It's the same unholy transformation every company goes through. Creating a company from nothing usually takes heart and soul. Once a company is established you stop needing the true believers. You stop needing the love. Love and maximizing profits are not compatible. I'll bet if you had data on the number of Twitch t-shirts sold over the last five years it would be a steady decline. Almost any company built on appealing to a specific demographic will choose to genericize itself if it can.
It makes a lot of money but I find it terribly sad.
Because Twitch focuses largely on marketing directly to children? You cannot separate the fact that Twitch is trying to become the site for all gaming (including children) and also allowing nearly-softcore porn on the same site. Its literally a few clicks away. Now, they think because they made a separate category, advertisers will be fine with it.
They are lucky that hot tub streamers haven't gotten mainstream news attention yet, I can't imagine the outrage of parents when they see some of the stuff thats allowed....
> I didn't know there were so many outraged prudes on twitch. Why should twitch have a sexually suggestive content rule in the first place?
If you're asserting that thinking hot tub streams break ToS, and Twitch's selective enforcement of that ToS causes problems very frequently on their platform, makes me an "outraged prude", well I'm sorry friend. Gaslighting an entire community doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
> Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch.
Is wearing a bikini, facing away from a camera and touching your toes for $5 not sexually explicit?
> I don't see what the huge issue with showing off your own sexiness is. Sheesh!
The issue is inconsistency. I think they should update the ToS to support these streamers - they're some of the biggest streamers on the platform. To suggest that those streamers are not being sexually suggestive is, again, an absolute joke. Twitch themselves made the determination that sexually suggestive content is not welcome on their platform, not me.
Because there are other places for that. Many people browse twitch at work (let’s not debate that) and don’t want to see that kind of content. Or on machines visible at home around other family members.
These women have every right to do as they please, and most likely will continue to push the boundaries of twitch’s tolerance. I suspect we will have car washing streams or sauna streams next to get around the rule.
It seems like a lot of the people in this thread are not really twitch users and aren't really aware of what's being discussed. They're seeing "Hot Tub Streams" and think it's just a person sitting in a hot tub, unaware of how sexual these streams have become.
Even if that were the case, they need to be segregated, very clearly from normal streams. I don't want to see women or men in minimal close when casually browsing in a public place.
Americans are still ashamed of sexuality and think it needs to be locked up. That said, it's clearly not 'just chatting' and probably belongs in a 'sexysexy' category.
>Prohibiting every form of content that could be interpreted as suggestive would also result in far more restrictions on the video games and premium content that we currently allow, especially considering the ways that female characters are sometimes objectified or presented in a sexualized manner.
The joke is asserting that hot tub streams aren't sexually suggestive. The twitch community seems to love them, so of course Twitch will fight tooth and nail to keep them. But to suggest that they aren't sexually suggestive (and by proxy against Twitch ToS) is an absolute joke. They look like clowns.
They don't say that. Did you actually read what they wrote? It is very nuanced.
Their rule is that it can't be "overtly or explicitly sexually suggestive", and they acknowledge that it lies on a spectrum. They have to draw the line somewhere. To some people, for instance the Amish or fundamentalism Muslims, the line is very different from that of typical Westerners.
> There has been confusion around whether streams from hot tubs are permissible under our current policies, and we understand why our rules as written have contributed to that confusion. Under our current Nudity & Attire and Sexually Suggestive Content policies, streamers may appear in swimwear in contextually appropriate situations (at the beach, in a hot tub, for example), and we allow creative expression like body writing and body painting, provided the streamer has appropriate coverage as outlined by our attire policy. Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch.
I again ask, is wearing a bikini, facing away from a camera and touching your toes for $5 not a sexual service?
Surely you recognize that these things lie on a spectrum. Is charging admission for beach volleyball a sexual service? No matter your level of prudishness, you will be able to find something that is right in the gray area.
> Is charging admission for beach volleyball a sexual service?
This question actually perfectly articulates the difference. When you pay $5 to watch a beach volleyball tournament, you're paying for volleyball, and may as a side effect experience content that _some_ may find sexual. By Twitch's ToS, this should totally be allowed.
As for my example, is there a nonsexual reason to pay a woman 5 dollars to bend over in front of you? What is it?
So you've come up with an example that is clearly on one side of the line. Ok, but not sure what that proves. I don't think anyone has argued that there aren't any clear cut cases.
What you are missing is that whatever rule you make, people are going to try to push the limits, because it gets them viewers. If twitch says that someone bending over in a bikini has no non-sexual purpose and therefore is against the rules, the creators could change the stream very slightly.... just enough so they can claim to be about exercise, yoga, modeling fashion, or dance. They'd still have the same audience, with the exact same reason for watching, but now it sneaks by the rule.
Pole dancing is an art and takes athletic skill, sure, but most people (at least in the US) consider it is purely viewed for sexual gratification. But creators could claim its "main" purpose is to enjoy the dancing for its artistic and athletic merit.
Sports Illustrated has a swim suit issue, and it's not about swimming so how is that sports? It's just an excuse.
The majority of art channels on twitch are people drawing sexy (often anime-style) girls and women. You can learn to draw from them, but the sexier they make them, the more viewers they get.
So... I really don't get what you are trying to say. You seem to not understand that there is gray area.
It seems that you think I'm referencing a contrived example to prove my point, when in reality I'm referencing the actual donation gifts for the vast majority of Hot Tub Streamers (which, please note, is not "people that sometimes stream in a hot tub", but is now a specific genre of stream of which many people exclusively stream).
People have been sometimes streaming from hot tubs for years, and it's always been the exact grey area you're describing. Only very recently has it turned into a hypersexualized scenario, which is why Twitch is putting out more content condoning it.
> You seem to not understand that there is gray area.
I do. You don't seem to understand that the vast majority of the streams this change will encapsulate are not grey at all.
Engagement doesn't pay the bills. In fact advertisers don't want to pay for this and don't want their advertising shown on these streams. Ultimately that's what the new policy is about. They're adding a new category so that advertisers can filter these things out.
What a truly excellent strawman. Do you see no middle ground between obviously sexual content and a Burqa? Is there no middle ground between writing someone's name on your breasts for $5 and going to the beach to swim?
What is that middle ground? Do you codify and say women can't write things on their chest? What about in a video game? Should streaming Cyberpunk 2077 be banned - it clearly has sexual content? I'm not making a straw man - I'm trying to point out your essentially saying "they should ban content I don't like", which means Twitch will apply the rules in anyway you fit - another complaint you have brought up.
Again, are you saying streamers shouldn't be allowed to go to the beach? Or are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to wear bikinis? And if another streamer watches a YouTube video that has a woman at the beach should they be banned?
> Again, are you saying streamers shouldn't be allowed to go to the beach? Or are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to wear bikinis? And if another streamer watches a YouTube video that has a woman at the beach should they be banned?
HN doesn't really do memes, but I made this because it seems relevant: https://imgflip.com/i/5ah3b7