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Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

blog.twitch.tv

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Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#211

Post by mrzimmerman »

derefr wrote: post #183
belval wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not enough money in it for Amazon to start ramping up in pornographic material. The chances of brand degradation, possible boycotts due to women looking young/revenge porn is much much too high to be worth it.

Amazon already is in the pornographic-streaming market, just at a remove. Who do you think the biggest customers of AWS's media-streaming IaaS infrastructure offerings are? People who need to move terabytes per second of live video over the Internet, but for some reason cannot make an Enterprise partnership with one of the public-facing media-hosting services (e.g. YouTube, Hulu, etc.) There's really only one industr…

That’s a gross oversimplification. That’s like saying “every application hosted on a server running Linux is basically the same”. AWS makes money by hosting all kinds of things, it doesn’t mean Amazon the company is a once removed partner of every single company using their infrastructure.

Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#212

Post by prnyjn »

throway98752343 wrote: post #201
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #199

The next looming issue for Twitch is the Slots/Video Poker streamers. Similar to swim suits, I don't think gambling as a whole should be totally against ToS. There are some great poker streamers, and there've been some quite successful charity drives around casino games. But there's also one big streamer, famous with the CoD audience, that lately has been playing video poker on one of those bitcoin casino sites. He h…

A test I like to use to isolate my concerns is replacement. Replace "actual money" with "fake money" in this casino example. Is the streamer playing poker entertaining, or are people watching because of the high-stakes gambling? Replace "woman" for "man" in these tub streams. Are people watching for the games or the streamer's personality, or for their body? I'd go so far as to say you should be able to replace withi…

This is a great way to think through and analyse this. Did you come up with it by yourself, or did you read about it somewhere?

Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#213

Post by robbrown451 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #194
robbrown451 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably it comes from the fact that humans are so naturally attracted to things sexual in nature, that without controls the whole world would look like the seediest red light district you can imagine. With everyone competing to be more and more extreme to get attention.

Let's imagine this is true - so what? Would people be unhappy? Would someone die? would people have less issues with their personal lives is sex expression wasn;t at troubles as it is?

I think it is a matter of preferences. More people would prefer it not be that way than would prefer it be that way. Probably people raising kids especially would rather not have explicit sexual stuff so in-your-face as it would likely be if we didn't have rules and societal standards about such things. I'm personally glad that my seven year old can use a computer and the web without being utterly bombarded with the type of stuff you'll see if you, say, stop over to the Pirate Bay or 4-chan or something. Then again, I'm glad I don't live in Victorian times where it is scandalous if a woman shows a little ankle.

That doesn't mean people would die or that some arbitrary percentage of the population would cross some arbitrary level of unhappiness if it were your way. The world isn't so black and white.

You presumably have different preferences. But you don't get to impose yours on the world just because you think they are better or more free or meet whatever ideals you have. We all kinda get to weigh in, and some sort of compromise is reached.

Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#214

Post by [deleted] »

krono wrote: post #189
tibbydudeza wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men that are lonely and crave some sort of connection to the opposite sex.

It's not uncommon to see donations of 5k USD and up in a single transaction. And oftentimes all this person gets in return - that is, if the camgirl.. apologies, streamer notices the sum come in at all - is a "you're so sweet thanks!". I just can't understand what they're hoping to get out of handing away so much money. Do they believe theirs will be reacted to differently? But why them? It's just so irrational!

[deleted]

Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#215

Post by robbrown451 »

void_mint wrote: post #115
robbrown451 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you've come up with an example that is clearly on one side of the line. Ok, but not sure what that proves. I don't think anyone has argued that there aren't any clear cut cases. What you are missing is that whatever rule you make, people are going to try to push the limits, because it gets them viewers. If twitch says that someone bending over in a bikini has no non-sexual purpose and therefore is against the rule…

It seems that you think I'm referencing a contrived example to prove my point, when in reality I'm referencing the actual donation gifts for the vast majority of Hot Tub Streamers (which, please note, is not "people that sometimes stream in a hot tub", but is now a specific genre of stream of which many people exclusively stream). People have been sometimes streaming from hot tubs for years, and it's always been the…

So how would you set the rules if you were running twitch?

Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#216

Post by throway98752343 »

prnyjn wrote: post #212
throway98752343 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A test I like to use to isolate my concerns is replacement. Replace "actual money" with "fake money" in this casino example. Is the streamer playing poker entertaining, or are people watching because of the high-stakes gambling? Replace "woman" for "man" in these tub streams. Are people watching for the games or the streamer's personality, or for their body? I'd go so far as to say you should be able to replace withi…

This is a great way to think through and analyse this. Did you come up with it by yourself, or did you read about it somewhere?

Myself, but I can't be the first.

Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#217

Post by throway98752343 »

viraptor wrote: post #206
throway98752343 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't body positivity supposed to be celebrating bodies that aren't traditionally attractive?

It's more generic - basically it's about not judging people's worth or intentions by their bodies. Whether they're unusually obese, unusually sexually attractive, unusually something else...

Oh, I had it wrong then. The generic version sounds like "not seeing race"

Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#218

Post by deanc »

notJim wrote: post #45
deanc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are other places for that. Many people browse twitch at work (let’s not debate that) and don’t want to see that kind of content. Or on machines visible at home around other family members. These women have every right to do as they please, and most likely will continue to push the boundaries of twitch’s tolerance. I suspect we will have car washing streams or sauna streams next to get around the rule. B…

Wouldn't a simple solution be to allow people to disable or hide NSFW streams? Reddit and Twitter both have this, IIRC.

This is the fundamental part of the problem. People are acting as if these streams are not sexualised and SFW.

Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#219

Post by Xeronate »

kibwen wrote: post #117
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitch has no spine. If it was up to Amazon they'd probably ban it though.

I can go on Amazon right now and buy a 55-gallon drum of sexual lubricant and a ten-inch, anatomically-correct silicone horse dildo. If it's making them money, they won't complain.

There's a pretty big difference between selling between selling sex related goods on a shopping website and showing softcore porn to children on a video game streaming site.

Re: Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

#220

Post by void_mint »

robbrown451 wrote: post #215
void_mint wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that you think I'm referencing a contrived example to prove my point, when in reality I'm referencing the actual donation gifts for the vast majority of Hot Tub Streamers (which, please note, is not "people that sometimes stream in a hot tub", but is now a specific genre of stream of which many people exclusively stream). People have been sometimes streaming from hot tubs for years, and it's always been the…

So how would you set the rules if you were running twitch?

Well, I'm the wrong person to ask because I think my interests are actually oppositional to Twitch's goals but:

I'd update ToS to ban nudity and literal sexual behavior (aka people cannot masturbate or use sex toys on stream), but relax the ToS to allow sexually suggestive content like hot tub streams, pole dancing, etc (basically just actualizing the ToS against the current unwritten rules). I'd probably move sexually suggestive content to a section of the site that gets their own ads (or no ads at all) and an updated revenue share to supplement the damage to Twitch's perceived brand and ad loss. Also, the NSFW area of the site is gatekept behind various age checks and doesn't get advertised on the main site (meaning, sexually suggestive streamers don't show up on the front page).

With these updates, the ToS becomes legitimate, sexually suggestive content is no longer in violation, the site gets more appropriately segregated (gaming vs. sex). Win/win.

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