New Twitch guidelines address harassment and sexual content

In a blog published today, Twitch announced the new enhancements made to its community guidelines which include policies on anti-harassment, hateful conduct, and sexual content. 

Notably, Twitch's new policy around hateful conduct that occurs outside of its platform will be considered a violation of policy. "We will now consider verifiable hateful or harassing conduct that takes place off-Twitch when making moderation decisions for actions that occur on Twitch," the blog states. 

It's worth mentioning that Twitch's guidelines around sexual content previously prohibited "nudity and conduct involving overtly sexual behavior and/or attire," but their new rules warn against streamers wearing "attire intended to be sexually suggestive."

To enforce these new policies, Twitch offers a dress code suggesting that "attire in gaming streams, most at-home streams, and all profile/channel imagery should be appropriate for a public street, mall, or restaurant." 

This affects streamers who maintain other channels dedicated to adult adjacent content .  “It means that if someone gets reported for breaking our community guidelines based on sexual content, we will take a holistic look at the channel,” a representative of Twitch reported to Kotaku. 

These new rules will go into effect on Monday, February 19, 9:00 am PST. In the coming months Twitch plans on revisiting policies around its appeals process, preventing user-to-user harassment, and making improvements around AutoMod (Twich's automated chat moderation system).