Over the past couple days, Twitch has gone back and forth about whether to allow certain types of content, which some might consider NSFW, on its platform.
On December 13, Twitch tweeted, “We’ve gotten feedback that our policies around sexual content are unclear so we’ve drawn clearer boundaries between what is & isn’t permitted on Twitch. We also recognize that not everyone wants to see certain content, so we’re updating our criteria for homepage recommendations.”
A blog post shared the same day got more specific. It delves into a lot of details, but the part that got the most attention was this bit from the Q&A section:
“Q: With the updates to the Sexual Content Policy, are artistic depictions of nudity allowed?
A: Content with a focus on fictionalized (drawn, animated, or sculpted) sexual body parts regardless of gender (such as doing nude figure drawing) are allowed with a Sexual Themes Label. However, fictionalized sexual acts or masturbation remain prohibited.”
However, Twitch quickly changed its mind.
In a new blog post shared today (December 15), Twitch explained that after the policy change was enacted, there was “a great deal of new content that was allowed under the updated policy.” They continued, “Much of the content created has been met with community concern. These are concerns we share. Upon reflection, we have decided that we went too far with this change. 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.”
As The Verge notes, “The specific callout of AI seems to be related to the concern that the new artistic nudity policy might enable artists and other streamers to create and display AI-generated ‘deepfakes’ passed off as permitted art.”
Twitch’s post continues, “So, effective today, we are rolling back the artistic nudity changes. Moving forward, depictions of real or fictional nudity won’t be allowed on Twitch, regardless of the medium. This restriction does not apply to Mature-rated games. You can find emote-specific standards for nudity and sexual content in the Emote Guidelines. We aren’t making other changes to the updated Sexual Content Policy.”
So…
It depends on the context.
The rules on outright pornography are clear, as the Sexual Content Policy linked above notes, “Users are prohibited from broadcasting, uploading, soliciting, offering, and linking to pornographic content.” However, nudity that appears in some video games is allowed, as the policy reads, “For games where nudity is not the core focus or feature, the Mature-rated Games Content Classification Label is sufficient for incidental nudity. However, the Sexual Themes label must be applied to gameplay that focuses on nudity.”
Read the full Sexual Content Policy for more details about what sorts of NSFW content are allowed on Twitch.
