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Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

bbc.com

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Re: Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

#61

Post by hateduser2 »

lwkl wrote: post #56
hateduser2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They try to emotionally manipulate their viewers into donating to them. Or they try to form a real bond. There’s some clear mix of genuine value for the lonely donators and id assume emotional abuse on the part of the streamers.

I had to laugh if showing some cleavage, saying thank you or talking to you is emotional manipulation or even abuse. Maybe there is really some truth to the lonely nerd. It's probably just people stuck in their teens or teenagers. It's exactly like the teenage girls loving some star they never met and thinking they'll get married and all. The more I read and think about it the more I'm asking myself how there can suc…

Taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable person, or as you put it "showing some cleavage, saying thank you or talking to you" is abusive. Just because you trivialize it (which you should feel ashamed for doing, very harmful attitude) doesn't mean its not abusive or wrong.

Re: Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

#62

Post by LinuxBender »

wisty wrote: post #40
ben_w wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I sexually identify as a CAS aircraft, will they ban DCS A-10 Simulator as sexual content? I don’t know if this is a joke, but that is a thing that happens. Given how long I was blind to my own (relatively straightforward) bisexuality, I think the real answer is that people in charge literally cannot conceive of sexuality that far away from their worldview.

For a less silly and inflammatory example, how about feet? Because there certainly are foot fetishists out there.

There are people sexually aroused by eyes as well.

Re: Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

#63

Post by heartbreak »

ktta wrote: post #24
NathanKP wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don't really understand who is complaining. You have to go pretty out of your way to find these "sexual streamers" and they have pretty low viewer count to be honest. If you stick to browsing Twitch by game you almost never see them, and the top game streams have 10k-20k viewers at all times. You have to specifically go to the IRL section of Twitch to find camgirl style streams, and most of these "sexual strea…

I think the problem is about brand image. All it takes is one person pointing out to an advertiser their ad beside these streamers. Of course, there's the other image problem with gaming competitions etc. who will hesitate a bit if Twitch was conducive to this behavior.

Because we all know advertising and scantily clad women do not mix.

With less snark, advertising as an industry is famous for “sex sells”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_advertising

Re: Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

#64

Post by cookiecaper »

jchw wrote: post #32
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #2

Twitch already has a flagging system for "mature" content, and they ban anything with actual nudity pretty aggressively. It sounds like this is actually a call to police the use of sex appeal by streamers, which seems like a difficult thing to judge in general and I'm not sure how they could actually achieve such a thing.

>and they ban anything with actual nudity pretty aggressively. Framing it as if they only ban aggressively for actual nudity is unfair. They ban aggressively on all kinds of fronts, including very subjective criteria, they just do it very inconsistently. For all I care, they can do whatever they want. But I do feel like they are hard to take seriously until they decide to apply their rules equally. They do not. They…

>when advertisers wise up they overreact and become adverse to supporting small content creators.

A cynic may interpret that as the desired outcome. From a business perspective, independent YouTubers don't have much to offer the platform.

Re: Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

#66

Post by jhanschoo »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #54
tomc1985 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching the world drift further and further towards moral prudery is so disheartening, especially when so much social progress was made on this front during the 60s and 70s. Society is so cyclical :/

Agreed. I feel like I don't recognize liberalism in the kinds of things that people advocate for these days.

I actually don't associate this with liberalism. To me this seems an extension of the "real gamers" phenomenon, where certain gamers think that gaming and streaming should correspond to some good-at-the-game, purely-about-the-game ideal, which the sex appeal streams clearly do not fall into.

Re: Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

#67

Post by _phaq »

NathanKP wrote: post #33
Bishonen88 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of your way, you say? Check out the irl section,please. More often than not you’ll find a female streaming with her tits out in top10. Quite often there’s 2 or 3 in top 10. The content they provide is just sitting around and look in the camera waiting for donations and having their breasts up in the camera. Personally, I don’t care. But it’s not like those type of streamers are hard to find.

That's my point though. These sex appeal focused streams are almost all in the IRL section, not the top games section. You have to specifically go to the IRL section to find them, aka you have to go out of your way to get there. Compare the game focused sections like PUBG, or League of Legends, or World of Warcraft. These sections of the site are clearly the dominant and original viewing categories on Twitch from the…

> It is personality focused, and sexual appeal is going to be part of it.

Well, exactly that is debateable. Sexual appeal is often coupled with a completely flat or acted personality. And if they have somewhat of a personality, then usually the stream is constantly interrupted by them reading out donations or whatnot.

And this discussion is not just about the rest of Twitch. Some people would actually like to use the IRL section to find streamers whose personality they like. Having the top-viewed streams there being focused on sexual appeal generally makes it harder to find actual personality streamers. It also means that actual personality streamers often avoid IRL.

But then they don't avoid it completely either. Some artists now stream in IRL instead of Creative. The section Music has been pretty much dead since the introduction of IRL, because people making music now pretty much either choose between Creative or IRL, leaving Music for completely personality-devoid streams of pre-recorded music.

Re: Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

#68

Post by ktta »

heartbreak wrote: post #63
ktta wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is about brand image. All it takes is one person pointing out to an advertiser their ad beside these streamers. Of course, there's the other image problem with gaming competitions etc. who will hesitate a bit if Twitch was conducive to this behavior.

Because we all know advertising and scantily clad women do not mix. With less snark, advertising as an industry is famous for “sex sells”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_advertising

Well sure sex is a great way to sell products, but for Twitch it will be terrible. They are selling a brand and a platform. That's all they have, because the tech is not too hard to replicate. That, and existing users, which I'll get to now.

Twitch already has a reputation with gamers/streamers of becoming something close to a camsite slowly(while it seems hyperbolic, sentiments of most of people there usually are too), contrary to what it was meant to be - a purely game streaming centered site. Apart from infuriating other usual steamers on the site who will lose viewers to the 'sexual content' steamers (and will result in general discontentment). These streamers will most likely leave to YouTube Gaming or something else. If that doesn't happen, there are long term ramifications to consider.

Say Twitch accepts that section of streamers and continues with MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY labels etc. Now obviously those videos won't be monetized so they are more of an expense now. Then, if they become a significant part of the website, they'll get questions from upper management. Despite silicon valley considering itself 'progressive', none of them will be okay with this (see patreon).

Then comes the next step: Gaming competitions and other engagements. If a gaming competition accepts Twitch as a sponsor, people will see it as if the events agree with that part of Twitch, which is a no-no because those events have kids' parents to consider (remember, you still can't swear in most similar events and hosts get fined if they do).

While this may seem like a weak argument, a weak enough link to sex industry is enough for investors to pull out. That's because they fear the occasional articles from The Daily Beast and The New Yorker about the effects of Twitch on teenagers' sexuality and the world in general. Now say one of those lead to someone from the NYT or Bloomberg looking for a story, you've got investors making calls who read a lengthy piece about how Twitch is preying on adolescent kids.

Do you think this is too outlandish? Look at YouTube's 'weird videos aimed at kids' problem and how many people it is hiring and time it is investing to solve that problem. Twitch is more at risk since it is a newer brand still at the 'first impression' stage for many. And boy you don't want to get that wrong.

Ask parents if they are okay with letting their kids have (paid!) membership on Twich after that news gets out. Parents are a huge effect on revenue of services their kids use.

Re: Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

#69

Post by lawnchair_larry »

tomc1985 wrote: post #37
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #2

Twitch already has a flagging system for "mature" content, and they ban anything with actual nudity pretty aggressively. It sounds like this is actually a call to police the use of sex appeal by streamers, which seems like a difficult thing to judge in general and I'm not sure how they could actually achieve such a thing.

Watching the world drift further and further towards moral prudery is so disheartening, especially when so much social progress was made on this front during the 60s and 70s. Society is so cyclical :/

I'm not sure where you got the ideal that moral prudery is involved here, but it has nothing to do with that. The people who want "twitch girls" off the site do not have any objections to cam girls. The problem is that they're hijacking a service that was built for and by a specific community.

Twitch has a large number of sex workers who are just using it as a conduit to find "customers" and are not contributing to the community, but detracting from it. There are other sites dedicated to that.

This is especially problematic for female streamers who are community members and get constantly harassed with "tits or gtfo" or worse. They struggle to be taken seriously as gamers due to the cheap antics and "accidental wardrobe malfunctions" employed by the other women on the site, and are punished for it in terms of number of viewers.

Re: Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming'

#70

Post by Bendingo »

hateduser2 wrote: post #61
lwkl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to laugh if showing some cleavage, saying thank you or talking to you is emotional manipulation or even abuse. Maybe there is really some truth to the lonely nerd. It's probably just people stuck in their teens or teenagers. It's exactly like the teenage girls loving some star they never met and thinking they'll get married and all. The more I read and think about it the more I'm asking myself how there can suc…

Taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable person, or as you put it "showing some cleavage, saying thank you or talking to you" is abusive. Just because you trivialize it (which you should feel ashamed for doing, very harmful attitude) doesn't mean its not abusive or wrong.

> "... or talking to you" is abusive

Please tell me you're kidding.

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