Twitch Walks Back Controversial "Artistic Nudity" Policy

Twitch will no longer allow nudity on its platform.

By Cade Onder

Twitch is rolling back its decision to allow nudity on its platform just days after instating this rule. Twitch has become one of the biggest platforms on the internet over the last decade. Not only can you watch people play video games, but you can also watch people live stream their lives, host things like game shows, watch eSport events, and much more. It's the go to place for livestreaming and it's incredibly accessible thanks to people being able to stream from their PC, console, or phone. However, as time has gone on and it has expanded beyond a gaming platform, people have tried to skirt around the rules via loopholes. Twitch has had content that is more sexually charged within the last few years with things like hot tub streams and as of recently, people are totally naked, but the full nudity is just out of frame of the camera. It has created a lot of controversy as a result with some saying it doesn't belong on Twitch when there are other places for this kind of content.

However, earlier this week, Twitch began to bend its knee to this content and allowed "artistic nudity" along with things like poledancing, strip teases, and more. Many were confused as to what qualifies as "artistic nudity", but the new rules led to a lot of anger from creators and viewers. As you might imagine, Twitch content got pretty out of control after these new rules and it seems like Twitch may regret its initial decision. Twitch CEO Dan Clancy released a blog post talking about how they'd be walking back this policy, noting that some took it too far and that there weren't enough guidelines in place to distinguish what is "artistic nudity" and not. So, effective today, this policy will no longer be in place and no nudity will be allowed on Twitch, real or fictional, going forward. You can read part of his statement below.

"First, we want to make clear that some streamers, in response to this update, created content that was in violation of our new policy. We've worked quickly to remove that content and issue channel enforcements. 

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However, there also was a great deal of new content that was allowed under the updated policy. 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.

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."

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