Twitch updates sexual content guidelines amid ‘topless’ meta backlash - Dexerto
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Twitch has updated its guidelines on sexual content following mass outrage over a new 'topless' meta that gained popularity on the site.

Twitch Updated their Sexual Content Policy:

  • Changes: Certain content now allowed with labels
  • Artistic Nudity: Permitted under Sexual Themes Label
  • Game Nudity: Contextual; labels necessary
  • Body Painting: Acceptable with appropriate label
  • Mature Games: Label generally covers content
  • Stream Visibility: Impacted by content labels
  • Twerking, grinding and pole dancing are now allowed without a label.

Via https://twitter.com/Dexerto/status/1735024184114245689

  • @linuxdweeb@lemm.eeEnglish
    22•1 year ago

    Nudity is not strictly porn, but not all nudity is strictly harmless. Platforms like these are for clickbait and attention whoring, and there’s no better way to get attention on the internet than sexual content (especially on a website mainly used by kids/teens).

    And it’s basically universally accepted that porn is harmful to children. We all watched some of it when we were young, but most people had circumstances that limited their exposure or access to it. A modern mainstream addiction machine like Twitch serving softcore porn to children under the guise of “artistic nudity” is going to fuck people up. That’s not even mentioning the “cam whore” aspect to it, which does frequently fuck up the lives of fully grown adults.

    What sites are parents supposed to allow their kids to access if rules like this start slipping in? Short of invasive AI scanning, it’s not possible to monitor every single thing your child watches on a site at all times.

    • LeadersAtWorkEnglish
      19•1 year ago

      I am always so interested by these types of comments. Lots of words, no substance. HOW will this cause harm? Is it the nudity? Is it the platform specifically? Is Twitch now more harmfully addicting due to there now being nudity? Was access to Twitch not harmful, or was harmful, before? In excess? In moderation?

      Give us something if you’re going to be throwing verbal hands. I neither agree nor disagree with this decision by Twitch, mostly because I honestly dgaf and strongly feel parents have a responsibility to learn how to limit access if it is needed. Having worked with parents a LOT, many of them are happy to shove responsibility for their children onto others, while simultaneously making outrageous demands and incredible accusations. I don’t see why this situation should be any different.

      • businessfishEnglish
        13•1 year ago

        i think the problem a lot of people (myself included) have specifically with nudity on twitch is with the streamers whose streams are basically just porn. now there’s nothing inherently wrong with porn, nudity, or sex work on the internet or in real life, but the issue comes in when you put people who are essentially sex workers on the same video game streaming site many young people visit for non-sexual content. now porn is available and popular on their favorite game streaming site, and it is being forcibly recommended to users who have never browsed that category of content on twitch before.

        pretty much all i watch on twitch is super mario 64 speedruns, but 9/10 times when i log in my first recommended channel is a streamer with their tits out doing jumping jacks in a hot tub or something. i can only imagine this is happening to a large percentage of other users as well, including younger users who could be easily manipulated by an attractive and interactive woman online heavily incentivizing them to donate money.

        it basically boils down to: i don’t care that porn is on the site, but it should not be recommended to people who are not already browsing that content as that is not what i’m there to see.

        edit - re-reading the changes, i’m hoping that the stream visibility and content label changes would fix this issue.

        • @InquisitiveApathy@lemm.eeEnglish
          5•1 year ago

          This is essentially how I see it also.

          The changes over the years allowing non-gaming content have allowed some really cool stuff to be showcased, but it also opened the floodgates for a lot of low effort softcore camgirls. I’m cool with sex workers making a living, but it would be nice to filter them out. Twitch has done a lot of work on discovery over the past year or two that’s been positive at least even if the site is awful when not logged in.

          I think the impact of these changes will really depend on the how Twitch chooses to allow monetization. Given the changes to aggressive ad-focused monetization recently I think that will be the big decider for what this means.

        • LeadersAtWorkEnglish
          2•1 year ago

          Thanks for the measured response! I can agree with this. There is inherently nothing wrong with nudity or sex in general. In fact a healthy relationship with nudity and sex likely supports good development. I don’t need to go much further to support this argument than to point out the myriads of people damaged from strict religious upbringings. That said, it does need to be filtered and enforced properly. Buried even where it had to be actually found, or specific settings activated that are otherwise automatically turned off.

          I think if these and/or similar steps were done many of us wouldn’t be bothered.

      • @Dkarma@lemmy.worldEnglish
        -7•1 year ago

        Yeah that poster comes off as brainwashed by the puritanical side of the usa. There’s nothing inherently damaging about seeing a naked body.

          • LeadersAtWorkEnglish
            3•1 year ago

            Well, I have a headache now. I had forgotten how poorly written some of these published papers tend to be. Anyway, sorta long summary after skimming a few of the studies and that meta-analysis:

            1. The meta-analysis worked through data obtained in a range from 1967 to 1995. It found that the consumption of “explicit pornographic material” appears to create a mostly consistent change in the behavior of adolescents and measured in four categories. I’m on mobile so I won’t go back and grab those categories, though the participants are mostly balanced between them. It should be noted that this analysis is trying to push a hard need for practical findings in our modern day despite only taking information from the range provided. Moreover, there is an air of bias regarding the findings.

            2. Other studies have concluded, in general, that while we believe there is an increased risk of early sexual development and even deviance, it has been difficult to replicate these consistently.

            3. Most studies conclude that modern consumption of media by teenagers may or may not increase the risk of deviancy many of us would consider stereotypical risks that teenagers take.

            Basically, science is struggling a bit to show a positive correlation. They think there might be something there, though looking at research into other types of media you’ll find similar findings.

            • archomrade [he/him]English
              2•1 year ago

              Not to mention that the metric of ‘sexual deviance’ is ill-defined and multi-variate. If sexual deviance is of a sexual health and safety orientation, then the obvious confounding factor is the historical use of abstinence-only education in this cohort (from 67-95). If the definition is speaking towards sexual violence and improper consent, then I think the conversation should include how healthy and consenting behaviors are being properly depicted outside of pornography as well as within, because simply not ever being exposed to sexual depictions doesn’t address the origins of anti-social attitudes toward the opposite gender and sexual frustrations of involuntarily celibate men. Domestic violence exists even outside a sexual context.

              Not addressing those issues is how you end up with senile men like Dennis Prager who believe rape is morally permissible inside a heterosexual marriage.

          • archomrade [he/him]English
            1•1 year ago

            I’m struggling to understand how the claim ‘pornography causes sexual deviance’ is different from ‘violent films and video games cause violent tendencies’

    • @wildginger@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
      15•1 year ago

      What universe do you live in where thats accepted knowledge? Cause its not the real one, thats a pretty frequently debated topic.

          • @inclementimmigrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3•1 year ago

            From your own link:

            However, pornography use was associated with increases in both self-esteem and symptoms of depression and anxiety, albeit only among adolescent women in one of the two panels. In addition, low subjective well-being was associated with a subsequent increase in pornography use, but only in female adolescents in one panel. This study’s results are not consistent with concerns about pornography use negatively contributing to male adolescents’ psychological well-being, but suggest potential antagonistic links between pornography use and specific facets of mental well-being in adolescent women. Such links should be considered tentative until verified with further research.

            Seems that your own study you posted acknowledges that porn with adolescents, mainly with adolescent males, is generally accepted and understood with their negative links.

            • @wahmingEnglish
              11•1 year ago

              Yes, I tried to link a reasonably balanced view of the issue. It’d be nice if you didn’t cherry pick statements. The point being, different studies have shown different results, and there’s no concrete conclusion to date. Hence your statement about ‘universal acceptance’ is extremely debatable.

              • @AMillionNames@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                0•1 year ago

                So you accuse someone of cherrypicking while admitting you cherrypicked yourself (which I should discard because your opinion of balanced is right and his of general consensus is wrong, obviously…)? Personally, I see a big difference between proper sexual education and children beginning to explore puberty with parental guidance and streamers drawing porn for money and exposure to sexuality becoming a circlejerk to personality cults.

                • @wahmingEnglish
                  2•1 year ago

                  Balanced in the sense that I acknowledged there’s an ongoing debate and linked a source that covered both sides, unlike a certain someone who claimed ‘universal acceptance’ of their worldview. Hopefully you can see a difference there.

                  • @AMillionNames@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                    -1•1 year ago

                    You are asking me whether I assume universal and general are used interchangeably most of the time or whether I assume that when people say universal consensus they do so literally and without any degree of dissension, something which rarely occurs. At this point we might as well be talking about which dictionary definition of a word is the “real” definition. His wording could have been better to avoid criticism, sure.

            • @wildginger@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
              8•1 year ago

              The last sentence of your quote literally says that there is no actual conclusive data from this, and any links need further study to be considered real and actionable.

              You didnt even cherry pick this correctly

              • @inclementimmigrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
                -2•1 year ago

                Conclusions

                Despite common public concerns that surround adolescent use of sexual media [66], the results of this first longitudinal assessment of the relationship between pornography use and adolescents’ subjective well-being provide no evidence that pornography use contributes to decreased subjective well-being in adolescent men. We found, however, limited evidence of the contradictory contribution of pornography use to female adolescents’ dysregulated mood and self-evaluation. Future research in this area should use large-scale prospective designs, which would include different developmental stages, to clarify possible effects in adolescent women. Given the public concern surrounding pornography use among adolescents, the veracity of these findings will likely be challenged. Thus, replication of our findings with diverse adolescent samples from other cultural settings is highly warranted.

                • @wildginger@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
                  6•1 year ago

                  This repeats the exact same point I pointed out. That they found nothing conclusive, only mildly suggestive data, and will need repeated deeper study to confirm if the data pointed towards an actual conclusion or if it was a flaw in the study.

                  I really wish they taught scientific reading in non-college school, you posted my own evidence for me as if it was a rebuttal

                  E: also? This study used regular porn, while twitch would have typically woman-led self-led content, which completely shifts the research. So even if this said what you think it says, thats still not conclusive for all porn. Just stereotypical male focused and male directed video porn.

          • @AMillionNames@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            -2•1 year ago

            Peas to apples, that study only involves adolescents, and it doesn’t clearly illustrate or partition according to the age groups. It also seems to merely itself to the self-assessment of those polled and particular concerns about body image and inadequacy.

    • @diffusive@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7•1 year ago

      I would like to learn more on a sentence you casually dropped

      it’s basically universally accepted that porn is harmful to children

      It would be interesting to read some studies and what is the definition of “children”.

      In other word I think that assertion is undebatable for a 6 year old… but what about a 14yo? And a 17yo?

    • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6•1 year ago

      That’s why I don’t monitor it. If I don’t trust my kids on a site, I ban it so they get no access to it whatsoever. If I trust them, I don’t have any restrictions on the content they can access on it.

      For example, I trust Netflix’s kids mode, but my kids can easily switch to my profile and see stuff they shouldn’t. I trust them to only watch on their profile, and if they violate that, they lose access to Netflix entirely. Adult content doesn’t appear on their home page, and it doesn’t even appear on my home page (as in, the trailers usually don’t have the intense parts).

      I feel like if I restrict it, they’ll be more curious about what they’re missing, whereas teaching them to avoid stuff in their own teaches discipline and builds trust

    • @wahmingEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      it’s basically universally accepted that porn is harmful to children.

      Source, please?

    • @Meowoem@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

      Every single time, anything and everything…

      You must realise no one buys it, right? Like you know everyone sees straight through your pearl clutching?