Twitch is further limiting sexually suggestive content in yet another change to its rules around the subject.
Starting Friday, the streaming platform will no longer allow livestreams focusing on clothed intimate body parts for prolonged periods of time. They include the “buttocks, groin, or breasts,” according to details in its updated community guidelines.
If that sounds specific, it is — Twitch has emerged in recent years as a popular platform for livestreams of everything from video games to ASMR but also one that has had an uneasy relationship with some creators who have embraced mildly sexual content, such as wearing revealing clothes or streaming from hot tubs.
“Our goal, always, is to make Twitch a welcoming place. We regularly assess our rules to ensure they’re clear and effective, recognizing that online behavior can shift over time,” a Twitch spokesperson wrote in an email Wednesday. “Today’s update was meant to clarify what’s allowed on Twitch, while giving our community time to adjust and ask questions before enforcement begins.”
Twitch, which is owned by the e-commerce giant Amazon, has tweaked its policies several times in recent months as it tries to strike the right balance for what sexualized content is permitted.
The company stirred confusion in December when it decided to start allowing artistic and digital depictions of fictionalized nudity, only to roll back the new policy two days after its announcement.
In a company blog post about the abrupt reversal, CEO Dan Clancy wrote that some streamers had responded to the news with content that violated the policy and that users had also expressed concern about the type of content that would be permitted.
“Upon reflection, we have decided that we went too far with this change,” Clancy wrote. “Digital depictions of nudity present a unique challenge — AI can be used to create realistic images, and it can be hard to distinguish between digital art and photography.”
After the rollback,…
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