Twitch released today its first transparency report, detailing its efforts to protect the 26 million people who visit its site daily. When it comes to transparency, the service owned by Amazon, a decade old, had a lot to recover.
Twitch benefited from a 40% increase in channels between the beginning and the end of 2020, supported by the popularity of real-time transmission technology and video games throughout the pandemic. However, this explosive growth is also the company’s biggest challenge when it comes to preventing harassment and hatred. Unlike recorded videos, live content is often spontaneous and ephemeral. Things only happen in front of thousands or tens of thousands of live audiences. This can include anything from 11-year-olds singing live Minecraft– exposing potential predators – to the famous Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm, who is now banned from a public bath at E3.
In its new transparency report, Twitch acknowledges this difficulty and provides for the first time specific details on how well it moderates its platform. While the findings are encouraging, what Twitch has not been historically transparent speaks equally loudly.
Twitch initially gained a reputation as an outbreak of toxicity. The women and minorities broadcast on the platform received targeted hatred from the hostile audience to people they thought had deviated from the stereotypes of players. Twitch’s vague guidelines for so-called “sexually suggestive” content served as fuel for the self-proclaimed anti-tits police to mass-report female Twitch movies. The volunteer moderators watched Twitch’s quick conversation to snatch the harassment. And for problematic streams, Twitch relied on user reports.
In 2016, Twitch introduced an AutoMod tool, now enabled by default for all accounts, that blocks inappropriate AI messages from viewers. Like other large platforms, Twitch relies on machine learning to signal potentially problematic content for human review. Twitch has invested in human moderators to examine the tagged content as well. However, a 2019 study by the Anti-Defamation League found that nearly half of the Twitch users surveyed reported experiencing harassment. And a 2020 GamesIndustry.Biz report cited several Twitch employees describing how the company’s executives did not prioritize safety tools and dismissed concerns about hate speech.
During all this time, Twitch did not have a transparency report to clarify its policies and internal functioning for an abused user base. In an interview with quantityAngela Hession, the new head of trust and security at Twitch, says that in 2020, security was Twitch’s “number one investment”.
Over the years, Twitch has learned that harassers in bad faith can arm themselves with vague community standards, and in 2020 they released updated versions of its guides “Nudity and Attitude,” “Terrorism and Extreme Violence,” and “Harassment and Harassment.” bad behavior ”. Last year, Twitch appointed an eight-member Safety Advisory Board, consisting of streamers, anti-bullying experts and social media researchers, to develop policies to improve safety and moderation and healthy streaming habits.
Last fall, Twitch brought in Hession, previously the head of Xbox security. Under Hession, Twitch eventually banned descriptions of the Confederate flag and the black face. Twitch is on fire, she says, and there’s a great opportunity for her to imagine what security looks like there. “Twitch is a service that was created to encourage users to feel comfortable expressing themselves,” she says, “but we also want our community to always be and feel safe.” Hession says Twitch has increased its content moderators four times in the last year.
The Twitch Transparency Report serves as a victory for its recent moderation efforts. AutoMod or active moderators reached over 95% of Twitch content in the second half of 2020, the company reports. People who reported receiving harassment via the Twitch direct message fell by 70% over the same period. Implementation actions increased by 788,000 at the beginning of 2020, to 1.1 million at the end of 2020, which Twitch says reflects the increase in the number of users. User reports have also increased during this time, from 5.9 million to 7.4 million, which Twitch attributes again to its growth. The same is true for canal bans, which rose from 2.3 million to 3.9 million.