Twitch's zero-explanation bans continue to baffle streamers, this time a popular VTuber
Earlier this week, Twitch streamer and VTuber Shylily was banned for three days and given no clear reason why. Her story mirrors those of many other high-profile streamers who, due to Twitch's policy against explaining its reasons for issuing bans, are left guessing what they did wrong.
«I find it absolutely wild that you sign a contract with this company but they hold the right to basically throw you off their platform without needing to let you know why specifically,» Shylily told me.
Shylily, who has about 20,000 subscribers and averages around 8,000 viewers per day, isn't sure what part of her most recent VRChat streams, or any of her streams from the last few months, could have provoked the ban. She received an email from Twitch that simply said she broke the terms of service on a live broadcast or a VOD.
According to Twitch's suspension policy(opens in new tab), it will issue warnings to streamers depending on the type of violation, but it can also suspend anyone immediately, even mid-stream in some cases. Twitch uses a three-strike system for DMCA warnings, but Shylily says she has only received one before, so it seems unlikely that copyrighted material was the issue. I emailed Twitch about Shylily's ban and didn't receive a response before publishing this article.
Shylily's streams regularly include what she calls(opens in new tab) «bro» and «lewd» humor, and have shown suggestive fan art. She's also a VTuber, which means she exclusively represents herself as a 2D and 3D avatar. In its guidelines(opens in new tab) for nudity and sexual content, Twitch says that «augmented reality avatars» must abide by the same rules as everyone else. Shylily thinks her new VRChat model could be the problem.
Shylily's new VRChat
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