this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Twitch allowing more nudity after disproportionately banning female streamers | Twitch confirmed its policy banning nudity was sexist.::Twitch confirmed its policy banning nudity was sexist.

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[–] theKalash@feddit.ch 66 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I'm all for allowing nudity in general, but it would be nice if you could actually block it or at least remove it from your recommendations.

One time I accidently clicked on one of these bathtub streamers and since then there always is one in my recommendation, with no way to remove it. I literally had to install a browser extention "Unwanted Twitch" to finally get rid of it.

[–] Zikeji@programming.dev 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My home page is literally bathtub streamers and horny VR chat streamers, I think it's because I watch VR chat meme streamers (lolathon, darrenzeus) and the algorithm just thinks that means I want horny shit. I'll have to look at that extension.

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[–] Mango@lemmy.world 54 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How many male bimbo gamer streams are there?

[–] 0x4F50@feddit.ch 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] Mango@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

I can do this. EQUALITY!!!

[–] Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works 40 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Twitch is stuck between a religious rock and a hard-as-wood place.

[–] RobotZap10000@feddit.nl 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] PwnTra1n@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago
[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

They meant hard ass wood

[–] hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm gonna get downvoted, but this culture where teenagers can form parasocial relationships with what are essentially softcore pornstars and a culture where women can very easily become pornstars isn't healthy.

[–] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I believe some of them are on websites like OnlyFans, which can be real porn if they decide to do so. I imagine being on Twitch is a method to be discovered.

I also agree with what you said. I also dislike how pornographic content is served right next to normal innocent content. It's like having porn channels on TV right next to the family channels.

[–] hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

I can argue that everyone on Only fans is a pornstar, just that some are softcore pornstars. On the flip side some are prostitutes.

Twitch IMO is fucked up in a different way. This is a platform that pre-pubescent children frequently use. Allowing for nudity essentially creates a pipeline where kids hit puberty, form parasocial relationships with pornstars, and get unhealthy ideas about women.

Like in the past there used to be a lot more of a disconnect. Like if you went on pornhub, you were explicitly going to watch porn. The porn videos were well known to be completely over dramatized to the point where it can't be taken as a realistic depiction of sex. The porn stars were explicitly porn stars. You had no idea about their personality and there was no concept of getting an emotional connection to them. There also was a general acknowledgement, even among the most liberal circles, that sex work was incredibly unhealthy.

Nowadays all of this shit is not only normalized to an insane degree, but the line between fiction and reality has been blurred to an insane degree.

Every time this comes up someone says "Oh what's the harm? PRUDE". There are some things that are harmful in ways that are difficult to explain, and not at all immediately clear. I feel like our current sex culture is a good example of that.

[–] felykiosa@sh.itjust.works 31 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I agree twitch is stuck but for me they shouldn't allow more nudity. Even if they put it in different categories. It s not a problem of puritanism , it s just that kid will have a direct access to literals strip stream , and your twitch account is directly linked with your amazon account and your cc. I have absolutely not problel with site like chaturbate , because you have to search for it , its completely clear on the content and even if of course there are kids who will browse it , well its more" difficult " to pay on it . Oh and btw on twitch the streamer is way closer to the chat than on any cam site the line between streamer and porn is too blur.

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is it really that hard for twitch to create an option to mark a stream as mature only Allowing 16+ accounts? (Should be mature enough for erotic non porn)

Kids who lie about their age know what there doing and require more parental oversight when signing up to a platform.

[–] stembolts@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I don't understand, children cannot see nudity? Is it bad for them?

[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Personally, I don't care about nudity.

My concerns are with normalizing hypersexualization. Both in the way that it turns normal nudity into some erotic situation which leads to nursing mothers being explicit and in the way it teaches people, and in particular children, that behaviour towards sex workers is normal behaviour to have when dealing with people outside of sex work. Including those sex workers.

Having some gate between regular content and erotic content can help establish a line that easy for people, and children, to understand. If a streamer doesn't turn off the camera to change and he or she is nude on stream, I don't care about. If a streamer does a strip tease for the outfit change, I'd want a separation or warning. I don't think it should be blocked, but sexualization and nudity are different things and should be treated differently. Sexuality should be a very opt-in process.

[–] theKalash@feddit.ch 4 points 10 months ago

I very much agree with you, but I'm not sure the concept easily translates to online media.

I've gone to nudist waterparks since I was 14, and my mother sometimes took me to the sauna at an even younger age, so basically grew up with non-sexualised nudity. But it took some social feedback to learn it, like learning the difference between looking and staring.

That last aspect is lost when it comes to streaming or videos. There is nothing preventing you from sexualising any nudity on screen.

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

They absolutely can and even should be exposed to healthy non sexualized human bodies but all is depending on the context.

I dont think people who are to young to understand topics like consent and objectification have any business on stream made for erotic tinted pleasure because we cant expect them to behave mature about the content and towards the streamer. Thats even a problem for adults but we simply should know better, kids cant and will at worst imitate toxic adult behavior offline.

I also put the age at 16 because i think 18 is to unrealistic and depending on maturity much younger teens may have the right level of maturity but we cant really know that when allowing people acces to such streams.

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 months ago

Thank you for acknowledging this. So many people grossly oversimplify objections to this into some sort of prudish anti-nudity thing. That's not it, they're arguing against strawmen.

I have an issue with the ongoing sexualization of content available to children, and I have precisely negative faith in Twitch's ability to properly discriminate between "artistic" and not.

[–] stembolts@programming.dev 5 points 10 months ago

I think you make some good points, I'm a bit torn on this topic and am not sure what to think yet. I do however agree that preventing the user from hiding any topic they don't want to see is harmful.

Platforms need to add common-sense controls like category blocking and family modes (which the user can craft themselves).

My biggest complaint here is the platform deciding what I want to watch.

[–] Patch@feddit.uk 7 points 10 months ago

There's a huge difference between nudity in the neutral sense of "no clothes on" and erotica (which may or may not involve nudity, but usually does).

My kids see nudity all the time. They see me and their mum nude in the mornings when we're getting dressed, they see people nude in the changing rooms at the swimming pool, they undoubtedly see other kids nude at nursery in the course of the day. That's all normal and healthy.

That's not the same as letting my 3 year old watch porn.

Porn is a complex subject even for adults, and absolutely needs an adult perspective to contextualise it, understand it, and potentially recognise when something about it is seriously wrong. This is something that is perfectly reasonable to limit to adults.

[–] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't think people care about the nudity as much as they care about the intent behind the nudity. Streamers seem to be edging as close to the line of porn as they can in order to gain views and money. This isn't someone simply walking around a beach without a top on.

I don't care if people want to fingerbang or jack themselves on cam while playing Zelda, but don't fucking blend it in and recommend it to people on a site specifically designed for children. That's what turns it from "someone seeking it out on their own" (as with the availability of porn on the rest of the internet) to "let's shove it in your face to boost our quarterly profits during an economic slump." People can claim that this all should be prevented by rules and tags but let's be real people are going to do whatever they can to skirt the rules and standout from the crowd and no human being is actually going to be moderating any of this just like with YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or any other similar site.

[–] Gljvf@lemmy.today 2 points 10 months ago

Also I think parents want to know when an app has nudity. Twitch is rated 14 plus on Google play store. Parents wouldn't expect nudity on it.

Also this was already walked back likely because disney and other advertisers didn't want thier ads to run in front of nudity / porn

[–] Artyom@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

"It's not a problem of puritanism, but (puritan argument)"

[–] MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 20 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Interesting how we've gone from "expecting nudity from women is sexist" to "NOT expecting nudity from women is sexist".

[–] MirthfulAlembic@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't think that's the message at all. It's disproportionately punishing women for nudity that is sexist.

[–] Gljvf@lemmy.today 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Unless the women are disproportionately engaging in nudity.

[–] ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's what's hard to gage. Likely due to what we consider nude on a woman isn't on a man. A shirtless man is completely acceptable, but a woman isn't. The discrepancy is cultural and the culture is discriminatory. This isn't going to change anytime soon.

The sensible thing would be to accept that what we consider appropriate for a man isn't for a woman. But this will always be pointed out as sexist. You could ban all nudity except arms, neck and knees down. But this will be criticised as excessive.

You could also allow all nudity as long as the context isn't sexual. However, twitch has a large market for sexual content particularly from people who may be limited from accessing that content like minors. So theres a large finical incentive for anyone to try to exploit allowed nudity.

Twitch likely want and encourage some of this content, as it drives engagement and thus profit. However, they want to minimise the legal/moral/reputation issues associated with delivering this content.

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[–] wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How in gods green earth did you mangle that point out of this story

[–] MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Well, in my experience from using Twitch it’s predominantly female streamers who do these kind of streams, so if there’s a policy against it, it would make sense that it would affect mostly women. That’s not sexist in and of itself.

But when you say that the policy is sexist because it affects mostly women, it implies that its unfair not to expect women to engage in nudity, doesn’t it.

[–] wahming@monyet.cc 2 points 10 months ago

You would have a point, except twitch very clearly had double standards of treatment for male and female streamers prior to this.

[–] wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, no it really doesnt. Not even a little bit.

If thats what it implies to you, I need you to call up your high school lit teacher and apologize for failing to learn a single thing in their classroom.

And then maybe invest in some picture books

[–] MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ah yes, calling my argument stupid is certainly going to convince me that I’m wrong. /s

I taught college stats, you dimwit. Perhaps you should invest in a math book. You know, with formulas and stuff. But you probably failed math since 9th grade.

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[–] starman2112@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Telling women what they can, can't, must, or mustn't wear is the sexist part

[–] Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi 12 points 10 months ago

A bunch of furries tried to abide by this policy and ended up getting banned lol

[–] GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network 7 points 10 months ago (3 children)

So what happens when a minor streams themselves nude to thousands of viewers? Does everyone get charged?

[–] ButtCheekOnAStick@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

LOL what? It would be the same if a minor uploaded themselves to Pornhub. The video would just be taken down.

[–] GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Pornhub isn't a live stream.

You think there were no incidents of live streamed cp on Omegle or ChatRoulette? Naive af

[–] ButtCheekOnAStick@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago

You missed my point entirely. If underage porn ends up on pornhub, do the viewers get arrested? No, of course not.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are minors allowed to stream? I don't know if it's worth the legal hassle.

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Rules are 13 with parents written legal permission delivered to twitch’s legal team last i remember. I had a friend whose daughter wanted to stream when she was like 15 a few years ago, thankfully she was talked out of it

[–] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

well, now I really don't feel like I'm missing much on twitch.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 6 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


In one prominent example, just two days before the policy change, Twitch banned OnlyFans model Morgpie for posting "topless" streams.

Hession confirmed that Twitch's policy prohibiting "content that ‘deliberately highlighted breasts, buttocks or pelvic region,’ even when fully clothed" was confusing.

"Streamers found it difficult to determine what was prohibited and what was allowed and often evaluating whether or not a stream violated this portion of the policy was subjective," Hession wrote.

The only exceptions will be made for streams labeled as including mature-rated games and profanity, which will still appear in the main feed on the homepage.

"In addition to providing clarity, these updates will also reduce the risk of inconsistent enforcement and bring our policy more in line with other social media services."

“With the updated terms of service, content on Twitch containing mature themes will be allowed but no longer pushed on the homepage of the site,” Morgpie told Dexerto.


The original article contains 691 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] lnxtx@feddit.nl 3 points 10 months ago

I think rule no. 2 should be more clarified.

[–] xc2215x@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sexism is an issue with gaming for sure but banning nudity is not sexism.

[–] Chriswild@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It is if women's nipples are nudity but men's nipples are not.

[–] Grimy@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

Bad take in my opinion. It's quite clear the difference between the two in our society.

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