Our Body painters are being wrongfully banned and ignored by the moderation team at Twitch.

Forkgirl, affiliate, has been banned 3 times due to mass reports of nudity. She is clearly not nude and abides by all of TOS. She is indefinitely banned and has still not received a single appeal even from her first one from the June of 2019.

Since her start of getting banned, other body paint artists like AndyRaeCosplay and NoctornalTrip.

What we as the creative community ask:
1. Clearing up the confusion of what is and isn't allowed within the creative community as a whole,
2. Look at who is reporting these artists, and see if there is a group of the same people doing so,
3. Give answers to your appeal system with humans, not a bot, these ladies have not received a single word back about their appeals from the bans they have received.
4. Instead of blatantly ignoring people reaching out about this, give some kind of acknowledgement that it is being looked into or not.

If nothing is done soon, the creative community will all be banned by these groups of trolls going around and mass reporting, and may even leak over into the gamers, ASMR, Social Eating, and Just Chatting communities. It will further deplete the site of content to enjoy and only be filled with people who actually do break TOS regularly, are pedophiles/*** offenders, and people who don't care about the communities they create.

I know Twitch CEO went over this at Twitch-con San Diego 2019 with some good pluses towards this better chance. I have no idea when that will be implemented into today's Twitch Moderation, but hopefully sooner rather than later.

But anyways, some things he did not mention was these ideas and should add-on or I would recommend a complete overhaul on the enforcement.

• We should be able to see in our own dashboards of previous infractions that are on the account and not removed due to being expired or mistakened suspensions. We, as live streamers, or even users (non-live streamers) should have this access than we taking our own record keeping off the platform (which I still recommend especially when we are incorrectly suspended we'd be unable to view this data, at least with the current method of suspensions). Give examples and details on the community guidelines pages. Yes, I understand you want to make it easy to consume and appealing to read for the masses, but learn from other platforms with their community guidelines. Make videos even, pictures, and visual aids. They work.
• On-stream violations, like actual violations, should suspend from streaming on their own channel only. Being a guest on another stream should be fine and not a death sentence to another streamer. The suspended streamer isn’t the #1 focus of the stream of course but still apart of the stream. I guess in some cases you/Twitch don’t want to associate with certain levels of suspended streamers and if that level is more extreme then yeah it’s understandable they shouldn’t be a guest on any streams on Twitch. But lower level should be fine. And your dashboard should show this level too for you, as the streamer know to not go onto any streams to be a guest as well.
• Also you shouldn’t need to take their ability to be a viewer and contribute to the overall communities on twitch and their own. I think an on-stream infraction should be completely separate than off-stream infraction. Off-stream infractions like breaking community guidelines when interacting on Twitch’s platform then suspend their ability to chat i.e. global ban. You and I know, people will always make an alt account to evade suspensions to continue to being twitch user/viewer.
• The intent thing with Twitch CEO mentioned should actually take place. CEO said if you didn’t have intent, you did not break community guidelines. And a lot of streamers granted did not read or just simply misinterpreted the community guidelines. As Twitch CEO said about safety / moderation is a global department and everyone has different in interpretations, same with live streamers, different interpretations. The suspensions should still exist for violations but it should not be indefinite based on no very clear intent. I’ve seen many live streamers banned because of misreading the context and misinterpretations from moderation. Let the live streamer give clearer context if needed than assuming as twitch moderation.

In your own TOS you allow:
Building construction sets (Lego, Erector sets, Mega Bloks, K'nex, Duplo, etc) or model kits (Warhammer, Gundam, and etc)

You do not, however, allow:
Toy assembly

How do you know that the Gundams etc. Will not be used as toys once they are done? How can you be sure they will not be gifted to a family member and that they will use them as toys.

Toy assembly should be allowed.

You do not allow: Unboxing
But yet many people do unboxing streams (primarly "big streamers")

You do not allow: Playing puzzles
But you allow Writing on the same directory.

You allow: Construction, home building and renovation
You do not allow: Assembling furniture or Decorating your house. Do these 2, fall under IRL then? If not, consider allowing those as they should fall under the same category as home building or renovation.

You allow: Licensed Tattooing in a safe, professional environment
You do not allow: Piercings. Why is that, if done in a safe, professional environment, it should be allowed. They usually do this at the tattoo parlor.

You need to review your TOS regarding Creative. You also need to review your IRL TOS. And review your site as a whole. Because the above written "Rules" do not make sense.

The Twitch community is composed of people from around the world, coming from unique political backgrounds and cultures.

Prohibiting games enforces a specific view of the world to the Twitch community as to what is acceptable or not, censoring content with valuable gameplay and cultural content in the process.

As of this writing, the list of prohibited games are either due to violence, sex, or any game with the "Adults Only (AO)" ESRB rating. While this could be argued to be a good thing for kids, Twitch has already a "Mature Content" flag in its channel settings for this specific case.

Responsible adults however are not allowed to take the matter into their own hands and are forced to stream and listen to content that do not fully match their own values. This is in my opinion unacceptable since it hinders the creativity of the video game art form and its economics.

This is not just limited to the entertainment factor of violent and sexual content, but also derivative content that could not exist without those elements. For example, Manhunt 2 contains in my opinion a very strong anti-violence message in its endings depending on the player's actions throughout the game, but said message does not make much sense without the censored content. Similarly, HuniePop can in my opinion empower shy people to reach out for real life relationships through the tips given by the characters and by gamifying their fear, but would have a lot less impact to them without the naughty rewards.

Regardless of whether you agree with these opinions or not, the point is that even the most insipid-looking game can have a positive effect to various people, and blocking such games would prevent people from benefiting from them.

Please allow responsible adults on Twitch to enjoy the content that they want freely.

This is simply a copy paste of a reply from a recent reddit post on the subject. It's un edited for this purpose but it gets the point across. (Seeing as there are already 2 people asking for nudity, I figured the counter needed a spot)

I'm a Creative streamer. Long before Creative was a thing. I don't want nudity as part of broadcasts. Why? Several reasons. I run a business. Customers come to my channel to see my work, and one of the problems with nudity is that I don't want my business to be associated with it - Be it fine arts or hentai.

That brings up the second reason why I don't want nudity. What is art, and what is porn? There's no hard line, and just because something isn't porn or distasteful to you, doesn't mean it isn't for others. I believe that hentai for instance, is porn. But ask any person who draws hentai, and they'll say it isn't. That it's art (The two are not mutually exclusive).

third reason why I believe there shouldn't be nudity (Read: genitalia). It's an open category with many different streams and people. While GTA is a category with just that one game, and that one audience - It's an 18+ game, in an 18+ category. Creative isn't 18+, and it shouldn't be. There's no good way to allow children browsing Creative with, or without their parents, when there are people drawing dicks in there. (And setting channels to "mature" doesn't do jack)

Fourth reason, which is more of a counter argument to the idea that Twitch allows plenty nudity already: They don't. Plenty of games are banned from Twitch for the one reason that they display genitalia in one way or another - Recently Genital Jousting, which is a cartoony, and rather funny game in my opinion, about dick-jousting. There's a world of difference between a game character performing a lap-dance more or less clothed, and clearly displayed genitalia. (For the record, I don't think these games should be banned necessarily. They should simply have their own 18+ section - And one could possibly make an 18+ Creative section) An addition to this: Twitch does punish streamers who linger on sexual things in games. It can occur, but it canot be the focus of the broadcast.

Fifth reason. There's no real good way to moderate this. Even without nudity allowed we've seen countless examples of people crossing the line, be it artful drawing or straight up porn, that have allowed to stream for hours before being shut down. There's no incentive at Twitch to have an admin browsing Creative constantly, verifying that all broadcasts that display genitalia are not crossing whatever arbitrary line Twitch would have to set on "What's porn?"

Lastly. The idea that allowing nudity would help Creative grow has no real validity. What ever audience may be gained from it, would likely be trumped by the loss of younger audiences and sensitive people who choose to not browse the category, because it shows content they're not comfortable with. This doesn't need to be an ongoing discussion. Twitch is a private company, and they have a relatively strict policy on genitalia (Unlike Youtube that allows for videos of births and Genital Jousting for instance). Can nudity be allowed in a way that isn't detrimental? Possibly. Is it worth it to invest the resources so a handful of artist get to do that one painting they want to do? Probably not. There are so many things to do in art. If you can't do nudity on stream, it's not that big of a deal, in my honest opinion.

There are art streaming services that allow for nudity, so it's not like there's no place to broadcast this type of content. If anything, I think it's important that we retain a place where nudity isn't part of the Creative process, for the sake of the younger audience, and the more sensitive audience.

The amount of risky content on JTV back when I broadcasted on there was actually enough to make me not want to share my broadcast with people I knew - It had much looser content guidelines, and as a result, it ended up being something I for instance wouldn't want to show my parents, because you never knew when a cam girl was building up an audience she'd then move over to an actual camsite (They did this a lot), or just straight up porn streams. (Porn streams could run for hours as long as they didn't hit frontpage, so if viewer numbers got too high, the broadcaster would put on a weird clown video or something to make part of the audience leave - The lengths people would go just to broadcast porn was stupid - The issue was well known by one of the mods I spoke with at the time) - I don't want Twitch to risk this being anywhere near a possibility to become the norm on their site.

Allowing nudity could potentially make it difficult to secure licensing for shows like Bob Ross The Joy of Painting, and the various Food shows. There are likely going to be more of these things in the future, and if nudity has any detrimental effect on securing a deal for these marathons, it's doing much more harm than good.

Since the creation of twitch creative last year, there's been a great community growing. Twitch has made a new and exciting platform for artists to connect with their audience that hasn't really existed before. It allows for such a personal connection between the art, artist, and viewer. When I see artwork from an artist that I watch regularly, not only do I see their beautiful creation, I remember special moments when they completed a section of their work.

On October 28th, 2015, when Twitch creative was announced on the Twitch blog they wrote, ”We expect to learn much about what is, and is not, appropriate for Twitch as the community grows.”

After a year of silence, I hope that the community can get some answers and solutions to this important issue.

For clarity here are the terms of service regarding nudity.

For Twitch gaming:

“Nudity can't be a core focus or feature of the game in question, and modded nudity is disallowed in its entirety. Occurrences of in-game nudity are permitted, so long as you do not make them a primary focus of your broadcast and only spend as much time as needed in the area to progress the game's story.”

For Twitch Creative:

“We are working on ways to ensure that artists can produce the work that they want, while also fostering a safe space for the community as a whole. We ask that you refrain from creating or using depictions of nudity or extreme violence until those features are implemented.”

For gaming, nudity can't be the primary focus. For creative, nudity can't be shown at all.

These rules imposed upon the creative community, cripple creators and the viewers knowledge from such a fundamental core of drawing, the human anatomy. Artists want to share their creative process, including their skills as they improve. How can they improve when the necessary knowledge of human anatomy is forbidden?

When game designers make a choice to have nudity in their games, the majority of the time it's for sexualized purposes.

However what the creative community wants is to at least have nudity as an educational tool to build upon our skills as artists to further our understanding of anatomy.

Today you can view nudity in games, however if there's a drawing thats somewhat suggestive it's a bannable offense.

Just as flowers, sunsets, and mountains are useful tools in the artist’s toolkit, the unadorned human body can be an essential tool to express the pure emotion of what the artist is trying to convey. Artists use nudity as a tool to focus attention on the human form, and not irrelevant aspects like how their shirts are buttoned, how clothing is being draped, or whether they are wearing the most stylish kind of hat. And if the point of art is to primarily express ideas about the nature of humanity and our role in the world, then it would be natural to expect the nude body would be among the most powerful of those expressive tools.

Artists deserve the same level of freedom as gamers. To put a lid on our talent diminishes the range of appreciation for the human condition and causes us to constantly edit our creativity.

I want the artwork I experience to be created with the best training, the most creative ideas, and the widest freedom to use all those things to make the most excellent works that best efforts can achieve. To do any less would make the world a worse place to live.

You allow gamers to play their games. Allow artists to create their masterpieces.