Twitch Updating Community Guidelines But Does It Matter

[Shawn Zipay]

Today, Twitch started to reveal their plans on how they are changing the official Twitch Community Guidelines that streamers and viewers will have to adhere to going forward. What was outlined today is said to be "just the first of many improvements coming to the policies, moderation processes, and safety features on Twitch."

Today's update centers around some of these new and updated policies on anti-harassment and sexual content. Twitch claims that they want to "increase clarity, strength, and consistency across (their) entire moderation framework."

Some of these new policies as they apply to anti-harassment and hateful conduct can be seen below.

We want everyone to not only feel welcome on Twitch, but to be proud to be part of the community. To that end, we are strengthening our stance on harassment and hate.

First, conduct we deem to be hateful will result in an immediate indefinite suspension. Hate simply has no place in the Twitch community.

Additionally, we will now consider verifiable hateful or harassing conduct that takes place off-Twitch when making moderation decisions for actions that occur on Twitch. If you use other services to direct hate or harassment towards someone on Twitch, we will consider it a violation of Twitch’s policies.

We are also updating our moderation framework to pay close attention to the context and intent in addition to the words or actions used. Please remember, even if you’re just joking with your friends, you’re still choosing to stream on a service that reaches a large audience.

Twitch notes that the new guidelines will go into effect on Monday, February 19 at 9AM (PT). They also say that streamers "must remove Clips and VODs that violate the new guidelines" prior to this date.

The full list of Twitch Community Guidelines are now available. They also have special guideline pages specific to Hateful Conduct and Harassment along with Sexual Content.

This is all well and good and frankly, it's a step in the right direction for a site like Twitch. The problem here isn't necessarily with the rules. In fact, many of the existing rules were perfectly fine as they were. Changing the wording on existing rules and guidelines aren't necessarily going to make the site a better or more friendly place. No, the problem with Twitch has been and will continue to be the moderation and the lack of consistency.

We have already seen multiple times how Twitch staff and moderators do not globally enforce the guidelines. We have seen how larger streamers can get away with undermining the guidelines that have resulted in suspensions and bans to smaller streamers. There has been no consistency, period. The new guidelines continue to leave interpretation entirely up to each moderator or staff member, same as the old guidelines have. There are no lists of specific examples provided in these new guidelines.

Nothing has changed. There will still be people getting banned or suspended and never knowing why. There will still be people that are very obviously above the law.