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Twitch Tags Help Marginalized Streamers Grow, But Bans Them for Being Harassed

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Screenshot of a Twitch page, shows a drawing of a ghost and the text: "Sorry. Unless you’ve got a time machine, that content is unavailable." There's a button that reads, "Browse channels."Amazon’s Twitch streaming service is a place to watch people live stream. Stream what? Well, mostly games. However, there’s some sports viewing, general chats, and other topics. Generally, it’s a community built around a streamer or group of people streaming video to people watching them. There’s a live chat, running jokes, and, in general, levity. While shouting at a TV screen while watching sports is stupid, because nothing can change on the TV, commenting or chatting with a streamer is an act of real human engagement. Perhaps that’s why it has become so popular, especially during the pandemic.

This year, Twitch finally added tags for marginalized communities. It’s perfect for Twitch, a place where many streamers form a small, tightly-knit community. People could find others in the same walk of life to follow and support.

Twitch was hesitant to add these tags, however, because, many of those Gamers™ are exactly the kind of people who would harass, terrorize, and assault members of marginalized communities. Clearly the solution would be to give streamers tools to easily ban people from their own streams, automatically moderate certain topics, ban people based on bans from other areas, and make full-site bans easier to initiate. Instead, Twitch just released the tags.

It’s been worse than anyone expected.

Take the case of Anne Atomic, the first, and perhaps only, out trans woman streaming in the “Hot Tub” category. Her subscriber count grew substantially when it could attract other trans people, supporters who were looking to form a community, and, let’s face it, people who fetishize trans women. She also faced mountains of vile harassment and false allegations. Despite reporting it, Twitch banned her indefinitely, rather than those harassing her. Cisgender streamers guilty of the exact same violation typically only get 3-day bans. She hasn’t heard from Twitch support while trying to appeal either.

Twitch didn’t just make it easier for marginalized communities to face harassment, they also are working with the harassers to make things worse.

Yeah, a Hot Tub Section

Screenshot from Twitch, "Let's talk about hot tub streams," from May 21st, 2021.

Yes, hot tub steams are allowed.

Okay, let’s get something out of the way. Twitch started more as a live game streaming platform and has evolved. Chat channels, ASMR, news, live sports, and, well, hot tub channels. You see, Twitch had a rule against provocative clothing except in circumstances that would make it appropriate, like swimming. So, a few streamers set up an inflatable pool or sat in a hot tub and did their streams from there. Suddenly, this became one of the most popular varieties of Twitch video. It completely took over Twitch for… reasons.

That reason is that it’s been a long pandemic and people are thirsty as all hell, especially on the internet.

Twitch, in an effort to get their site back from the Hot Tub Streamers, made a hot tub category. This allowed them to section it off for the fans of this kind of video, while allowing their homepage and other content to focus more on other streaming varieties. You won’t find the hot tub category without signing up for Twitch.

So, yes, there is a hot tub category on Twitch. It doesn’t violate Twitch’s rules to be in a bikini on Twitch, which is all Anne Atomic did. She may have a porn site and porn videos elsewhere, like other streamers in this category, but that content stayed off of Twitch, as per Twitch’s rules. Hot tub streams are consistently one of the most popular (if not the most popular) streaming categories, and it’s 100% allowed.

Unless, apparently, if you’re transgender.

Different Standards, Different Bans

Two identical Twitch ban emails, only the one for the trans streamer is an indefinite ban, while the one for a cisgender streamer is just 3 days

Twitch seemingly gave out a much more harsh ban to Anne Atomic than cisgender streamers.

While hot tub streams are allowed, sometimes those doing them take it too far. It may involve nudity, accidental or intentional. When that happens, Twitch will collect reports and ban the user. They’ll be back in a few days. Some popular hot tub streamers have been banned multiple times, and always come back. It’s almost like street cred. If you haven’t been banned for a hot tub stream and some accidental nudity or sexual content, are you even a hot tub streamer?

But that’s different for a trans hot tub streamer. Mass reporting falsely claimed nudity in a few of her streams. Those harassing her mass-reported her page, and, as a result, Twitch banned her without looking into the case. Twitch didn’t consider the fact that marginalized communities are frequently the target of campaigns to get them banned. Instead of recognizing that this could be such a case, they handed down the worst ban they could. Despite this being in the news for nearly two weeks, with tweets from Anne Atomic receiving thousands of interactions, Twitch has not looked into her case and un-banned her.

Twitch still hasn’t looked into the case for evidence of false reporting or bias. They can’t even claim that content was the problem. In fact, Twitch reviewed Anne Atomic’s account prior to the ban to see if she could take part in their partnership program. They had nothing but positive words to say, considering her page “on the right track” with “great content,” just not enough followers yet.

One harassment campaign later, and Twitch couldn’t care less about the transphobia that lead to her ban.

Twitch Makes Harassment Easy

Tags are great. In fact, it was members of marginalized communities that asked Twitch to add tags. They wanted to be able to find community and support members of communities that frequently get little attention. Twitch added tags and members of these communities saw their audience grow and found more people to talk with, interact with, and, yes collect donations from.

But Twitch failed these users. They knew that tags could lead to an increase in harassment but did nothing to fix that. They haven’t given false reports against these profiles the additional scrutiny they need. Instead, they acted like biases, like racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, didn’t exist, while acknowledging that of course they exist, that’s why the tags were needed in the first place.

Twitch showed harassers that harassment campaigns are extraordinarily effective. Twitch will do nothing to protect marginalized communities from their attacks. As a result, these problems are going to keep happening.

Twitch doesn’t have harsh enough penalties for trolls. They don’t have good enough verification processes for accounts to prevent ban evasion. Twitch doesn’t have strong enough moderation tools to allow streamers to ban people who have bans elsewhere, automatically moderate and ban in chat, or any of the necessary tools to help marginalized groups. Instead, Twitch props up the trolls.

What Needs to Happen

Twitch’s moderation controls are lackluster, especially for streamers who don’t have moderators. Not that it helps much. Requiring a verified email address means nothing when generating fake emails is something that takes seconds. Blocking phrases isn’t enough whén !t’s ∑äsy 2 ßypa$s them with symbols and other human-readable messages that simple word lists won’t pick up on.

What tools does Twitch need? None that would be overly difficult to add or implement. Make it easier for creators to ban harassers and escalate those to site-wide bans. Ensure streamers can ban people and alert others to potentially dangers users with ban lists. Someone banned from one trans streamer’s platform could be banned from all trans streamers’ pages. People could choose to use these lists and they could be available through Twitch or uploadable txt files. Twitch could also make use of better verification, like an actual phone number for text-based and 2-factor verification, making it harder for people to spin up burner accounts for ban evasion.

Internal Bias Too

Besides these tools to improve moderation, Twitch needs to examine both its own bias and the bias of its users. When someone from a marginalized community receives a number of reports, which they then appeal, you have to look into that promptly. Twitch admits that these communities need extra care, but then refuses to give them that care.

No user who makes a platform toxic is worth a company’s time. While that one user may give Twitch more traffic in the short term, they scare away other users. For every toxic user Twitch saves from a ban, they lose countless other users who don’t want to be a part of a platform with trolls. Twitch has chosen their trolls over their creators, especially their creators in marginalized communities. As a result, they’re going to lose members in droves. Many more will never sign up.

Anne Atomic has been banned for nearly two weeks, with no reply from Twitch support. Twitch has shown its true colors, it doesn’t support marginalized communities, it actively works against them.

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