Participants pass by the TVs that show live streams of Twitch Interactive’s video service during the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Twitch, Amazon’s video streaming platform, used primarily by gamers to stream their games live, announced on Wednesday a new policy that allows the company to take action against users who display certain harmful behaviors entirely offline.
Politics is a unique approach among colleagues on social networks at a time when the industry has been under increasing pressure to put in place strong and consistent content moderation policies. While lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have threatened to remove online platforms from protecting their liability under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, many platforms have taken steps to place stronger bumpers on what users can post.
Under the new policy, Twitch can suspend users for an indefinite period of time after a third-party investigator establishes that there is strong evidence that the person engaged in certain offline behaviors. These actions include involvement in deadly violence, terrorist activities, caring for children for sexual exploitation, sexual assault or even “complicit in non-consensual sexual activities”. It will also continue to consider offline harassment in cases where a user alleges online abuse.
Twitch said he would work with “an experienced law firm” to determine the validity of the requests, which will sometimes be based on access to evidence from law enforcement. The company stated that it will not take action on behalf of a user until it completes the investigation and confirms evidence of wrongdoing.
Harmful offline behavior must not involve another Twitch user to be considered a violation, a spokesman confirmed. It is based on the notion that people who engage in these types of behaviors are more likely to create security risks for the Twitch community, the spokesman added.
Other social media platforms also take into account the real-world harms spread by users on their platforms, but Twitch’s new policy is unique in its explicit approach to completely offline behavior and some of the types of offline behavior it prohibits. For example, Facebook’s community standards prevent mass killers and members of terrorist, hate, criminal or human trafficking organizations from having any presence on its platforms. Twitch’s policy includes other offline behaviors that may not be part of an organized criminal group, such as sexual assault.
Social platforms tend to base most of their implementation actions on the damage resulting from the content actually posted on their services. Although they may take real-world events into account when assessing harm, they will usually indicate posts on their own platforms as a tipping point for action.
Even when Facebook and Twitter each decided to ban former President Donald Trump from their services after the January 6 U.S. Chapter insurrection, their reasoning was fundamentally rooted in the ways they said they would use or could use their platforms. to incite further violence. .
Twitch’s new approach comes as a result of a broader discussion of how certain real-world events should be handled by technology platforms. Last month, a Business Insider investigation revealed a woman’s accusation against Dominykas Zeglaitis, a member of the so-called Vlog Squad, led by popular vlogger David Dobrik. The nameless woman said Zeglaitis sexually assaulted her one night when she and her friends appeared in one of the group’s videos, when she said she was too intoxicated to give her consent. Zeglaitis declined to comment on the allegations against Insider.
YouTube, owned by Google, said that following the report, it will temporarily prevent Dobrik from monetizing his account through ads. YouTube policies for creators say that off-platform behavior, including violence or cruelty, could lead to penalties, such as loss of promotional opportunities or display of their videos in user recommendations.
Although Twitch will initially address a handful of listed serious crimes, the platform said it aims to make the guidelines iterative. Because offline damage can be difficult to verify, the company gave priority to the categories it considered most harmful to its community.
Users who wish to confidentially report offline damages that fall into the categories prohibited by Twitch can send an email to [email protected].
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