Chhavideep SinghTwitch is a San Francisco-based social video platform which has been gaining a lot of attention lately because of its gamers profile where they can log in, broadcast, watch and talk about video games. The platform has been acquired by Amazon and it goes beyond just video games.
Recently, after a serious pushback from advertisers on Twitch’s hot tub streamers, the company pulled some advertisements without warning or notifying streamers. The company later apologised for doing the same and realised that it should have at least notified the impacted users as creators rely on the company for their content streams.
However, Twitch told its users that these ads were pulled down at the advertisers’ request and it is not working with individual creators to restore their advertisements.
According to sources, the noise was created after one of Twitch’s biggest streamer, Amouranth’s account was impacted by this ad suspension issue and as reported by The Verge, it seems like some of her steamy hot tub streams have also been removed.
Twitch has a direct rather extremely straightforward approach to dealing with the issue. The company says that while sexually suggestive content remains banned on the platform, its policies regarding content streaming will not change. Twitch outrightly says that it is not going to prevent users from posting content in swimwear or streaming in hot tubs. However, it would appreciate context-appropriate clothing, as in, streams in the bathing suit are contexted appropriate when you are in a pool.
To curb this issue, Twitch is launching a new dedicated “Pools, Hot Tubs and Beaches” category on its platform. This is a good way to enable creators to create and stream whatever they want, helping advertisers to prevent ads on a complete category of video streams that they don’t approve of.
Twitch recently wrote in a blog post,
“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.”
Hot Tubs’ streamers are usually women that face a lot of criticism and harassment for posting what they like and because of this, Twitch has removed all hot tubs and pools related streams from the very popular “Just Chatting” section and moved these streams to the dedicated new “Pools, Hot Tubs and Beaches” category.
However, one major downside of the situation accounts for zero to negligible advertisements in this new category which means less revenue. There is no option left for Twitch but to get advertisers to opt into the Hot Tubs section to maintain the inflow of revenue.