Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has pledged to do more to tackle harassment and penalize repeat offenders on the platform. According to Clancy, the Twitch team has reviewed its existing harassment policies. Its latest review will inform new Twitch harassment policies later this year.
“This year, we’ll roll out updates to our Community Guidelines, including clearer, updated harm definitions, and more severe penalties for some types of harassment. We’re also building tools to better identify harassment across our service, including changes that would block more harassment before it shows up in your chat,” he said.
The letter says the company wants suspensions it issues to “match the severity and seriousness of the harm” committed.
“We also recognize that some suspensions shouldn’t stick around forever,” Clancy wrote. “Like violations of our lower-severity policies, which cover non-malicious or accidental behaviors that aren’t likely to result in serious physical or emotional harm.”
However, the open letter doesn’t mention whether any of these “penalties” will include an IP address ban. While Twitch bans accounts, it doesn’t ban users’ IP addresses. This makes bans a lot easier to evade compared to other platforms.
This, along with their perceived delays in responding to harassment complaints, means that Twitch harassment policies have garnered a reputation for being too soft.
In fact, star streamer Pokimaine, who previously had an exclusivity deal with the platform, told listeners on her podcast that she was done with Twitch.
“Even when something becomes evidently clear that it is wrong, it still takes them a hot ass minute to do anything about it,” she noted.
Perhaps, following all this bad press, Twitch is receiving the pressure it needs to majorly clean up its act.
