It’s been another long 24 hours for Twitch – the latest in what’s formed as one painfully long year for the company (and everyone on Earth too). Yesterday afternoon, Twitch held out a living town hall with the aim of highlighting recent policy changes and features around DMCAs, sexual harassment, advertising, and other hot-button issues. In the aftermath, however, many streamers settled on a small portion of the two-hour presentation: Twitch’s decision to ban words like ‘simp’, ‘incel’ and ‘virgin’ – at least when used in derogatory contexts.
Towards the end of City Hall, Twitch COO Sara Clemens moved on new Twitch rules coming into effect next month. Clemens explained that one of the new rules prohibits “derogatory statements about another person’s alleged sexual practices”, including “negatively targeting another person with sexually directed terms.”
“Using terms like ‘simp’, ‘incel’ or ‘virgin’ as an insult to negatively refer to someone else’s sexual activity is not allowed under this new policy,” said Clemens. “In addition to the policy change, we also proactively deny emotes that contain the term ‘simp’. We will remove them on notification and will continue to do so as soon as the policy changes. “
In an email to Kotaku, Twitch clarified that ‘simp’, ‘incel’ and ‘virgin’ are not generally prohibited and will only be punished if they ‘negatively refer to someone else’s sexual practices’.
“Using these terms independently would not lead to enforcement, but we would take action if they were used repeatedly in an intimidating way,” said a Twitch representative. “We deny emotes related to these terms and remove them when reported to us. We generally have a stricter policy on emotes because they can be used anywhere on Twitch, so we are taking more proactive measures to minimize the risk of damage. “
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Earlier this year, Kotaku found that Twitch had removed ‘simp’ emotes since February, so this is not entirely new. But it’s a codification of an approach that has left many streamers baffled because of who most often faces harassment (sexual or otherwise) on the platform.
“Still, people can still walk into my chat and call me sneaky with little to no action,” Twitch partner PleasantlyTwstd said on Twitter.
“Where was all this outrage when black and female streamers complained about harassment on Twitch?” said streamer and organizer DaPurpleSharpie. “Then where was Twitch’s attitude ‘WE MUST STOP HARASSMENT’?”
“Twitch talks big about inclusion, but can’t ban the N word from chat globally,” said Twitch partner and musician Detune. “Instead, we have to type it ourselves to be modified. You all want to know how painful it’s to type the racial slur that you are called and have to come up with every variation, so that an automatic ban can come? “
“Usage of the words ‘simp’, ‘virgin’ and ‘incel’ are now prohibited offenses on Twitch,” said Twitch partner SeriouslyClara. “Glad the super-marginalized male demographics are finally safe.”
Twitch generally portrays itself as a company developing new tools and features so that streamers can nurture their own community as they see fit, but City Hall painted a less than encouraging picture of when and how it chooses it. intervene. In the case of words like “simp”, Twitch chose to make a decision in front of everyone – and an enigmatic one too. There was no widespread demand for crackdowns on terms that, when used negatively, largely refer to the people who are harassing it, not the harassment. Nobody really asked for this. It came out of nowhere, when Twitch issued a decree despite streamers’ protests.
However, streamers to have has been asking for tags centered around specific identities – for black and trans streamers, among others – for years. The idea is that just like Twitch’s “communities” feature that replaced tags in 2018, these tags would allow streamers to find others like themselves and allow viewers to discover new streamers that are part of those groups. This would create stronger communities not only within single streams but also through the channels of different broadcasters. In a hostile Internet, these kinds of simple community-building tools are essential for marginalized groups. And yet, at City Hall, Twitch made a different decision for streamers, despite what they asked for. By the start of the stream, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear acknowledged streamers’ campaign for a trans tag for years, but not telling them one is on the way.
“When looking for new identity tags, such as the trans tag, we ran into two problems: The first problem we found is that using the tags can often lead to more harassment for streamers, especially among vulnerable identity groups,” he said. “We wanted to make sure we tried to fix that, so people don’t accidentally choose that kind of harassment.”
The other problem, Shear noted, is that he doesn’t want Twitch employees to be “the identity workers.” “When we are choosing which tags deserve a tag, there will always be someone who feels left out,” he said.
Shear went on to say that in 2021 there will be some sort of tagging system that will “ allow own identity, ” but he didn’t explain what form it will take. In the meantime, streamers are upset that Twitch has drawn the line here.
“They waved hand without implementing a trans tag because … they no longer want to incite hatred / harassment directed at trans people on the platform?” said Twitch partner and voice actor Negaoryx. “They already handle this, Twitch. Moderate your platform! Force your [terms of service] and deal with harassment! “
“I’m getting some targeted harassment for being bi through the LGBT + tag, but I’m getting 100x more fellow LGBT + people as viewers who identify with me,” said Twitch partner Novaleesi. “It’s worth it. The whole ‘risk weighs reward’ discourse is stupid. Give transgender people the opportunity to have a trans tag.”
“Tags are sign up!” Twitch partner and founder of I Need Diverse Games Ask “Cypheroftyr,” said DePass. “Twitch cannot arbitrate an opt-in tag. Tackle harassment instead of not giving us identity tags. Or bring communities back!”
Twitch has said repeatedly that reducing harassment is a priority, and to the company’s credit, it is trying harder than most. Are new rules target harassment in an appropriately harsh manner, at least on paper (we’ll see how enforcement goes when January rolls around), and at City Hall the company said it continues to grow its trust and security team. However, Twitch has an old habit of ever so slightly missing the mark in ways that turn out to be annoying. Often it does this by offering bandages for surface wounds like the word ‘simp’ while telling streamers asking for more systemic solutions that what they want is simply not possible, or that it represents too much . risk. This paints a picture of a company that thinks it knows better than everyone else, even as age-old problems continue to loom. Streamers naturally get frustrated with this.
In some ways, Twitch knows better than its users; it regularly experiments with new functions and collects data on an astonishingly large scale. But data is never the full story, and until Twitch learns how we can really listen to its community and communicate its findings without coming across as dismissive or woefully shortsighted, we’ll just end up in the same place again, just as we’ve been countless times in Past. Maybe Twitch is just a simple punishment.