Can gaming save itself from its content moderation problems?

Twitch rolled out several new content moderation changes in December. Not everyone was happy. (Photo by Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash)

In December, Twitch, the popular gaming platform that entertains nearly 18 million people each day, introduced some new content rules for its global community. As part of an announcement, dubbed “Our New Hateful Conduct & Harassment Policy,” Twitch said that it would no longer tolerate the use of the Confederate flag as an “emote,” noting that “[the flag’s] historic and symbolic association with slavery and white supremacist groups in the US.”

And at the end of the announcement, Twitch also said that it would no longer permit users in live chat to use the words “simp,” “incel” or “virgin” — at least not, as the company says, “when they are being used to negatively refer to another person’s sexual practices.” (In practicality, this seemingly means that one could write, “I’m a virgin”; but not, “You’re a dumb virgin.”) Shortly after the announcement, Twitch COO Sara Clemens spoke to the new guidelines and said that such violations will be “reported” and “removed.” These content changes ladder back to new sweeping shifts in how the platform is combating sexual harassment, a problem that’s plagued the gaming industry for years. Twitch, bought by Amazon for $1 billion in 2014, further outlined new policy changes, including prohibiting users from commenting on others’ “perceived attractiveness,” as well as “sending unwanted/unsolicited links to nude images or videos.”

(Many of these new guidelines raise questions about free speech and what can or can’t and what should or shouldn’t be allowed to be said in public forums. After all, the United States has no law against hate speech, and many argue that censoring such speech does more harm than good. At the same time, tech giants like Twitch and Twitter benefit from Section 230, a law passed in 1996 that shields internet companies from liability for the content posted by its users while simultaneously retaining the right to monitor and moderate what is said on their platforms, removing content or banning users at their discretion. For the purposes of this article, we’ll leave this broader discussion for another day.)

Twitch appears to be betting, or hoping, that bad actors punch themselves out and eventually give up.