
Calls for Twitch to police 'sexual streaming' - bdz
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42222939
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knowaveragejoe
Twitch already has a flagging system for "mature" content, and they ban
anything with actual nudity pretty aggressively. It sounds like this is
actually a call to police the use of sex appeal by streamers, which seems like
a difficult thing to judge in general and I'm not sure how they could actually
achieve such a thing.

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NathanKP
Yeah I don't really understand who is complaining. You have to go pretty out
of your way to find these "sexual streamers" and they have pretty low viewer
count to be honest.

If you stick to browsing Twitch by game you almost never see them, and the top
game streams have 10k-20k viewers at all times. You have to specifically go to
the IRL section of Twitch to find camgirl style streams, and most of these
"sexual streamers" have under 1k viewers. It's hardly a mainstream part of
Twitch, and is something you have to specifically hunt down.

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ht85
> If you stick to browsing Twitch by game you almost never see them

I don't have a strong opinion of what should or shouldn't be allowed, but that
statement is false.

For example, if you browse League of Legends in the evening, very often a
couple of the top 24 thumbnails are girl streamers in sexy outfits who are not
really focused on playing, and do provocative things when people sub / donate.

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NathanKP
Sure it's not that sex appeal focused streamers are never in the game
categories but it is much rarer than it used to be. The IRL category has
helped by moving the majority of all these streamers to one place where you
can go watch them if that's your thing.

All that is needed is for Twitch mods to be a bit more active in retagging
such streams to IRL instead of the game category. In general I think that they
are doing a great job. You used to see a lot more League of Legends streams
where a female host dressed in a revealing outfit had her cam much larger than
the gameplay and it was clearly more focused on sex appeal than gameplay, but
that type of stream is now mostly cordoned off in IRL.

A simple rule like "streamer camera can only take up X% of the screen, and
gameplay must take up at least Y% of the screen" otherwise it gets retagged as
an IRL stream solves the issue.

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crsv
It's interesting to see the timing on when mainstream media runs these things.
BBC is picking this up when most of the intensity around the topic was piping
up on Reddit over the last couple of months. I just find the lag between when
something hits the BBC vs the people directly involved with it fascinating.

The devolution of stream content on Twitch is really is something that needs
to be addressed though. Anyone that thinks that Twitch isn't turning in to a
soft-core cam girls site can just load the IRL section of Twitch and see for
themselves. It takes about a 30 second cursory glance to see the themes.

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freeflight
> Anyone that thinks that Twitch isn't turning in to a soft-core cam girls
> site can just load the IRL section of Twitch and see for themselves.

And it's not even like anybody is trying to hide it, the Patreon's of many of
these Streamers involve rewards like "Private lewd pictures" and their
"gaming" often boils down to a video of a game being played in a small corner
of the screen or simply playing rhythm/dance games.

Some of these Streamers advertise the fact they work as strippers/dancers in
some place, it's a really weird combination of gaming and cam-girl culture.
Imho it's kinda exploitive considering how it combines two of the things young
males in puberty just love to do and plays on them very heavily.

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mschuster91
I dont see what's exploitive on young males there. Older generations have had
Playboys from the gas station and dad's VHS collection (or if they knew
someone, their own), my generation had emule, Us porn sites and prepaid CCs,
the new generation has patreon and camgirls.

~~~
hateduser2
They try to emotionally manipulate their viewers into donating to them. Or
they try to form a real bond. There’s some clear mix of genuine value for the
lonely donators and id assume emotional abuse on the part of the streamers.

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lwkl
I had to laugh if showing some cleavage, saying thank you or talking to you is
emotional manipulation or even abuse. Maybe there is really some truth to the
lonely nerd.

It's probably just people stuck in their teens or teenagers. It's exactly like
the teenage girls loving some star they never met and thinking they'll get
married and all.

The more I read and think about it the more I'm asking myself how there can
such an outrage about it.

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hateduser2
Taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable person, or as you put it
"showing some cleavage, saying thank you or talking to you" is abusive. Just
because you trivialize it (which you should feel ashamed for doing, very
harmful attitude) doesn't mean its not abusive or wrong.

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Bendingo
> "... or talking to you" is abusive

Please tell me you're kidding.

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hateduser2
Are you a Russian trollbot? I just read your comment history.

The agenda seems to be:

1) disrupt empathy/modern thought on mental issues

2) promote Russia

3) demean the US

You literally wrote you were in awe of Russia’s builders and that the US is at
fault for North Korea. Wtf????

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apk-d
Oh come on, why can't we just have fun? The site already has a "no nudity
allowed" policy and a per-stream "mature audiences only" warning screen.

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noobermin
I think the idea is people who don't have the same sex appeal feel they are
finding it hard to compete. Also, they feel it is "changing" the feel of the
site.

Not saying I agree, that's what it sounds like to me.

~~~
apk-d
It's easy to be salty when you're an unappreciated streamer and there's girls
out there having an easier time with less effort. However, they're even not
competing for the same audience. As to the second thing, it's a valid point,
but there are solutions that don't resort to removing streams.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>However, they're even not competing for the same audience.

I don't think that's exactly accurate. Presumably the major audience for both
types of streamers is young boys/men.

~~~
apk-d
You have broadened the category widely enough to include both audiences. Given
that guys typically watch gaming streams and undressed females for different
reasons, I think there's finer distinctions in terms of which the audiences
don't overlap.

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noobermin
Here's a thought experiment, imagine you are a young male looking for random
streams because you're bored. You see a) one stream with speed runs done by a
female streamer who is not scantily clad but actually has a lot of skill and
is trying to garner views by being a good gamer. Then, there is a b) 23 year
old female streamer who isn't really playing games but is merely doing
stretches in yoga tights. What will you probably click first?

When talking about aggregate, the small delta counts. This swings those
uncommitted to looking for sexual content as well as attracting those purely
looking for sexual content. To be fair, there are more hardcore sexual content
out there that is just as free, so why would the population just looking for
soft porn go to Twitch to do it?

It sounds more to me like they are competing more than just having different
audiences.

EDIT: and more importantly, these sexual streamer are taking advantage of it,
while avoiding other sites devoted to sexual content where competition would
be harder for _them_.

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rhizome
The sex-work scolds have found a new cause.

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marme
they should just relaunch justin.tv and move the IRL section to there. The big
problem that the gamer streamers have is the IRL streamers are flooding twitch
with users that are not the gaming streamers audience

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ameister14
The rise of new Victorianism.

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frgtpsswrdlame
So I think Twitch actually will ban 'booby streamers' but I don't expect them
to do it yet. The problem is that the community Twitch has built wants Twitch
to be about games with little bits of other stuff but twitch wants to be a
general service streaming site that just happened to start out with games.
Sexualized streaming is a great way to branch out into non-game related
livestreaming but also hurts the reputation of the site so I think allowing
these streams is probably a temporary measure to build up the IRL streaming.

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coffee9
Didn't even have to finish the headline to know it was the UK.

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tux1968
Has the land of Benny Hill really changed that much?

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jlebrech
yes

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LinuxBender
If this is such a problem, then clearly there is a demand for it. Perhaps
create a channel just for sexual streaming. The only question is, what to call
it?

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Sylos
Well, they can't do that, because it would give the impression that they're
tolerating it. Which they are, but they can't leave that impression.

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LinuxBender
Assuming the streamer proves they are at or above the legal age of consent for
their location, why could this not be tolerated?

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Sylos
I'm not saying that it shouldn't be tolerated. But other people don't want it
to be tolerated, usually hardcore religious people.

With Twitch officially prohibiting it and streamers doing it anyways, those
people will be angry at the streamers, not so much at Twitch.

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jacksmith21006
Just wish Amazon would give Twitch back to the Roku. Amazon anti competitive
behavior lately is a bit out of hand.

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jlebrech
women are sexier than men, so this is just anti-women.

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s73ver_
The problem is, there's a contingent of people on Twitch that will call any
woman who's not completely flat chested or not all covered up a "booby
streamer".

