Twitch enforcement rate on reports of violations dropped to 11% in 2021
Brendan Sinclair
Managing Editor
Wednesday 8th June 2022
Twitch released its transparency report for the second half of 2021 Friday afternoon, providing an opportunity for us to check in with the streaming platform's moderation efforts and how they've changed over the past year.
The company's transparency report for 2020 revealed that fewer than 15% of user reports for policy-violating behavior on the service actually led to enforcement, a term that covers everything from permanent bans to simple warnings.
For 2021, that number actually decreased to a little over 11%, but there were significant shifts in the types of reports that were acted upon.
(Just like last year, Twitch did not share a breakdown of exact numbers for how many reports it received from each category, but a bar graph of reports gives us enough information to ballpark the numbers. We asked Twitch for the exact numbers for its transparency report, but a representative told us the company did not share those numbers.)
A graph from Twitch's transparency report
In 2020, enforcements were overwhelmingly more likely to come from "Viewbotting, Spam, and Other Community" complaints than more serious transgressions like harassment or threats. More than 90% of enforcements in 2020 came from that category, and reports of viewbotting and spam violations resulted in action more one in four times, making it far and away the most likely type of report to end in enforcement action.
That changed in 2021, as every category except viewbotting and spam saw enforcement rates increase year-over-year. (One possible exception to that statement might be "Terrorism, Terrorist Propaganda, and Recruitment," which sees so few reports that we did not feel comfortable even assigning it a
Read more on gamesindustry.biz
