Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2021/05/21/lets-talk-about-hot-tub-streams/

by danso • 5 years ago

151 253 5 years ago

blog.twitch.tv

_6pvr7• 5 years ago

Twitch continues to pretend hot tub streams aren't intentionally sexually suggestive. What a joke.

HN doesn't really do memes, but I made this because it seems relevant: https://imgflip.com/i/5ah3b7

nichochar• 5 years ago

They probably have ridiculously good engagement. Very tough for twitch to give that up more than likely.

_6pvr7• 5 years ago

The joke is asserting that hot tub streams aren't sexually suggestive. The twitch community seems to love them, so of course Twitch will fight tooth and nail to keep them. But to suggest that they aren't sexually suggestive (and by proxy against Twitch ToS) is an absolute joke. They look like clowns.

newacct583• 5 years ago

Engagement doesn't pay the bills. In fact advertisers don't want to pay for this and don't want their advertising shown on these streams. Ultimately that's what the new policy is about. They're adding a new category so that advertisers can filter these things out.

Zoo3y• 5 years ago

Twitch put it succinctly here:

Prohibiting every form of content that could be interpreted as suggestive would also result in far more restrictions on the video games and premium content that we currently allow, especially considering the ways that female characters are sometimes objectified or presented in a sexualized manner.

Jonanin2• 5 years ago

I didn't know there were so many outraged prudes on twitch. Why should twitch have a sexually suggestive content rule in the first place?

This rule actually seems reasonable:

Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch.

I don't see what the huge issue with showing off your own sexiness is. Sheesh!

_6pvr7• 5 years ago

I didn't know there were so many outraged prudes on twitch. Why should twitch have a sexually suggestive content rule in the first place?

If you're asserting that thinking hot tub streams break ToS, and Twitch's selective enforcement of that ToS causes problems very frequently on their platform, makes me an "outraged prude", well I'm sorry friend. Gaslighting an entire community doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Nudity or sexually explicit content (which we define as pornography, sex acts, and sexual services) are not allowed on Twitch.

Is wearing a bikini, facing away from a camera and touching your toes for $5 not sexually explicit?

I don't see what the huge issue with showing off your own sexiness is. Sheesh!

The issue is inconsistency. I think they should update the ToS to support these streamers - they're some of the biggest streamers on the platform. To suggest that those streamers are not being sexually suggestive is, again, an absolute joke. Twitch themselves made the determination that sexually suggestive content is not welcome on their platform, not me.

deanc3• 5 years ago

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.

But I don’t want to see it.

mrgreenfur• 5 years ago

Americans are still ashamed of sexuality and think it needs to be locked up. That said, it's clearly not 'just chatting' and probably belongs in a 'sexysexy' category.

overtonwhy2• 5 years ago

Twitch has an audience that's largely children...

ZephyrBlu5• 5 years ago

I guess you think that Twitch should allow itself to become a cam site then.

The issue is that Twitch is not supposed to be for this type of content.

When you think of Twitch, do you think of hot tub streamers and cam girls? No, you think of things like gaming and IRL.

crazypyro2• 5 years ago

Because Twitch focuses largely on marketing directly to children? You cannot separate the fact that Twitch is trying to become the site for all gaming (including children) and also allowing nearly-softcore porn on the same site. Its literally a few clicks away. Now, they think because they made a separate category, advertisers will be fine with it.

They are lucky that hot tub streamers haven't gotten mainstream news attention yet, I can't imagine the outrage of parents when they see some of the stuff thats allowed....

Causality1• 5 years ago

It's the same unholy transformation every company goes through. Creating a company from nothing usually takes heart and soul. Once a company is established you stop needing the true believers. You stop needing the love. Love and maximizing profits are not compatible. I'll bet if you had data on the number of Twitch t-shirts sold over the last five years it would be a steady decline. Almost any company built on appealing to a specific demographic will choose to genericize itself if it can.

It makes a lot of money but I find it terribly sad.

nemothekid2• 5 years ago

Twitch continues to pretend hot tub streams aren't intentionally sexually suggestive. What a joke.

What do you want Twitch to do? Ban women from wearing anything than a Burqa? Or ban Twitch streamers from going to the beach?

_6pvr7• 5 years ago

What a truly excellent strawman. Do you see no middle ground between obviously sexual content and a Burqa? Is there no middle ground between writing someone's name on your breasts for $5 and going to the beach to swim?

an_opabinia• 5 years ago

especially considering the ways that female characters are sometimes objectified or presented in a sexualized manner

Probably the most interesting and persuasive case they have. What if a human being dressed like League's Evelynn, a succubus? Would they be banned from Twitch? No, of course not. Would it be sexually suggestive? They've illuminated how disingenuous of a question that is, because Evelynn is a character in a game people stream.

tschwimmer• 5 years ago

A perhaps relevant anecdote: I interviewed at Twitch many years back and it happened to be on Halloween. My recruiter was dressed up as some league of legends character - perhaps Ahri (she had a tail and animal ears). It was not strictly western business casual but clearly it was not notably outside Twitch’s cultural norms.

parsimo20102• 5 years ago

They claim that they only prohibit things that are intentionally suggestive, but every streamer is afraid to accidentally show their feet because they get a ban. Twitch has inconsistencies in the way they apply their policies, and they sometimes don’t even tell a streamer why they got a ban. Creating a beach and hot tub category is the least of their worries. But at least it makes it easier for me to intentionally find attractive women in swimsuits who are streaming their sexiness unintentionally, and filter them out when I’m not looking for it.

Semaphor2• 5 years ago

every streamer? Hard disagree, I see feet commonly and never never even heard of this.

vorpalhex2• 5 years ago

I've seen multiple streamers, especially women, who are playing games or normal twitch things and end up modifying their behavior because of fear of this rule. A whole bunch of twitch streamers are wearing slippers in case their feet end up on camera for a second.

The whole rule started because people were monetizing feet content which obviously leans lewd, but the poor rule targeting has ended up with all kinds of weird consequences.

LegitShady6• 5 years ago

. But at least it makes it easier for me to intentionally find attractive women in swimsuits who are streaming their sexiness unintentionally,

...do you honestly think it's unintentional? The issue is twitch are open hypocrites. They take a cut of money people 'donate' to these sexually suggestive streamers. They don't need the advertisers on those streams because the money is already coming in from the viewers.

The issue is that they're full of it.

parsimo20102• 5 years ago

No, that was the internet failing to convey my sarcasm. Twitch just said, “hey folks, hot tub streams aren’t sidestepping the rules, so here’s a special category to make it easier for you to not sidestep the rules, wink wink.”

They ought to just enable explicit content and put in decent parental controls rather than this B.S. Advertisers might actually prefer having a clearly defined explicit content tag, rather than risking their ads running next to soft-explicit streams.

autocorr• 5 years ago

Community and advertiser feedback made clear that we need to offer more ways to control the content that’s recommended as well as where ads appear. So, we’re introducing a new category: Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches. If you have chosen swimwear that is allowed under the “Swim and Beaches” contextual exception to our standard Nudity and Attire policy, you should stream into the Pools, Hot Tubs and Beaches category.

People set up kiddy-pools in their room with a bit of water to get this "contextual exception" for the express purpose of streaming suggestive content. Why not just remove the exception and let people stream sexually suggestive content and make a separate category for that without a ridiculous "beaches and pools" euphemism?

wincy• 5 years ago

Last time I was looking through streams I saw a woman in a bikini in a kiddie pool riding on a giant inflatable hot dog. I think her normal stream is painting herself with body paints? It’s hard to avoid and that plus the super coarse language make it seem insane to me that people let their kids watch Twitch streams. I’m sure there’s good content somewhere but it’s just not for me, if I want that stuff I’ll just go to Pornhub. Feels more honest.

belltaco3• 5 years ago

You're missing the point of Twitch and also its culture. Twitch is closer to cable TV than anything else, even the terminology is the same, with 'channels'. Except that anyone can create a channel and stream it within the rules. The fact that there's some content you don't like on other channels being does not mean you shouldn't watch the streamers that you like.

Just like there's a wide variety in content thats broadcast on TV channels at different times of the day. There is even a Science and Technology channel with some developers streaming their coding. There are some game developers that only code their game while streaming the IDE.

Here's Stephen Wolfram streaming right now. https://www.twitch.tv/stephen_wolfram

Why should a Wolfram viewer care if there is some risque content on other categories? Even if you're looking around after the stream, you can just scroll past it like you do on Netflix.

I personally mostly watch only the few streamers that I have followed. I rarely come across the streamers mentioned in the article except when there's some Twitch drama that I hear about on Reddit or from friends.

cortesoft• 5 years ago

Many advertisers don’t want their ads on sites that show sexual content, even if their particular ads are not shown on the sexually suggestive section of the site. Twitch must have decided that it wasn’t worth risking those advertisers.

qsort2• 5 years ago

Because many people like softcore pornography but they are too much of a prude to admit they do, in fact, enjoy watching softcore pornography.

Also, advertisers wouldn't like it.

DaedPsyker• 5 years ago

I doubt the type of people that watch this stuff are really just prudes that can't handle porn.

acidbaseextract• 5 years ago

Probably the lost ad revenue. No company wants to advertise on those streams. By breaking them out in way where advertisers could opt out of that stream category, suggestive streamers (a huge segment of traffic) would lose money for Twitch.

belinder• 5 years ago

But isn't that already exactly what they're doing by breaking it into hot tub category and letting advertisers opt out of that category? So the question is if they let advertisers opt out anyway, why this hot tub category instead of an explicit suggestive category.

corobo3• 5 years ago

No company wants to advertise on those streams

Does anyone know why this is? Is it just a legacy generation thing?

If it was me hell yeah I'd be advertising on 30k viewer streams full of people eager and willing to throw money around (assume market fit, obviously)

Traster• 5 years ago

They don't want to be a porn site. The problem they have is that the porn content drives away advertisers and non-porn related contant. So they have to steer away from porn, but wherever they draw the line there are going to be people testing the line, and there's an audience for it. So the compromise they've clearly come up with is they don't allow porn, but if you happen to be sexy wearing practically nothing, that's fine - as long as it's got some pretext of not being porn, because porn is what will kill their non-porn related business.

wvenable• 5 years ago

Seems like there's an opportunity to just split the site, create a new brand for adult content, and send that content over to that brand.

oliwarner• 5 years ago

No, they don't want to admit to being a porn site. Tying themselves in knots with silly rules like this means they're just a gateway for people to promote their OnlyFans pages.

If they want to be a game streaming site, why allow player video at all? Pare it back to what it was actually for.

TheAdamAndChe• 5 years ago

I saw the same culture policing from advertisers warp the foundation of YouTube too. Why are advertisers like that? Why don't they just go where the people want to go?

chevill4• 5 years ago

What's funny is that they insist on pretending that these streamers aren't trying to sexualize themselves. The streamer that caused this blog to be written basically uses her twitch channel as a front to sell her nudes on another site.

If people want to sexualize themselves for money that's their business, the problem is they keep trying to find loopholes in the conduct policy to transform a site about videogames that children frequent into something sexual.

They mention the tools that allow you to filter channels on their website. They make it really easy to block channels that are recommended to you. Why not extend that functionality to the entire site so you can just click 2-3 times and get rid of any channel for any reason forever? The answer is simple: Money.

ixacto• 5 years ago

They want the simp $ but without being a porn site. So twitch will just evolve into girls-gone-wild light.

This is kinda hilarious though some brand managers must really be squirming when they are tying to sell advert spend for furniture or something on the twitch beach boob cam.

cblconfederate2• 5 years ago

in old times, TV had late night shows, bordering soft porn, in which advertisements like alcohol and cigarettes seemed popular. It was never without ads (or it wouldn't exist). I wonder how come the online world advertising ecosystem has evolved to be an infantile one

bombcar6• 5 years ago

Isn't it obvious? The advertisers don't want to advertise on a camsite, those are available elsewhere.

Trying to document and define "I'll know it when I see it" is an NP-complete problem, and this won't be the end of it.

t-writescode• 5 years ago

Automating “I’ll know it when I see it” is closer to the halting problem. It might even be definable in those terms.

michaelt• 5 years ago

Imagine a household where the parents run a porn blocker, while a teenager wants to view risqué things.

Twitch wants to keep them both happy: Not so much censorship as to drive the teenager away, but enough prudishness that porn blockers don't censor their entire domain.

Jetrel• 5 years ago

This pretty much hits a bullseye.

matheusmoreira• 5 years ago

The advertisers won't like it. Anything they don't like gets banned because they're the ones with the money.

LegitShady6• 5 years ago

Because twitch is a disaster, the openly hypocritical armpit of internet streaming. Less honest than an actual camgirl site, but preachy and idiotic at the same time.

What's the point of protecting their reputation when their reputation is the home of camgirls and hot tub streamers pushing their onlyfans pages already? At least if they were honest about it I could respect that, but they're not.

I hope they fail.

corobo3• 5 years ago

Why not just remove the exception and let people stream sexually suggestive content

Because you'll lose your card processor and have to switch to a high risk processor which halves your income. America is super weird when it comes to sex and there's no alternatives.

1MachineElf• 5 years ago

As Traster said, they don't want to be labelled as a porn site in spite of the streaming content they have, and so i.e. they must implement a change that gives them some plausible deniability in the face of advertisers.

didibus• 5 years ago

Sexually suggestive content–and where to draw the line–is an area that is particularly complex to assess, as sexual suggestiveness is a spectrum that involves some degree of personal interpretation of where the line falls

This is just in general why I have an issue with prudeness in our society. I have no idea where prudeness comes from, is it innate to some people? Is it a taught trait? But it seems to cause so much discord and disagreement yet is inherently safe and peaceful.

robbrown4516• 5 years ago

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.

msbarnett• 5 years ago

citation needed

ClumsyPilot6• 5 years ago

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?

overtonwhy2• 5 years ago

Because as you get older over time you can observe how this kind of "content" messes up young peoples' expectations about the average human body, instills a shallow and superficial mindset about relationships, and generally does absolutely nothing of value for anyone except the parasite who is manipulating ignorant or desperate people using sexuality for profit.

bombcar6• 5 years ago

It’s strange how people will readily admit that advertising can cause unhealthy eating habits but sexual content can never cause unhealthy sexual habits.

evandale• 5 years ago

I have no idea where prudeness comes from, is it innate to some people?

This Vsauce video is one of my favorites. It's titled "Why Do We Wear Clothes?" and Michael explains why cultures may encourage modesty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4HGfagANiQ

throway987523436• 5 years ago

This is just in general why I have an issue with prudeness in our society.

My brain reacts to sexual stimuli, as it evolved to. I don't want that reaction when I'm riding the metro, or in a work meeting, or having a family dinner. So it's helpful to have a set of social norms about when and where to expect and accept sexual content and when not to.

I have no idea where prudeness comes from, is it innate to some people? Is it a taught trait?

It's cultural. Norms change, sometimes rapidly. In video games, sexy characters who used to be contentious have been commonplace for a while now, and this hot tub streams thing is just over the line. Maybe in a decade, softcore streamers will be normal but streaming hardcore sex will just over the line.

But it seems to cause so much discord and disagreement yet is inherently safe and peaceful.

Is the "it" here prudery or provocation?

Prudery is at one end of the spectrum with provocativeness on the other. There's almost no way you aren't prudish in some way. Prudery is usually about control but it's only bad when it can't be relaxed in private or when that control becomes a means of oppression.

majewsky• 5 years ago

sexy characters who used to be contentious have been commonplace for a while now

They have always been both.

swagasaurus-rex• 5 years ago

It's the reaction itself that's discordant.

People put on a show. Others are drawn to watch. It's such a reliable mechanism that it can be monetized.

supergirl2• 5 years ago

I don’t want my children to think it’s normal that girls on twitch are only there to make porn. does that make me prude?

sillysaurusx2• 5 years ago

The context here is that one of the most prolific twitch streamers recently had her advertising cut with no warning. (They still run ads on her stream, but she doesn’t get any of the proceeds, if I understand it.)

Lots of these streamers have an Onlyfans link in their Twitter bio, though, and they make it pretty obvious that you should join “to see the good stuff.” https://twitter.com/amouranth/status/1395192511958851585?s=2...

Someone put it like “she’s doing the equivalent of holding a finger in front of your face and saying ‘not touching you! Not touching you!’ for a no-touching policy.”

Afforess• 5 years ago

(They still run ads on her stream, but she doesn’t get any of the proceeds, if I understand it.)

In what universe is this an acceptable outcome for a TOS violation?

mcherm3• 5 years ago

It wasn't a TOS violation until today's announcement... at the time her revenue stream was cut off her content was in compliance with the letter (if not the spirit) of twitch's published policy.

LegitShady6• 5 years ago

In what universe is this an acceptable outcome for a TOS violation?

in the universe where it's unlikely for small streamers to successfully sue twitch for stealing revenue. It's an egregious abuse but its one that has to be first arbitrated and then sued over and its unlikely to succeed so no one has really done it.

notJim2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure why it's relevant that they have OnlyFans links, unless Amazon's position is that no one who has an OnlyFans or who makes adult content on other platforms is allowed on Twitch.

“she’s doing the equivalent of holding a finger in front of your face and saying ‘not touching you! Not touching you!’ for a no-touching policy.”

In other words, she's in compliance with the policy?

sillysaurusx2• 5 years ago

She’s in compliance with the policy. And her channel isn’t banned — she’s free to stream.

But apparently when she streams, she doesn’t earn advertising revenue. That’s not really a ToS issue; twitch’s advertising partners get the final say there.

(It seems nuts that they still run ads on her channel at all, though. If they’re showing ads, it makes no sense that she doesn’t get a cut.)

ad404b8a372f2b9• 5 years ago

It's relevant because it makes it clear what their intent is: To advertise their porn through twitch, half the audience of which is underage. It's the same reason some casual nudity subreddits banned people with onlyfans from posting, they infiltrate communities with the single purpose of getting customers.

ClumsyPilot6• 5 years ago

Ah amazing, I see they are protecting my kids by Checks notes keeping the porn revenue for themselves?

busterarm3• 5 years ago

They also only cut her advertising after she blurted out on stream that her hot tub streams were good in the short term and long term detrimental to Twitch's platform.

She basically admitted to poking a bear.

theonlyklas• 5 years ago

Go outside and touch grass instead of watching these streams or caring about them. It's 10x more fulfilling and productive.

cool_dude85• 5 years ago

And risk seeing someone in a bikini? No thanks.

speedgoose• 5 years ago

Grass usually doesn't make people horny.

sol_invictus• 5 years ago

”I don’t need your fantasy women!”

- William T. Riker

eertami• 5 years ago

So no changes really, except they've made it a distinct category so that people can find this content easily without leaving the site and going to something like booba.tv for discovery (nsfw I guess, it is curated links to "sexually suggestive" twitch streamers).

mcherm3• 5 years ago

So no changes really, except they've made it a distinct category so that people can find this content easily

Making it a distinct category also means that both advertisers and viewers can AVOID the content easily.

emilfihlman• 5 years ago

Nobody cares about hottub streamers.

We care about your idiotic double standards and banning of streamers.

29athrowaway• 5 years ago

tl;dr: no ban. new category (pools, hot tubs and beaches).

The revenue model of hot tub streamers is herding simps and sending them to their onlyfans via one level of indirection like twitter.

fasteddie31003• 5 years ago

It's a slippery slope. There are a lot of things that are intentionally sexual suggestive in society that we don't bat an eye at such as makeup, push-up bras, and yoga pants. When will they start banning these things?

jedberg3• 5 years ago

I never used Twitch before the pandemic -- watching people play games was never really my thing. But then I discovered the entire second use of Twitch, streaming music. Since March 2020, it's been possible to find someone streaming music at pretty much any time of day.

One day I was watching around 2am Pacific time, and the stream ended. I was looking for another one when I saw someone in the music category with 13,000 viewers (most DJs don't crack 1000). So I went to check it out.

It was a hot tub streamer holding a guitar while she thanked people for their tips and subs. In the 10 minutes I watched, she never once played anything.

I was fascinated by the fact that she had so many people basically just watching her in a hot tub and giving her money. She wasn't doing anything compelling.

To each their own, but I had no idea there were so many people on the internet willing to pay for such a thing.

poyu• 5 years ago

I was fascinated by the fact that she had so many people basically just watching her in a hot tub and giving her money. She wasn't doing anything compelling.

Wait until you learn about VTubers.

tick_tock_tick• 5 years ago

I mean don't they do the same thing as most people on twitch (video games) just with a fake avatar? Honestly I still remember when face cam was rare and you had no idea what most streamers looked like.

jedberg3• 5 years ago

I just Googled that. I'm equally fascinated.

JohnJamesRambo• 5 years ago

Especially on the internet, home of more pornography than any human could ever consume in a million lifetimes. I don't understand what would compel someone to sit and watch and tip someone in a bathing suit attempting to play video games.

jedberg3• 5 years ago

The one I saw wasn't even playing games. She is literally just sitting in the hot tub in a bikini. And in the corner it says "new bikini with 50 subs".

mensetmanusman2• 5 years ago

It’s a well known symptom of extreme loneliness. Very common in Japan, and growing in the west.

slightwinder3• 5 years ago

It's not porn, it's human interaction, acknoledgment and a form of power. The viewer can control with their money what the streamer is doing, they are recognised and build a form of relationship. This is on both sides a darker aspect of sexuality and behaviour that humans are not learning much about. That's why it's hard to understand and recognise such things.

booleandilemma• 5 years ago

Go on Tiktok and check out how many random girls list their cashapp profile in their bio. Men will just give them money.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristatorres/venmo-tiktok-money-fro...

throwkeep2• 5 years ago

It reminds me of World of Warcraft, where guys give female avatars their items and gold for nothing.

bombcar6• 5 years ago

Standard knowledge for a easy start on a new server was to roll a female elf and unequip everything and dance on the mailbox at the capitol.

I preferred cornering the thorium market on the weekends.

tibbydudeza4• 5 years ago

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

krono• 5 years ago

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!

busterarm3• 5 years ago

indiefoxx is quite popular, yes.

corobo3• 5 years ago

She wasn't doing anything compelling.

Consider your experience except with the change that porn is banned in your household/country.

Vaslo• 5 years ago

So many chumps - I honestly think people subscribing to players is just as chumpy but I get that is just one mans opinion.

gabereiser2• 5 years ago

Hasn’t the business model been either top-notch gaming or this, the soft core porn niche? I mean, most women streaming on twitch are using their looks and body for viewership. It’s the oldest play in the book. It’s all over YouTube as well (show a girl in a thong, get a million views). Twitch should just create a NSFW/Verified 18+ section and be done with it. I think the real issue is with advertisers. They don’t want to be associated with porn or even suggestive content. Twitch won’t police their platform so people are going to continue meeting the “bare minimum” definition and argue they are following the rules.

bluefirebrand3• 5 years ago

I mean, most women streaming on twitch are using their looks and body for viewership. It’s the oldest play in the book

This is the real sticking point. If they came down hard against titty streamers they would be destroying a large portion of their own viewer base.

Not to mention how bad it would look from a "Twitch is being sexist" viewpoint. Top male streamers would continue to do extremely well, male streamers would be unaffected almost entirely ( I bet some stream shirtless or whatever sometimes and might get in trouble from that )

But lets be real, such a crackdown would basically only effect women.

viraptor3• 5 years ago

Also any policy like that would hit women who are into positive body expression, without trying to use it as a popularity tool. I.e. they'd have to figure out how to tell apart those who work on being suggestive for money and that who just enjoy being suggestive in life. Kind of like the repeating issue for https://mobile.twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg who as far as I can tell is strongly in the second category.

But that's in the mind reading area - they just can't do it reliably.

rayrag• 5 years ago

So, we’re introducing a new category: Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches.

So in one word - Softporn.

ClumsyPilot6• 5 years ago

Well you can show tits on the beach but not on Twitch/youtube/etc,

baobabKoodaa• 5 years ago

This is false. Youtube allows showing tits.

gary_0• 5 years ago

Aside from the "I know it when I see it"[0] angle, here are my thoughts.

Long, long ago, I dabbled in content hosting, and still sometimes daydream about doing business along those lines. When it comes to the thought of my hypothetical service hosting purely sexual content it's not due to any puritanism that I'd prefer that my platform have rules against it.

Sexual content (ie. porn) brings with it regulatory burdens, potential public scrutiny, a large revenue stream that might end up incentivizing product development detrimental to the service's original purpose, and from a marketing perspective it might cause the public to associate your service with certain kinds of content (see: Tumblr) which limits your growth options.

It seems to me that Twitch so far isn't seeing the drawbacks I just listed when it comes to hot tub streams, hence their response.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

throway987523436• 5 years ago

The test of "the people who like that kind of thing also like this" could also apply here to decide whether a stream is sexual or not. Recommendation engines cut both ways.

rgoulter• 5 years ago

Yeah. The post makes much more sense to me in terms of arguing that it doesn't go against regulations / rules of their payment processors, etc.

It seems they've had trouble in the past trying to draw lines around sexual activity. It's a safe bet that if hot tub streams got banned, all the involved streamers would still keep toeing the line as far as they can. Drawing a broad line & cordoning it off seems reasonable.

Though I wonder if there remains an incentive for pushing boundaries in 'just chatting'.

chevill4• 5 years ago

Though I wonder if there remains an incentive for pushing boundaries in 'just chatting'.

I don't know about pushing boundaries but there will still certainly be lots of intentionally sexualized content in the just chatting category, it will just be milder than the new category on average.

nickysielicki2• 5 years ago

These streams are closer to pornography than most people realize. There's a reason that these streams get so much attention: 14 year old young men love watching video games, so they go to sites where they can watch video games. If you start serving softcore pornography on the same website, well gee wiz, who could have guessed that it would be pretty lucrative?

You don't have to be a prude to have a problem with this. It's not a matter of stigmatizing sex work or being anti-women, it's about profiting by serving porn-lite on the same site where children are likely to be.

I don't personally care, but I'm floored that a company like Twitch/Amazon, with hundreds of people in HR and PR, would not play it safe and just ban it.

vorpalhex2• 5 years ago

If your kid is on the internet, it's on you to manage that. Full stop.

fancifalmanima• 5 years ago

Sure, and it's reasonable for parents to express to twitch that if they don't actively control sexualized content (or provide parental controls), that they will lose the eyes of their child. It's reasonable for advertisers to do the same. Unless your concept of that is control the mouse and keyboard for the child at all moments, what's the issue?

xboxnolifes• 5 years ago

Becomes hard to manage when soft-core porn is allowed to co-mingle with "safe" content without the ability to filter out.

meheleventyone2• 5 years ago

Given the sheer amounts of money being flung at streamers of all stripes by their audience directly I doubt the majority of the audience is 14!

yjftsjthsd-h• 5 years ago

That doesn't follow; maybe the oldest 10% of people are 90% of donations.

ZephyrBlu5• 5 years ago

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

kibwen• 5 years ago

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.

asdfasgasdgasdg• 5 years ago

It is up to Amazon, right? Don't they own Twitch?

bombcar6• 5 years ago

It seems pretty clear to me that they’d do so immediately if they felt they could do so without being called sexist.

First they group them into a particular category. Then they restrict that category behind a login. And then they restrict it further, and finally ban it entirely.

nprz• 5 years ago

being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules

Phew! Glad I'll still be able to host my twitch stream!

Manuel_D2• 5 years ago

I think there's a significant amount of nuance in this situation. On the one hand, I don't object to people steaming and monetizing suggestive (or even explicit) content. These content creators should be able to produce and monetize this content without stigma.

On the other hand, I do think the juxtaposition of this content with the rest of Twitch content is problematic. I think putting this content in the same category as gaming content unintentionally conveys the message, "Men garner popularity by exhibiting their skills, women garner popularity by exhibiting their bodies." I suspect this juxtaposition of the most popular male streamers' content with that of some of the most popular women's content on the platform and exposing this young people ends up fostering non-productive attitudes among boys and young men. Other women on the platform have complained about their audiences pressuring them into producing similar content. I've also heard from women and girls that it's off-putting to see the prevalence of women in bikinis, not playing any games, on a platform that ostensibly about gaming. I think Twitch is in the right to see this as a problem.

But what's the solution here? On the one hand, I think it's giving these streamers the short end of the stick to have ambiguous policies and issue unexpected demonetizations or bans. Maybe a more effective approach would be to have stronger separation between "just chatting" content and gaming content, to retain this content but mitigate the problem of that juxtaposition. I suspect this is what the "Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches" category will probably be, but maybe it'd be better to spin this off into sister platform that isn't explicitly tied into gaming.

bombcar6• 5 years ago

Camsites already exist, and there's nothing stoping you from streaming games on them.

The "pools, hot tubs, beaches" exception was a (stupid) loophole and they should just close it (I suspect that this is the end result moving forward, eventually). The hard part for Twitch is figuring how to do this with out appearing sexist.

makomk• 5 years ago

Well, at least one major adult cam site banned streaming games a few years back due to copyright concerns. Not sure about other sites but I suspect they'd end up having to do the same thing if it caught on there; the plausible deniability of being on a games streaming site is important if you want to be able to stream games, since it's at best a bit of a copyright grey area and developers don't have the same incentive to permit adult streamers as they do plain game streamers.

TchoBeer• 5 years ago

Other women on the platform have complained about their audiences pressuring them into producing similar content.

I'm not at all in touch with twitch stuff, so I'm just reading about this now. That's horrible. Would making stricter bans help?

KapKap55• 5 years ago

Twitch does not see it as a problem. Advertisers (the actual important group in this discussion) and the gaming side of the Twitch community do care, for different reasons.

This situation has been ongoing for awhile with individuals pushing the boundary of sexual content, but this response from Twitch only occurred after a partner who creates this type of content pissed off Twitch's advertisers.

sleepybrett• 5 years ago

Twitch does see a problem. In the past they have handed out bans for people streaming in low cut blouses. Yet somehow now women in bikinis dry-humping pool toys in a portable hot tub set up in their living rooms is cool.

Like facebook or twitter they just need to have CONSISTENT AND CONSISTENTLY APPLIED rules. I can make a judgement on your platform when those two things are happening.

ZephyrBlu5• 5 years ago

"Men garner popularity by exhibiting their skills, women garner popularity by exhibiting their bodies."

In what way does this foster non-productive attitudes in boys and young men?

Manuel_D2• 5 years ago

I suspect it reinforces the stereotype that women who enter "nerdy" spaces like gaming are more interested in attracting the attention of men, than actually engaging with gaming. It plays into the trope of a "gamer girl that sucks at games, but succeeds because she's hot". This leads to women's abilities being doubted, and their intentions often mistaken.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with doing suggestive cosplay or things like that. I also doubt that the average person is going to watch Amouranth, and then immediately assume that all the women interested in gaming are curating the same kind of appeal - this kind of influence is more subtle than that. But I do believe that the juxtaposition of male streamers' content, and many of the most popular women's content likely fosters these stereotypes.

floatingatoll4• 5 years ago

This is the core of the problem that we're facing on every modern "all the things" platform.

How do you create a general content site, without spending money on human review and curation of all uploads, while segregating erotic and non-erotic content, without having your entire site banned/blocked/gated around the world for hosting erotic content?

This has affected Amazon, Blogspot, Facebook, Google, Imgur, Patreon, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitch, Youtube. Every general content site has this problem. Most try to solve it with "user flags", which are promptly weaponized and abused to silence others. Problems constantly recur around statues, breastfeeding, swimsuits. Advertisers want content to be segmented with certainty, but site operators don't want to pay human beings to do that. Standards of "erotic" vary wildly per city, country, religion. The list goes on.

What if human curation is the only valid solution? We haven't found any other solution that works yet, and AI is barely able to recognize human beings, much less discern whether content is intended to be categorized as erotic, non-erotic, or both.

robto• 5 years ago

Do you think this moderation paradox - of needing curation at scale, but automatic moderation + "user flag" moderation being inadequate - is a universal problem, or do you think it's specific to ad-funded platforms?

I wonder if a patron-driven community that sets its own moderation policy wouldn't have this problem, because when a topic gets too large it will inevitably splinter into smaller communities where the preferred moderation style of each subset can be catered to.

dangerface• 5 years ago

I agree ai curation doesn't work but I don't think human curation works much better. Twitch has a team of human curators that will ban channels, no one knows who this team is there is no trial or opportunity to defend your self, channel or content. The person judging may be in a bad mood today, often diffrent people will get diffrent ban lengths for the same thing, there is no consistency or review process.

cblconfederate2• 5 years ago

Apparently 65% of users of twitch are men. Gaming and porn are interlinked in internet culture so it's not clear why companies should go on crusades against what is reality.

The whole point seems to be about separating 'child safe' content. This cannot be done automatically, they would have to hire moderators to manually curate channels and then block access by age.

slightwinder3• 5 years ago

I think putting this content in the same category as gaming content

This is not happening here. Twitch is not a pure Gaming-site anymore, for several years now. And those hot tub-streams are not listed in gaming-categories, they are in non-gaming-categories like "Just Chatting", "Music", even "Travel & Outdoors" (because there are also legit beach-streams which play the hot tub-routine).

Twitch started as Gaming-Only, and the majority of content is still gaming. But people should realize that Non-Gaming is already big on twitch too, and it grows. Twitch is bringing sports and fashing-events to the platform. Music has grown string the last year because of COVID. And some people have found their niche in tame porn-content. Which technically is kind of a joke, because the biggest Hot Tub-Streamer has sexualized content on Twitch for years. But in the past she used the Just Dance-Game to create sexualixed content, or did some fitness-stuff. She is literally infamouse on the platform for this, and Hot tub is just the latest trend in a series of long running content-attempts. Just because it now is now missing the gaming-part, should make it worse? I don't think so.

goatcode• 5 years ago

Bring back the Thot Audit.

Ekaros2• 5 years ago

Twitch is truly a mess... The enforcement is all over the place...

Not that Youtube isn't also "interesting" in some content moderation. Outright nudity is possible with thin veil of "educational" content.

I wish the platforms just applied rules equally and had clear rules. And not punish past content with new rules. But maybe that is too much to ask these days...

system2• 5 years ago

Hah every girl streaming in tubs have pornhub channels as well as onlyfans. If we know it, twitch knows it too. This is such a bullshit post.

smbv• 5 years ago

Second, while we have guidelines about sexually suggestive content, being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules, and Twitch will not take enforcement action against women, or anyone on our service, for their perceived attractiveness.

I can't believe that this has to be spelled out.

throwkeep2• 5 years ago

Here's the new category:

https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Pools%2C%20Hot%20Tubs%2...

thinkingemote• 5 years ago

The main thing is these are not "hot tubs" they are indoors, in a normal room, an apartment, in a kiddies play pool, with kiddies inflatable equipment. The water is, additionally, cold and a few inches deep. No-one in the world does this type of activity privately or in public.

It's so obviously soft core pornography and way away from the sensible "appropriate behaviour and clothing rules" that it's absurd.

Now there is the debate about sexuality and sex work. This is not applicable here. Amazon's Twitch is saying it's not sex work. One sure fire thought experiment is that, if it's not porn, would you be okay with a 13 yr old (the age limit on twitch) doing it?

To give credit to Amazon's Twitch they are dammned whatever they do.

soared• 5 years ago

Twitch is certainly aware of your argument because it’s true. Twitch doesn’t think there are actually hot tubs in peoples living rooms.

They know it’s basically soft core porn. They’re definitely not going to call it that. But they’ll separate it out from the rest of their content and let users and advertisers opt out of it.

degenerate• 5 years ago

I think this is the best option, at least for now. Shove all of these streamers into one category so they are now compete against each other. Previously, you could choose any game or category and scroll down until you inevitably found a streamer in a bikini. Now the entire category is bikinis, so there is a lot less uniqueness to their stream. It's a good solution to a problem that might go away on its own with the new rule.

ilaksh2• 5 years ago

Well, the one I was just watching was definitely hot water and pretty deep.

PCgamer is at this moment streaming Geralt taking a bath in the Hot Tubs category.

Lol.

ClumsyPilot6• 5 years ago

"if it's not porn, would you be okay with a 13 yr old (the age limit on twitch) doing it?"

That's about the age people discover porn, so the test doesn't work.

hervature• 5 years ago

They are talking about actually streaming. Would you be comfortable allowing a 13 year old girl in a bikini playing in an indoor inflatable pool that changes bikinis every 50 subs? The content is public, you can watch any stream without logging in.

slightwinder3• 5 years ago

The main thing is these are not "hot tubs" they are indoors, in a normal room, an apartment, in a kiddies play pool, with kiddies inflatable equipment.

Some are, some not. There are Hot Tub-Streams in Gardes, Pools, beachs. And the whole thing did not even start with Hot Tubs. In the beginning it was just people on their bed.

logicslave• 5 years ago

My real question is all the young men that will have to marry all these women exposing themselves online for money. Three times in the past week I drove by a car where a girl put her venmo on the window. On dating apps its now common for girls to have a venmo in their profile. This culture is far more widespread than just twitch.

s5300• 5 years ago

I'm missing your question. Who is forcing anybody to marry who?

grodes• 5 years ago

man throwing money to hot tub: . twitch: I like money

tibbydudeza4• 5 years ago

I really don't get it.

What is the joy of watching a girl in a bathing costume sitting on a inflatable horse in a kiddy pool showing off her behind every now and again ???.

Most of the chat are about as dumb as bricks so you can't be there for the conversation.

serf• 5 years ago

What is the joy of watching a girl in a bathing costume sitting on a inflatable horse in a kiddy pool showing off her behind every now and again ???.

sex sells.

people like looking at other people half-nude and becoming aroused; it's about as simple a marketing tactic that exists.

tibbydudeza4• 5 years ago

Thinking about it more - it is most likely just very lonely men that is seeking a connection to an attractive women - It reminds of Japan and their hostess clubs - no sex just companionship and chatting for an hour at a price.

floatingatoll4• 5 years ago

There are as many Rule 34 categories as humanity has dreams, and no one has solved that problem at humankind scale.

I really don't get it. What is the joy

You're asking why one specific instance of Rule 34 exists. It's because all instances of Rule 34 exist, and this one just happens to have become popular on Twitch. Rule 34, while distressing, is unfortunately a very real aspect of the human race at scale; it essentially says that if you can imagine something, it will be found erotic by someone, no matter how much it is or isn't erotic to you. I think it was first invented in the time of Usenet, when people would create ever-more-specific newsgroup hierarchies, but I'm honestly not sure.

When we democratized content creation, we made it possible for niche fetishes to be discoverable, to form communities, and to financially support content creators. For example, "1800s-era bathing costumes" is absolutely a niche that some subset of humanity will pay money to see more of. There are much more specific, weird, and uncomfortable niches. (We're lucky that this one is so boring and dull, relatively speaking, because it's possible to discuss it without squick.)

It's not about "getting" why it's erotic to some and not others. That's between you and your own erotic desires or lack thereof for any given content. It's about the greater question of how and when society will come to terms with erotic content appearing in "general content" pools on platforms that co-mingle all user-created content without human curation. In this case, Twitch openly admits that they haven't solved that problem:

This is not intended to be our long-term solution to improve brand targeting capabilities and increase personalization in our recommendations. It does, however, solve a few issues for all audiences in the near term.

But they do clearly understand that, even within the bounds of "no nudity or sex", it's still very possible for content to be erotic to some and uninteresting/offensive to others. I am very curious to see what their next steps will be after this temporary patch, because there's no way to categorize or exclude all Rule 34 content on any content platform where users can upload content without human review and classification, and I don't think that Twitch's short-term compromise today will be a viable long-term solution.

CodeArtisan• 5 years ago

Japan has a whole industry of cute girls in bikini or other costumes posing suggestively while acting cute or innocent known as Gravure Idols. I once asked a Japanese friend why when you have porn, he replied something like "It's hard to fantasize about a pornstar being your girlfriend/wife".

tibbydudeza4• 5 years ago

As long as they shove all those pool streamers into that specific category and don't show it at all on their main recommendation screen than I will be happy.

tareqak• 5 years ago

We recently suspended advertising on some channels that were flagged by the majority of our advertiser base and failed to notify them. Our creators rely on us, and we should have alerted affected streamers to this change before it happened–it was a mistake not to do so. We’re working with individual creators to address their specific situations and restore ads where appropriate.

What do others here think about Twitch’s behavior here? Should there be SLAs for actions taken on an account and notification of the account holder of said action?

loudandskittish• 5 years ago

What I don't understand is why people care so much...

david-cako• 5 years ago

Nice, it's good that they're bringing clarity since there's so much of this sort of content now. Hopefully Twitch becomes more consistent and transparent with how they enforce content policies moving forward. There's very unclear feedback or warnings provided to streamers, and there seems to be quite a bit of nepotism. All sorts of streamers from all different communities can corroborate this.

mensetmanusman2• 5 years ago

It’s a tricky issue because it pits the capitalistic tendencies of wanting to make as much money as possible against the ethical tendencies of trying not to contribute to most girls’ body issues.

These are the types of conversations people are having around the data showing a steady decrease in women’s subjective well being over the last many decades: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp09-11bk.pdf

dsr_• 5 years ago

Tide and Coke and GM would definitely advertise on PornHub if they didn't know that a vocal chunk of their consumers would actively protest, and stop buying those products.

But advertising on a website that is oriented towards Let's Play and educational lectures and video games? Of course!

Twitch just needs to make the sexual content deniable and findable at the same time... which they have just done.

fierro• 5 years ago

being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules

cratermoon2• 5 years ago

FOSTA/SESTA strikes again https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27059300

jasonwatkinspdx2• 5 years ago

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 has swings of up to $100k in a single night. His audience slants young and there's typically about 40k people watching him. That... makes me a bit uncomfortable. I'm far from someone that wants a nanny state, but I'm squeamish about the idea of say a 20 year old kid watching this behavior as a role model, trying to emulate it, and losing a non trivial amount of money at a point in their life where that would have a huge lasting impact. This streamer can only do this because he's insanely rich so even $100k is just play money.

throway987523436• 5 years ago

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 within any protected class with minimal effect on viewership. If that's not true, there's some bias being expressed.

prnyjn• 5 years ago

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?

0xy• 5 years ago

The ship has sailed on that, given EA and Activision have already pioneered slot machines for kids known as loot boxes.

Nextgrid• 5 years ago

Besides traditional gambling, there is/was this whole idea of paid "skins" in games (cosmetic enhancements that - thankfully - don't give you any advantage) and there is/was a site where you could gamble with them. Some popular streamers were gambling thousands worth of skins on these sites are were seen winning, while in reality I'm sure the gambling site was actually in on it and was sponsoring the gambling (if not outright skewing the odds in his favour) to entice viewers to do the same (but most likely lose).

ibaikov• 5 years ago

Introduce a new category: a little bit suggestive but still within our rules and guidelines

bo3OU• 5 years ago

Twitch is open for 13 years old people, as a streamer (I don't remember who) said, what if a 13-year-old started a hot tub stream? Will it be sexually suggestive content or is it a 13 years old kid having innocent fun ?

DeathlyRage• 5 years ago

this is what twitch has become RIP, https://www.twitch.tv/exohydrax

Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

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