BERLIN, GERMANY – OCTOBER 11: In this photo illustration the logo of live streaming video platform … [+] Twitch is displayed on a smartphone on October 11, 2019 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)
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The past few weeks have seen some measure of outrage over a new Twitch trend that many viewers believed was inappropriate. The content featured livestreams of women who appeared to be nude, but with the camera raised just enough to avoid a reveal of full toplessness. But they would interact with chat and perform uh, some jiggling, for lack of a better term.
This included some women who are adult film stars, and one of the main goals appeared to be not just earning through Twitch streams, but pointing viewers toward sites like OnlyFans where “all could be revealed” and they’d make more money from subscriptions.
A main problem with this was not just the content itself, but the fact that Twitch kept surfacing it on highly visible recommended pages. This lead to a refrain of “children use Twitch!” and viewers demanded action. Some of the highest profile women doing this were at least temporarily suspended from doing so.
However.
Now, Twitch has come out with a new set of guidelines that is both more restrictive in some ways, but much more permissive in others. They are restricting the prominent surfacing of more sexually explicit streams like that, but more generally have announced exceptions for “artistic nudity” and provocative dancing like twerking, poledancing and grinding, so long as it’s not filmed in a literal strip club.
Twitch is still disallowing nudity or partially nudity, but has a long list of sexual content that is okay with a label classifying it as such like bodypainting, animated (ie. artist drawn) nudity or “kissing or licking a microphone” (yes this has been a thing).
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Pornographic actress Morgpie, who was the highest profile example of the “nudity meta” that sparked much of this and was suspended, views the changes as positive overall for sexual expression on the site:
“I care about Twitch as a platform, and I care about whether or not inappropriate content is being pushed to the wrong audience,” she told Dextero. ““With the updated terms of service, content on Twitch containing mature themes will be allowed but no longer pushed on the homepage of the site. I think this is the best possible outcome, because it gives creators much more freedom, while also keeping this content from reaching the wrong audience. Bravo, Twitch!”
This has led many people who were protesting all this in the first place to throw up their hands in frustration that Twitch has seemed to actually loosen restrictions in many ways.
It is difficult to know whether the people weighing in on all this are truly doing so out of concern “for the children,” or they are playing into the longstanding stereotype that believes women doing sexualized content on stream, or even attractive women more generally, are “stealing” viewership from men who do not do the same. This seems to ignore the fact that the 99 out of the top 100 streamers on Twitch are men, according to a 2023 report.
How this changes Twitch from here is unclear. It seems like there will be more sexualized content, albeit perhaps not the exact nudity-based streams that were previously starting to gain popularity. But the goal is that this content is classified in a way that will not surface it in prominent places. We’ll see.
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