In December, Twitch relaxed its rules to allow for "artistic depictions of nudity" in streams—things like «content that ‘deliberately highlighted breasts, buttocks or pelvic region,’»—as long as it was labelled as containing «sexual themes.» Two days later, following «community concern,» it chickened out and walked the changes back: «Moving forward, depictions of real or fictional nudity won't be allowed on Twitch, regardless of the medium,» CEO Dan Clancy said.
Today Twitch further firmed up its no-nudity rules with an update to its attire policy that prohibits «implied nudity» in streams. The change comes in reaction to a recent meta in which streamers used objects, black censor bars, or strategic camera positioning to make themselves look fully or partially nude—even though, as Twitch acknowledged, most of them were clothed, and thus were not actually violating any rules.
«While most streamers have labeled this content appropriately with the Sexual Themes label and are wearing clothing behind the object or outside the camera frame, for many users, the thumbnails of this content can be disruptive to their experience on Twitch,» chief customer trust officer Angenla Hession wrote.
«While content labeled with the Sexual Themes label isn’t displayed on the home page, this content is displayed within the category browse directories, and we recognize that many users frequent these pages to find content on Twitch.»
In other words, it's not enough to be wearing clothes, streamers have to be seen to be wearing clothes so people won't think that maybe they're not wearing clothes, even though it's impossible to see the bits we're not supposed to see if they weren't because they're covered up—just not by clothing, except that in
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