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.

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.

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."

Twitch plans on soft-banning a handful of words in their next policy update, namely "simp", "incel", and "virgin", in an attempt to * down on ** harassment. They say it will only be in cases where they are used as insults but I want to get ahead of this since community outcry is already bubbling up.

Banning individual words that are not slurs not only lumps them in with genuinely harmful words but also encourages an environment where context is devalued. The above three words are usually used in a joking manner, but I worry that shuffling them into the same category as things like the N word, F slur, etc. will create knee-jerk reactions when moderating; if you're sent a clip of someone saying one of the words to someone and you're unaware of their relationship or their tone is ambiguous, seeing that the word is "banned" is automatically going to push you toward one opinion over the other. You can say they're only going to be banned when used as insults but preemptively sticking a black mark on them leads to bias. Already there are rumors a popular Twitch streamer was banned for jokingly using these words, which, whether true or not, doesn't exactly soothe the community.

It's also important to note that ANY word can be used maliciously because, again, context matters. There are more childish insults that can still end up being used against TOS if it's done repeatedly and maliciously rather than as part of less-serious trash talk and banter. People get called "stupid", "idiot", and a whole host of other insults (both jokingly and not) but no platform is wild enough to outright ban them. Nevermind niche phrases that can be community-specific (e.g. "blue heart" is a serious allegation in one of my circles) that you'd never be able to ban despite their potential for misuse.

The upcoming rule also feels biased: there are other "new"(ish) terms that are actually linked to vulnerable minorities that don't seem to hit moderation's radar, yet something that gets jokingly tossed around a lot like simp that is linked to negative behavior is a bannable offense?

TL;DR Individual words that are not slurs and/or do not have a /serious/ history of misuse should not be singled out in the harassment policy.

This DMCA crap is getting out of hand!

Now they are going to strike people for the music that was made to be played in video games?!

Absolutely unacceptable.

We are not going to start muting games, on top of muting music that we play in between games or downtime or AFK screens.
Streamers don’t want awkward Dead air!

Music has always been nice to play in the background since day one.
And I have never seen any streamer ever take credit for the music that they were playing.
We know who’s singing a song most of the time. What band. What singer. Artists and composers.

A lot of the time, streamers even have that little scrolling information bar about what song is playing.

And when the music is just there for background purposes, it’s not taking the forefront of the stream, it should not be in any sense, any sort of deal!

And, in fact, myself and I’m sure hundreds of thousands, if not millions of other people, have actually FOUND music, and started listening to different artists, when hearing certain songs in peoples streams!!!!
And I am not about to lose that!

More people need to start standing up against this DMCA absurdity!!!!!

It’s going to start getting pretty awkward on twitch, not having any music at all, whatsoever, even music that’s made to be played within the video game itself!
Streamers cannot talk 100% of the time! We need to have some sort of a background music going on!
A lot of streamers, that actually helps set the “vibe“ of the stream too!

No more of this DMCA crap! Let’s bring twitch back to where it was the first couple of years that the site opened! Where we can just listen to music, Play games, chat with chat, and have a good time! Instead of worrying every millisecond now, if we are doing some thing against the stupid “rules” that are constantly being changed and made up!

There is nothing currently in TOS that prevents anyone with a criminal record in casting - including people who have been convicted of race, hate or crimes. As a private company, Twitch could make the step to update TOS to prevent people who have been convicted of race, hate or crimes from casting - and make a DBS part of the onboarding process (a DBS is mandatory for teachers working with children, people in the care industry etc - why not on twitch when children can create an account from the age of 13?) . It wouldn't solve the problem, but it'd be a start - and make it easier for Twitch to remove those who pose a risk now and in the future both online and at IRL events.

I have a friend who is a beginner streamer who has been banned and doesn't know why. Twitch only reported that he said something that is outside of his policy. I watch all of his lives and I don't remember any time he offended someone else. In addition to not making the reason clear, the platform does not give confidence to new streamers, making them question whether the platform is the best option for them to work. Not only that, I remember other cases in which Brazilian streamers were banned for stupid reasons. So I would like to leave the suggestion, so that the platform could be more transparent and analyze the situations for banishment in a deeper way. That way, beginners would feel safer to start working on the platform, in addition to more popular streamers not migrating to other platforms taking their fans away.

[SPA]

Necesitamos un grupo de personas que se dedique a controlar de forma más activa la comunidad, y a la vez controlen que los creadores de contenido siguen todas las normas y directrices establecidas para la plataforma.

Sería la mejor forma de aumentar la seguridad y la confianza de los usuarios para que todos puedan disfrutar de Twitch.

¿Tienen planteado crearlo? ¿Necesitáis gente?
Deberíais ofrecer oportunidad de empleo para esto.

[ENG]

We need a group of people who are actively dedicated to control the community, and at the same time keep that the content creators follow all the rules and guidelines established for the platform.

It would be the best way to increase the security and trust of users so that everyone can enjoy Twitch.

Are you planning to create it? Do you need people?
You should offer employment opportunities for this.