By Joséphine Li

Amazon’s live streaming service, Twitch is home to millionaire content creators. The leading technology company had a big year in 2020 — Viewership in October reached 1.6 billion hours, twice that of the same month last year. 

Last week, Twitch issued one of the most targeted and far-reaching social media guidelines. The company said it is beefing up its policy against hateful images and harassment on its platform and adding a ban on blackface and other hateful symbols. The new rules will take effect on 22 January 2021.

Although Twitch previously banned hateful symbols and images in the community guidelines, this is the first time blackface has been specifically designated as out of bounds. The new language is also more explicit. Twitch said the new guidelines would make the standard “clearer for everyone.”

Twitch has been working on the policy since the beginning of the year and said it consulted social media experts and conducted research for months. The company said it was announcing the policy weeks ahead of instituting it to give users ample time to adapt to the new rules. The ban applies only to content posted on or after 22 January 2021.

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Twitch acknowledged that women, African Americans, indigenous people, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, unfortunately, continue to experience a disproportionate amount of harassment and abuse online, including on its service. It also acknowledged that that kind of hateful comments would undermine people’s opportunities to pursue live streaming as a career.

Twitch said it is also refining its guidelines covering sexual harassment to ensure a lower tolerance for objectifying behavior. The company will now ban repeated, unsolicited compliments about a person’s attractiveness, sexually explicit comments and links to nude images.

The company also indicated it would continue to allow the acerbic humor, including insults meant as jokes that some online communities are known for. Twitch said, adding that it would only take action against reported users and posts if there were specific indications that show “the behavior was unwanted”. Depending on the circumstances, the measures may include bans, time-outs or suspensions.

The expanded guidelines forced Twitch to double the size of its safety operations team in 2020, although the platform declined to reveal how many such team members it employs.