for pushing boundaries in 'just chatting'.
- chevill 5y ago
  >Though I wonder if there remains an incentive for pushing boundaries in 'just chatting'. I don't know about pushing boundaries but there will still certainly be lots of intentionally sexualized content in the just chatting category, it will just be milder than the new category on average.

nickysielicki 5y ago

These streams are closer to pornography than most people realize. There's a reason that these streams get so much attention: 14 year old young men love watching video games, so they go to sites where they can watch video games. If you start serving softcore pornography on the same website, well gee wiz, who could have guessed that it would be pretty lucrative? You don't have to be a prude to have a problem with this. It's not a matter of stigmatizing sex work or being anti-women, it's about profiting by serving porn-lite on the same site where children are likely to be. I don't personally care, but I'm floored that a company like Twitch/Amazon, with hundreds of people in HR and PR, would not play it safe and just ban it.

meheleventyone 5y ago
Given the sheer amounts of money being flung at streamers of all stripes by their audience directly I doubt the majority of the audience is 14!
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  That doesn't follow; maybe the oldest 10% of people are 90% of donations.
  - thewakalix 5y ago
    See: “whales”.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    And maybe they’re not, I made no statement of fact just doubt the characterisation of Twitch being full of 14 year olds.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
Twitch has no spine. If it was up to Amazon they'd probably ban it though.
- 5y ago

nprz 5y ago

> being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules Phew! Glad I'll still be able to host my twitch stream!

Manuel_D 5y ago

I think there's a significant amount of nuance in this situation. On the one hand, I don't object to people steaming and monetizing suggestive (or even explicit) content. These content creators should be able to produce and monetize this content without stigma. On the other hand, I do think the juxtaposition of this content with the rest of Twitch content is problematic. I think putting this content in the same category as gaming content unintentionally conveys the message, "Men garner popularity by exhibiting their skills, women garner popularity by exhibiting their bodies." I suspect this juxtaposition of the most popular male streamers' content with that of some of the most popular women's content on the platform and exposing this young people ends up fostering non-productive attitudes among boys and young men. Other women on the platform have complained about their audiences pressuring them into producing similar content. I've also heard from women and girls that it's off-putting to see the prevalence of women in bikinis, not playing any games, on a platform that ostensibly about gaming. I think Twitch is in the right to see this as a problem. But what's the solution here? On the one hand, I think it's giving these streamers the short end of the stick to have ambiguous policies and issue unexpected demonetizations or bans. Maybe a more effective approach would be to have stronger separation between "just chatting" content and gaming content, to retain this content but mitigate the problem of that juxtaposition. I suspect this is what the "Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches" category will probably be, but maybe it'd be better to spin this off into sister platform that isn't explicitly tied into gaming.

KapKap55 5y ago
Twitch does not see it as a problem. Advertisers (the actual important group in this discussion) and the gaming side of the Twitch community do care, for different reasons. This situation has been ongoing for awhile with individuals pushing the boundary of sexual content, but this response from Twitch only occurred after a partner who creates this type of content pissed off Twitch's advertisers.
- sleepybrett 5y ago
  Twitch does see a problem. In the past they have handed out bans for people streaming in low cut blouses. Yet somehow now women in bikinis dry-humping pool toys in a portable hot tub set up in their living rooms is cool. Like facebook or twitter they just need to have CONSISTENT AND CONSISTENTLY APPLIED rules. I can make a judgement on your platform when those two things are happening.

goatcode 5y ago

Bring back the Thot Audit.

Ekaros 5y ago

Twitch is truly a mess... The enforcement is all over the place... Not that Youtube isn't also "interesting" in some content moderation. Outright nudity is possible with thin veil of "educational" content. I wish the platforms just applied rules equally and had clear rules. And not punish past content with new rules. But maybe that is too much to ask these days...

system2 5y ago

Hah every girl streaming in tubs have pornhub channels as well as onlyfans. If we know it, twitch knows it too. This is such a bullshit post.

smbv 5y ago

> Second, while we have guidelines about sexually suggestive content, being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules, and Twitch will not take enforcement action against women, or anyone on our service, for their perceived attractiveness. I can't believe that this has to be spelled out.

throwkeep 5y ago

Here's the new category: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Pools%2C%20Hot%20Tubs%2C%20and%20Beaches https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Pools%2C%20Hot%20Tubs%2...

thinkingemote 5y ago

The main thing is these are not "hot tubs" they are indoors, in a normal room, an apartment, in a kiddies play pool, with kiddies inflatable equipment. The water is, additionally, cold and a few inches deep. No-one in the world does this type of activity privately or in public. It's so obviously soft core pornography and way away from the sensible "appropriate behaviour and clothing rules" that it's absurd. Now there is the debate about sexuality and sex work. This is not applicable here. Amazon's Twitch is saying it's not sex work. One sure fire thought experiment is that, if it's not porn, would you be okay with a 13 yr old (the age limit on twitch) doing it? To give credit to Amazon's Twitch they are dammned whatever they do.

soared 5y ago
Twitch is certainly aware of your argument because it’s true. Twitch doesn’t think there are actually hot tubs in peoples living rooms. They know it’s basically soft core porn. They’re definitely not going to call it that. But they’ll separate it out from the rest of their content and let users and advertisers opt out of it.
- degenerate 5y ago
  I think this is the best option, at least for now. Shove all of these streamers into one category so they are now compete against each other. Previously, you could choose any game or category and scroll down until you inevitably found a streamer in a bikini. Now the entire category is bikinis, so there is a lot less uniqueness to their stream. It's a good solution to a problem that might go away on its own with the new rule.
ilaksh 5y ago
Well, the one I was just watching was definitely hot water and pretty deep. PCgamer is at this moment streaming Geralt taking a bath in the Hot Tubs category. Lol.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"if it's not porn, would you be okay with a 13 yr old (the age limit on twitch) doing it?" That's about the age people discover porn, so the test doesn't work.

grodes 5y ago

man throwing money to hot tub: . twitch: I like money

tibbydudeza 5y ago

I really don't get it. What is the joy of watching a girl in a bathing costume sitting on a inflatable horse in a kiddy pool showing off her behind every now and again ???. Most of the chat are about as dumb as bricks so you can't be there for the conversation.

serf 5y ago
>What is the joy of watching a girl in a bathing costume sitting on a inflatable horse in a kiddy pool showing off her behind every now and again ???. sex sells. people like looking at other people half-nude and becoming aroused; it's about as simple a marketing tactic that exists.
- tibbydudeza 5y ago
  Thinking about it more - it is most likely just very lonely men that is seeking a connection to an attractive women - It reminds of Japan and their hostess clubs - no sex just companionship and chatting for an hour at a price.
floatingatoll 5y ago
There are as many Rule 34 categories as humanity has dreams, and no one has solved that problem at humankind scale. > I really don't get it. What is the joy You're asking why one specific instance of Rule 34 exists. It's because all instances of Rule 34 exist, and this one just happens to have become popular on Twitch. Rule 34, while distressing, is unfortunately a very real aspect of the human race at scale; it essentially says that if you can imagine something, it will be found erotic by someone, no matter how much it is or isn't erotic to you. I think it was first invented in the time of Usenet, when people would create ever-more-specific newsgroup hierarchies, but I'm honestly not sure. When we democratized content creation, we made it possible for niche fetishes to be discoverable, to form communities, and to financially support content creators. For example, "1800s-era bathing costumes" is absolutely a niche that some subset of humanity will pay money to see more of. There are much more specific, weird, and uncomfortable niches. (We're lucky that this one is so boring and dull, relatively speaking, because it's possible to discuss it without squick.) It's not about "getting" why it's erotic to some and not others. That's between you and your own erotic desires or lack thereof for any given content. It's about the greater question of how and when society will come to terms with erotic content appearing in "general content" pools on platforms that co-mingle all user-created content without human curation. In this case, Twitch openly admits that they haven't solved that problem: > This is not intended to be our long-term solution to improve brand targeting capabilities and increase personalization in our recommendations. It does, however, solve a few issues for all audiences in the near term. But they do clearly understand that, even within the bounds of "no nudity or sex", it's still very possible for content to be erotic to some and uninteresting/offensive to others. I am very curious to see what their next steps will be after this temporary patch, because there's no way to categorize or exclude all Rule 34 content on any content platform where users can upload content without human review and classification, and I don't think that Twitch's short-term compromise today will be a viable long-term solution.

tibbydudeza 5y ago

As long as they shove all those pool streamers into that specific category and don't show it at all on their main recommendation screen than I will be happy.

tareqak 5y ago

> We recently suspended advertising on some channels that were flagged by the majority of our advertiser base and failed to notify them. Our creators rely on us, and we should have alerted affected streamers to this change before it happened–it was a mistake not to do so. We’re working with individual creators to address their specific situations and restore ads where appropriate. What do others here think about Twitch’s behavior here? Should there be SLAs for actions taken on an account and notification of the account holder of said action?

loudandskittish 5y ago

What I don't understand is why people care so much...

david-cako 5y ago

Nice, it's good that they're bringing clarity since there's so much of this sort of content now. Hopefully Twitch becomes more consistent and transparent with how they enforce content policies moving forward. There's very unclear feedback or warnings provided to streamers, and there seems to be quite a bit of nepotism. All sorts of streamers from all different communities can corroborate this.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

It’s a tricky issue because it pits the capitalistic tendencies of wanting to make as much money as possible against the ethical tendencies of trying not to contribute to most girls’ body issues. These are the types of conversations people are having around the data showing a steady decrease in women’s subjective well being over the last many decades: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp09-11bk.pdf https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp09-11bk.pdf

dsr_ 5y ago

Tide and Coke and GM would definitely advertise on PornHub if they didn't know that a vocal chunk of their consumers would actively protest, and stop buying those products. But advertising on a website that is oriented towards Let's Play and educational lectures and video games? Of course! Twitch just needs to make the sexual content deniable and findable at the same time... which they have just done.

fierro 5y ago

being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules

cratermoon 5y ago

FOSTA/SESTA strikes again https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27059300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27059300

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago

The next looming issue for Twitch is the Slots/Video Poker streamers. Similar to swim suits, I don't think gambling as a whole should be totally against ToS. There are some great poker streamers, and there've been some quite successful charity drives around casino games. But there's also one big streamer, famous with the CoD audience, that lately has been playing video poker on one of those bitcoin casino sites. He has swings of up to $100k in a single night. His audience slants young and there's typically about 40k people watching him. That... makes me a bit uncomfortable. I'm far from someone that wants a nanny state, but I'm squeamish about the idea of say a 20 year old kid watching this behavior as a role model, trying to emulate it, and losing a non trivial amount of money at a point in their life where that would have a huge lasting impact. This streamer can only do this because he's insanely rich so even $100k is just play money.

throway98752343 5y ago
A test I like to use to isolate my concerns is replacement. Replace "actual money" with "fake money" in this casino example. Is the streamer playing poker entertaining, or are people watching because of the high-stakes gambling? Replace "woman" for "man" in these tub streams. Are people watching for the games or the streamer's personality, or for their body? I'd go so far as to say you should be able to replace within any protected class with minimal effect on viewership. If that's not true, there's some bias being expressed.
- prnyjn 5y ago
  This is a great way to think through and analyse this. Did you come up with it by yourself, or did you read about it somewhere?
  - throway98752343 5y ago
    Myself, but I can't be the first.
0xy 5y ago
The ship has sailed on that, given EA and Activision have already pioneered slot machines for kids known as loot boxes.

marsven_422 5y ago

This is why I teach my son's the difference between a quality women and trash.

ibaikov 5y ago

Introduce a new category: a little bit suggestive but still within our rules and guidelines

bo3OU 5y ago

Twitch is open for 13 years old people, as a streamer (I don't remember who) said, what if a 13-year-old started a hot tub stream? Will it be sexually suggestive content or is it a 13 years old kid having innocent fun ?

DeathlyRage 5y ago

this is what twitch has become RIP, https://www.twitch.tv/exohydrax https://www.twitch.tv/exohydrax

DeathlyRage 5y ago

This is what twitch has become RIP. https://www.twitch.tv/exohydrax https://www.twitch.tv/exohydrax