Since Body Painting has been established as a valid category on the platform, there has been a noticeable lack of encouragement from Twitch in creating a healthy community around it. This lack of support is further emphasized by the massive push back and public harassment of Body Painters online, including but not limited to: Organized hate raids by other streamers, Streamers sexualizing body painters on their own live streams, Public groups that organize mass reports on body painters, Lack of response by Twitch to counter the culture of continued degradation of women through objectification by viewers (including inappropriate usernames).

Twitch has a growing issue on its platform in regards to Body Art, one of its more controversial categories. The streamers of this category are heavily targeted for harassment every day by other streamers and their communities, often leading to malicious mass reports on accounts resulting in account suspensions and bans with little offering as to the specifics of what the offense entails. While the community is grateful for Twitch to include this art on it's platform, the seeming lack of effort to foster a sense of support for the community is disappointing. While it is true that Twitch has offered a recent update to the community guidelines in regards to body painting, they still leave too much up to interpretation. These gray areas leave a number of inconsistencies laid bare on the enforcement of these policies, and leave the streamers feeling a lack of safety in their art. The additional focus, and inequality of these rules being enforced on male presenting streamers as well, also has a play in how the Body Painters are objectified as these guidelines are settled under "****** Content".

Proposed Solution
Twitch has an opportunity to lead by example and help to change the rampant culture of harassment and hateful conduct on the platform by showing support for one of it’s most controversial categories. After much discussion with over 100 body painters about the trials we face on a daily basis, we came to a few proposals that if implemented would create a better sense of belonging, safety, security and health in the category. Many of these proposals also have the ability to improve the harassment faced by all females on the platform if expanded on.

Being as controversial a category as Body Painting is, the community would like to ask for even MORE defined guidelines. There are too many areas that need further definition, such as how long is a short break when painting since the average body paint takes anywhere from 6 to 8 hours to complete? What constitutes performing unrelated activities? How much coverage actually has to be painted before a stream starts (whole ? Areola/ and underbust only? Does it need to be detailed or is a single color ok? Do we need to start with the chest as we paint or starting with the face ok?)? As streamers we've seen inconsistency in enforcement of these rules as some streamers are known to show off a pet on stream in a break from painting, some eat while simultaneously painting, and others may take a moment to answer bigger questions on stream. In many of these situations we've seen some people become suspended or banned from the platform when being threatened with reports while live, and others no severe action taken under the same threats. By further defining time limits, expectations of paint coverage to meet, and what is considered a break versus participating in unrelated activities, it leaves little question to the streamer as to what is allowed, and removes some of the discrepancy between how these reports are handled.

To further elaborate on these discrepancies, we would like to propose that a team of two persons be assigned to review reports against body painters. This can be expanded on to include all ****** content reports that happen live, but is important that there be little room for error when handling these cases. In order to set a precedence for conduct and what is expected, there has to be consistency in the actions taken as well as the reasoning behind those actions. Not only are the guidelines easily interpret-able, but the reasons for suspensions and bans are even more vague and lacking context. If the reports made against body painters are handled by specific staff, that further makes it possible for consistency and clearer definition of the offense when resulting in punishment.

I cannot stress enough how the platform as a whole would benefit from clearer reasoning for suspensions and bans. While it is hard to give time stamps for the offense in question due to the VOD being removed from the site, it would not be impossible to supply a screenshot or clip with clearer definition of the actions being performed that were against policy. Not only does being clearer about policy enforcement help the community by setting clear precedent, it honors an overwhelming outcry to Twitch to honor its commitment to transparency.

There is also a great opportunity here to add in a community manager for the creative category with an emphasis on Body Painting. With a community manager, those streaming in Beauty&Body Art would have a designated point of contact when there are questions or concerns about content they wish to produce. Community managers also allow Twitch to have live eyes on the category and better utilize the warning system as things are happening live allowing the streamer to either end their stream or course correct immediately. This line of communication also narrows the ability of more edgy streamers to intentionally misinterpret the guidelines, and would give Twitch staff in Safety and Policy a better view of the issues and harassment going on. This suggestion is one that has been implemented by competitors, including YouTube, who have active community managers that do outreach to streamers and communities while live.

The list of issues facing body painters is long, and the concern over the lack of support received from Twitch as a category is frustrating. We truly believe in Twitch as a platform though, and the powerful change that can be made in the current culture of objectification and ****** harassment, not only by other streamers but the viewers as well, if Twitch were to take a stance in this controversial category. As a community, we sincerely hope that you will hear our voice, our concerns, and take into consideration our many proposals for solutions. We are open to discussion with policy staff and willing to work to help better the platform as a whole.

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.

Please create the option for an account age chat restriction (similar to follower only mode) so streamers can restrict newly created accounts from trolling/harassing in chat.

When necessary, brand new Twitch accounts could be restricted from chatting by allowing the streamer to pick the length of time accounts need to have been created for before they can chat. (24 hrs, 7 days, 14 days etc).

This would potentially be even more effective at dealing with certain types of harassment compared to a 10 min+ follower only mode because it would allow for the average twitch viewer to still interact with a stream that they perhaps don't follow while still protecting the streamer from someone making new accounts for harassment purposes.

Please allow streamers to remove people from their follower's list. As a small streamer, I struggle with trolls, and I have made many streamer friends who have had the same experiences as me. On more than one occasion I have banned a troll from chat and had them return with upwards of 3 other accounts, sometimes even up to 10 or 15 other accounts during one stream. (Keep in mind my average stream is about 2.5 hours, and I try my best to not acknowledge or encourage the trolls at all, I just ban them and move on.) They follow each time they return, adding new but empty follows to the follower count.

I have had trolls return with new usernames that target my mods, or reference something that was said earlier in the stream, or even referencing their past usernames that were previously banned. Their follows are meaningless because they will likely never return with that account that they made to troll a specific streamer.

Many streamers try to keep track of their follower to viewer ratio as they grow. To see what they're doing wrong or right, and to see what helps them grow or makes them lose followers. Having those empty follows of people who will never return is quite a problem.

Here are a few of my suggestions:

• Automatically removing someone from the follower's list if they get banned in chat.




• Giving streamers the option to view their banned chatters list and manually remove the follow themselves.




• Remove the option to make multiple accounts with one verified email address. (This enables trolls to make new accounts in just a couple of minutes and quickly return to keep harassing a streamer)




• If a streamer has banned several usernames that share the same email, allow the streamer to ban the entire email address and any associated usernames.




• If a streamer has banned several usernames that share the same email, allow the streamer to remove any and all usernames that are associated with that email from their follower list.

Trolls will not keep me from streaming, but implementing at least one (if not several) of these ideas would be a huge help to me and many other streamers out there. Thank you for your time and consideration!

This is not to take away from the improvements that have already been made, and are being implemented. The work that is being done is greatly appreciated.
However, further change is needed to better protect streamers for banned users. Merely preventing chatting is not enough to deter harassment, stalking, or intrusive bot behavior.

Most people are aware that measures often can be circumvented, that is not an excuse for the lack of protection that currently exists.
Streamers need a way to completely cut off a user from content. I believe the proposed measures are reasonable, and will also provide protection against abuse as well as preventing intrusive bots from squatting in channels without permission.

The proposed changes are:
1. A banned user is prevented from connecting to a channel's chat completely, which means their name does not appear in the list of viewers.
2. A banned user is prevented from viewing the stream itself, on site or using other means.
3. A banned user is blocked from subscribing and following, and will be automatically unsubscribed and / or unfollowed.
4. A banned user is prevented from viewing any other channel information and content, including the streamer's panels, VODs, clips, followers, and followed accounts.
5. A streamer must be able to toggle an option to treat logged out viewers similarly as a banned user, preventing any access until they log in.

Additionally, to prevent excessive account creation, the following measures should be implemented as well:
6. Accounts need to be verified by e-mail.
7. Limit the amount of accounts per e-mail, to 1 or at a maximum 2.
8. Limit the amount of accounts that can be created from a single IP address per day.

Thank you for your consideration.

I would like to propose that Twitch implements much stricter rules surrounding username creation and the terms which are allowed to be used in usernames. Users are still allowed to create usernames which are hateful, sexually explicit and degrading, despite this behaviour being against the Twitch Community Guidelines.

I appreciate that moderators and streamers are able to ban and report these accounts, but stopping this behaviour should NOT be the sole responsibility of content creators and their team. Furthermore, this method merely addresses the problem AFTER it has already happened. We need Twitch to implement a system which can identify harmful usernames and prevent them from being created in the first place.

I am proposing this out of both a need to protect streamers and their communities. I was targeted by numerous accounts, with usernames including the statements 'all lives matter' and 'no consent', as well as phrases relating to graphic ****** acts and anatomy. Although my mods were able to ban and report these individuals, the usernames were still visible to my community and myself, and affected me deeply. Twitch needs to do more to protect content creators, and the simplest way to do this is by addressing the problem BEFORE it happens - by preventing the creation of these harmful usernames.

I would like to remind people of the Twitch Community Guidelines, specifically relating to Hateful Conduct and Harassment, and a couple of these guidelines which were clearly violated from my own experience:

Content that is prohibited under our Hateful Conduct policy—regardless of whether it is intended to be hateful—includes, but is not limited to the following:
- Content that encourages or supports the political or economic dominance of any race, ethnicity, or religious group, including support for white supremacist/nationalist ideologies

The following categories of behaviors are considered to be sexually harassing, and are prohibited on Twitch:
- Making unsolicited objectifying statements relating to the body parts or practices of another person
- Making unsolicited statements in reference to performing graphic acts on another person
(And perhaps most relevant:)
- Creating accounts dedicated to harassment or hate, such as through abusive usernames

I understand that this may be very difficult to implement, however it would greatly improve the experience for both content creators and their communities, and foster a much safer environment. I believe that actively ensuring hateful behaviour has no place on Twitch is worth the challenges that might arise.

Users are able to hide specific badges already (Twitch Prime, Turbo, Bits, ...) but what about Moderator Badges?

The reason for this suggestion:
In smaller streams (new) chatters might get scared if moderators post messages.

So I see 2 potential ways this could be achieved:

1. Only visually disable the mod badge (keeping the moderation actions in-tact)


2. Allow moderator to go into "non-moderation mode" - in this mode, the moderation actions are not available and they are like a normal chatter

In both cases moderators should still show up in the Moderator List (/mods).

Recently Twitch added a "Mod View" into the chat settings - maybe something could be added in there?
Say a "Hide Moderator Badge" option?

Recently in the twitch community, there has been a rise of hot tub streamers also known as the "Hot Tub Meta". This has been a very controversial issue but I'm going to give my thoughts on the issue and hopefully twitch will do something about this. On twitch TOS it's stated "Content or camera focus on breasts, buttocks, or pelvic region, including poses that deliberately highlight these elements". This means any sort of content that deliberately does these would be against TOS. Now when we look at how the Hot Tub Meta we can see that it's unhealthy and unfair to the community. When I was looking through some of the streams a streamer called "Kaellyn" had their butt covering half the screen which I would assume is against TOS but nowadays it's hard to tell. Although the whole stream isn't just that it was obvious that she did to satisfy her chat. Another example is the popular streamer "Amouranth" who lets their viewers donate money to get their name written on many things the most common one being floaty. Just tuning into the chat for a few minutes I saw many twitch users send very questionable things such as "Show feet Kreygasm" "Show your booty" "Change bikini" and many more things. Constantly messages were being deleted by mods because they were either offensive or very . Another issue is the fact that it's clear that these streams are but the streamers don't even care to put the stream to mature just to get more people. This means that many kids can easily just go onto these streams and see big booba's. It's clear that this issue has gotten out of hand and that it needs to be stopped. My final thoughts are that although this stuff is "content" I don't think it's healthy or fair to the community and streamers to continue letting these streams go on. I think streamers should be able to be creative with their content as well. Hopefully twitch will something about this. Thank you for reading.

For 9 months I have been reporting someone who has been harassing me over and over with NO response from Twitch. When will there be a real system in place to protect streamers??

This person has made numerous accounts with usernames that have shared personal information including my phone number, addresses, and names of family members. I have reported, banned, blocked, and had my MODs do the same, but nothing has ever been done on Twitch's end.

If others are going through this, I want to hear about it and what Twitch is going to do to help those of us who are dealing with long term harassment and the emotional duress that follows it.

Enable 2FA as a chat optional requirement for users to be required to have 2fa before typing in a users stream chat. This would drastically reduce the number of times a banned user will try to evade a ban to harass a streamer / disrupt chat.
On top of this it would drastically increase awareness on 2fa. Being optional it wouldn't force people or streamers to turn it on or use it. This could also help people who have 18+ Mature content streams reduce the number of people under 18 from engaging.

As 2fa already exists within the twitch platform and is required for affiliated/partnered streamers enabling this to a chat setting would be pretty easy for a developer to add into a code

Its already clearly a pretty popular idea
https://twitter.com/ellerows/status/1299393402266628096

How it could look here:
https://twitter.com/ellerows/status/1299403769634000934/photo/1

Only allow accounts with 2fa enabled to watch your stream

There are a host of problems on Twitch and I feel as though this idea could be a solution to some of the bigger ones.

I suggest giving streamers the option to only allow accounts with 2fa to access their channel. Make it an option for the individual streamer and make it toggleable.

In order for this to work, Twitch must do more than just “not allow the user to use chat.” Twitch needs to stop them from accessing the streamer’s channel all together. The same needs to be done for users who are banned/blocked but that is a whole other discussion.

There should also be a way to have this feature enabled, but with a customizable exemption list so that streamers can still allow their nightbots, moobots, etc access.

As someone who has faced harassment from a person viewbotting me for 10 months now, this is one of the only solutions I can think of to combat this. By only allowing accounts connected to a phone number to access my page, I would no longer be harassed this way.

It would also eliminate the problem of people constantly harassing with alternate accounts.

It would also be a good option for when someone is playing a new game and wants to stop people from using alt accounts to spoil.

These are just a few benefits I could see coming out of this!

Please Twitch, it is time to do more to protect your creators. As someone whose issues have been constantly pushed aside, I ask that you consider this solution not just for me, but for every streamer that’s faced harassment as I have.

So I will break this into 3 parts. What it is, How it will work, and why I think it's needed. (first and 3rd part may overlap.)

My idea is to create a Channel Admin role for content creators at the affiliate and partner level. This role would have a golden sword (opposed to the green sword that regular moderators have) and would be able to remove/add people from moderator for the respective channel they are a channel admin for.

How this will work: Starting first, how it will be set up (in my head.) All affiliates are allowed 1 channel admin. Partners are allowed 2 or 3 [Whichever you think is more appropriate, larger streamers may need more. (You could also do it so that you get an additional based on sub points if this is better.) That person would have essentially the same roles that an "editor" now has along with all Mod perks, only addition is that they can add moderators to the channel as well as remove them.

Why this is needed: As a larger then average streamer, I, as is usual with people around my level, have a dedicated mod team with a manager that controls the mods, oversees them, etc.. I know a lot of other streamers that also do that and essentially give almost full oversight control of their mods to someone else as it's impossible to always keep up with chat, focus on what's going on, and pay attention to who is always there and deserves mod . It's a lot for one person as i'm sure anyone can agree. I know some streamers bigger then me that have multiple "managers" so to speak that oversee this stuff. These "unsung heros" (as twitch called them in their latest ad.) do a lot for the channel and I think acknowledging and awarding that is only appropriate. This would also help with the day to day back end management for larger/medium sized channels. I was actually surprised nothing like this had been suggested before and I hope other people will see my ideas as something worth backing.

This is directly copied from the proposal update from Jambo, which states as follows:

"Twitch Safety Support - Update Proposal by Jambo

1. UPDATED REPORTING TOOL
   Twitch’s reporting tool is outdated, and needs to be revamped. The biggest suggestion for this is to have a lesser detailed reporting still available on profiles but provide a link to something similar to submitting a ticket, but will allow the user to submit images as well as links (currently images cannot be uploaded with a report) be marked ‘high priority.’




2. HAVE A DIRECT CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESS FOR PARTNERS
   Along with an updated reporting tool, make it easier for Partners to contact the team for urgent matters. A ticket queue will not always work when situations require more attention, and allow actual responses to come through, not an automatic response to a ticket. Designate members of your team to reach out to, as well as reassure, those with high urgency situations.




3. CONDUCT ON OTHER PLATFORMS MUST HAVE MORE OF AN IMPACT ON TWITCH
   If a Twitch user harasses others on another platform, there is clearly a direct correlation and this needs to be addressed. Twitch should absolutely have open communication with other platforms, such as Twitter and Discord, and be able to abolish communities and users who bully, harass and target attacks on others. Their activity represents the site regardless and that responsibility absolutely falls on Twitch to make note when it’s brought to their attention. There may not be anything Twitch is able to do with regard to the other platforms, but can absolutely take matters into their own hands for theirs.




4. BUILD AN EMERGENCY/URGENT RESPONSE TEAM
   Twitch may be a streaming and gaming website but internet threats are all too real. Harassment and bullying are not medium level urgency. The mental health of the streaming community needs to be a higher priority. While there are definitely other large issues, many attacks online impact the very real lives of content creators every day. For a platform that cares heavily for inclusivity, safety and equality, there are not a lot of tools in place to ensure its safety.




5. STOP ALLOWING THE CREATION OF RACIST AND HATEFUL USERNAMES
   We are able to ban these words in our chats, it should be just as easy to create a filter that prevents names of this nature. Plain and simple. Allowing these words to be used, and their creation allowed, is setting us back. While there will always be an exception, the exception and rare circumstance is better than allowing these to be made with no precaution taken.




6. WORK WITH DISCORD TO BUILD A FILTER/INTEGRATION
   DISALLOWING BANNED ACCOUNTS JOIN A STREAMER’S DISCORD SERVER
   If a streamer or viewer has their Twitch linked to their account, any user who joins from a link originated by said streamer for their chat only (a creator link, if you will) that’s built into chat through a linked bot that does not allow users who have been banned in chat to join a Discord server.




7. DO NOT ALLOW BANNED USERS TO VIEW CONTENT
   While having banned users unable to see chat is a great step in the right direction, it’s not enough. As streamers, your personality is on video, not in chat. It’s great to keep your community safe, and unseen, but the streamer is more than likely the target in attacks like these. While, yes, incognito tabs exist and there is nothing that can be done with that (outside of IP bans, which should also be considered), it needs to be noted that keeping your creators safe should be a top priority.




8. NAME CARDS SHOW IF USER IS BANNED IN OTHER CHANNELS YOU MOD FOR
   When you click on a users name, mods in that channel should be able to see if this user has been banned in other channels that they mod for, and be made aware of potential incoming issues.




9. ADD A MODERATOR CHAT BUILT WITHIN MOD ‘VIEW’
   Build a chat box/space for moderators to discuss without leaving stream to talk in a separate app’s chat (i.e. Discord) and lose sight of chat in the process."

The new channel points are pretty fun, and the ability to highlight messages is great. I'm using it frequently when moderating to make sure all the users see certain messages (like instructions on how to vote on something, announcing that the streamer will be right back, reminders about backseating not being allowed, etc).

It would be nice if it didn't cost any points for us mods to use that feature though, because there are situations where we might need to use it but don't have enough points available. Alternatively, add another similar feature available for mods only that isn't dependent on channel points at all.