SAN FRANCISCO — Two days after Twitch revised its rules to allow some “artistic” nudity, CEO Dan Clancy announced Friday that the company had reinstated its ban on sexual content.
Clancy alleged via a company blog post that “much of the content” created under the policy updated Wednesday has been met with community concern.
“These are concerns we share,” Clancy stated. “Upon reflection, we have decided that we went too far with this change. Digital depictions of nudity present a unique challenge — AI can be used to create realistic images, and it can be hard to distinguish between digital art and photography.”
“Effective today, we are rolling back the artistic nudity changes,” Clancy announced. “Moving forward, depictions of real or fictional nudity won’t be allowed on Twitch, regardless of the medium. This restriction does not apply to Mature-rated games. You can find emote-specific standards for nudity and sexual content in the Emote Guidelines. We aren’t making other changes to the updated Sexual Content Policy.”
Popular dances, such as twerking, grinding and pole dancing, appear to still be allowed without a label.
“While I wish we would have predicted this outcome,” he added, “part of our job is to make adjustments that serve the community. I apologize for the confusion that this update has caused.”
As XBIZ reported, the updated policy, which has now been reversed, was announced in a blog post by Twitch Chief Customer Trust Officer Angela Hession.
Hession’s post, titled “Updating our Approach to Sexual Content and Content Classification Labels,” explained that the platform had “received consistent feedback” from streamers that its policies around sexual content were confusing and difficult to follow.
“We want streamers to feel confident they understand our rules and viewers to feel confident they will get the experience they expect,” Hession wrote.