When it comes to streaming there's one platform to rule them all - Twitch. The popular platform will now ban members who harass others even when that's not happening directly on Twitch.
Twitch announced some major changes to its misconduct policy and now even harassment outside the platform will be punishable. Will we see more bansthan ever before or is it just a precaution?
Twitch Changes Its Misconduct Policy
It's one of the biggest updates to the Twitch Hateful Conduct and Harassment policy. From now on, harassment is harassment, and it doesn't matter if it's happening on the Twitch platform or somewhere else. Twitch revealed all the changes and the reasoning behind them in a lengthy blog post.
In January, we began enforcing our updated Hateful Conduct and Harassment policy so we could better protect every person on Twitch. Today, we want to share our plans for how we'll handle incidents that happen off Twitch. Read the blog here: https://t.co/vBnoY6nPau pic.twitter.com/KQX1ZBsRVg
— Twitch (@Twitch) April 7, 2021
The guidelines for offline harassment is now split into two categories:
Category one: Someone is harassed on Twitch, as well as off Twitch. When this happens, we will take into account verifiable, off-service behaviors or statements that relate to an incident that took place on Twitch. For example: if we’re reviewing a harassment report about an incident that happened live on stream, related or continued harassment on Twitter could be taken into account when reported to us. This is how our current off-service policy works in the vast majority of cases, and will not change.
Category two: We will now enforce against serious offenses that pose a substantial safety risk to the Twitch community, even if these actions occur entirely off Twitch.
Twitch then goes to list all the behaviors that'll be punishable:
- Deadly violence and violent extremism
- Terrorist activities or recruiting
- Explicit and/or credible threats of mass violence (i.e. threats against a group of people, event, or location where people would gather).
- Leadership or membership in a known hate group
- Carrying out or acting as an accomplice to non-consensual sexual activities and/or sexual assault
- Sexual exploitation of children, such as child grooming and solicitation/distribution of underage sexual materials
- Actions that would directly and explicitly compromise the physical safety of the Twitch community, such as threatening violence at a Twitch event
- Explicit and/or credible threats against Twitch, including Twitch staff
Twitch also mentioned that they're bringing in a third-party investigative partner to support their internal team with the investigations. If we take a look back at the past year the number of sexual allegations towards popular streamers and content creators has only grown. The platform is now doubling down and actually relying more heavily on law enforcement and other services to share relevant evidence before moving forward. What do you think about the latest changes? Tell us on Twitter!
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