Days after deregulating the (imaginary) nipple, Twitch backed away from its “artistic nudity” policy that allowed streamers to display illustrative, animated, or sculpted images of breasts, butts, and genitals.
The announcement comes days after Twitch announced sweeping updates to its sexual content policy, which simplified the platform’s community guidelines and allowed nudity in certain contexts, such as artistic streams. The reversal comes after many in the Twitch art community, who have long rallied for the platform to lift restrictions on nudity in art, raised concerns about the volume of realistic AI-generated nudes flooding Twitch’s art category since the policy update.
Starting Friday, depictions of real and fictional nudity will be banned on Twitch again. Streamers will still be able to show nudity in adult-rated games.
in Blog postTwitch CEO Dan Clancy wrote that the company initially updated its nudity policy in response to feedback from streamers, who complained that existing restrictions were “restrictive.” The update was supposed to allow creators “to use the human form in their art,” he said. Since Wednesday’s update, streamers have produced a “significant amount” of newly allowed content on Twitch.
“A lot of the content created has been met with community interest. These are concerns we share,” Clancy said. “After reflection, we decided we had gone too far with this change. Digital nude photography presents a unique challenge – artificial intelligence can be used to create photorealistic images, and it can be difficult to distinguish between digital art and photography.
Clancy added that the company is not adding any more changes to the new one Sexual content policy.
The initial update was intended to simplify and clarify Twitch’s stance on nudity, but the very specific guidelines set by the policy only served to widen the gray area between what is and isn’t allowed on the platform. “Fancy” depictions of fully exposed breasts, butts, and genitals were allowed, but “augmented reality avatars” like VTubers had to adhere to the same clothing requirements as regular streamers. A Twitch spokesperson told TechCrunch that nudity would be allowed if it was fixed, and that VTubers could interact with the audience and make “gestures” that could violate the platform’s policies, which prohibit any sexual acts on live streams.
Twitch’s dress code policy was not affected by Friday’s changes. Signs presenting females must cover their nipples and are not allowed to show “underboob,” but can show cleavage. It’s still unclear if Sideboob is allowed.
Under the initial update, artistic nudity was allowed as long as creators described their stream as containing “sexual themes.” Content labeled as adult — including “drugs, intoxication or excessive tobacco use,” “gambling,” “violent and graphic depictions,” as well as “sexual themes” — is not promoted in Twitch’s homepage recommendations and should be intentionally sought out Users. A Twitch spokesperson told TechCrunch that the updated content rating system aims to ensure viewers agree to see adult content, as well as give advertisers more right to decide where their ads are shown. Twitch hopes to increase brand confidence in running ads on the platform by doing so.
The lifted restrictions on NSFW content have been largely embraced by the Twitch tech community, but others have raised concerns about how the policy will be implemented. While a few creators have called for Twitch to ban nudity completely, some have asked the platform to add more protections to prevent viewers from seeing adult content, such as Blurring the thumbnails of the stream And Add filter options When browsing the Professional category. On UserVoice, Twitch’s community feedback forum, users also suggested adding a Separate mature label for artistic nudityinstead of the generic “sexual themes” tag as well Create a separate homepage for 18+ content So that creators who tag their streams with adult labels can still be detected. 1 artist on UserVoice pointed out Since Wednesday’s update, the artistic category has been overtaken by non-artistic NSFW content and AI-generated nude images.
“This does not mean that this is not art and that these accounts did not exist before, they just appeared in our category because of this new policy,” streamer Kamisama_Kimi wrote. “The art category has been around for years, for people who stream and watch art, and our favorite space has turned into a grab bag for those who don’t know which category to stream in, which makes it quite inconvenient.”
Social media sites in general struggle to address policies on conditional nudity. Consensual nudity and sexual content are allowed on Reddit, and until recently, were allowed on X (formerly Twitter). Moderating “artistic nudity” or “non-sexual nudity” is more difficult because the line between nudity and sexual content tends to be subjective. Instagram Nudity is prohibited Excludes images of paintings and sculptures, images of breastfeeding, childbirth, postpartum moments, and health-related situations, such as breast cancer treatment or gender confirmation surgery. Still, Users complain This content containing visible, exposed breasts is often flagged and removed, even if it falls within policy exceptions.
Users have similar complaints about Tumblr, which banned porn in 2018 before reversing it last year with a policy update that allowed “nudity and other types of adult material” but not “visual depictions of explicit sexual acts or content with an overt focus on ‘genitalia.’ Adult artists and content creators say so Tumblr enforces this policy inconsistentlyand like Instagram, may remove nude content that does not violate privacy rules Community Guidelines.
Sites with the clearest guidelines either allow nudity and sexual content completely, or don’t. Conditional nudity policies that attempt to separate “good nudity,” such as in art, from “bad nudity” or sexual content, are not as progressive as they are made out to be.
In Twitch’s case, even the most precise and clear policy language still has holes in it. None of the detailed examples outlined in the updated guidelines address the real threat to online artists: realistic nude images generated by artificial intelligence.
“While I wish we could have predicted this outcome, part of our mission is to make adjustments that serve the community,” Clancy said in the post. “I apologize for the confusion caused by this update.”