A couple of days after Twitch started allowing what they called “artistic nudity” on their streaming platform, the streaming platform is now reversing its stance, no longer allowing it, whether it’s real or not. 

The announcement, which goes effective immediately, reverts the changes Twitch made last Wednesday that allowed streamers to get a bit more daring in what they can show during a stream. To the shock of no one except for Twitch themselves, the policy change didn’t go exactly as they had hoped for, with countless streamers pushing it to what many considered to be pornography. 

In response, Twitch has now reverted those changes, issuing the following statement on their site. 

On Wednesday, we updated our Sexual Content Policy. Our primary goal in making these updates was to make our guidelines easier to understand and enforce.

Part of this update included changes to how we treat fictionalized nudity. For years, through UserVoice and in conversations, we heard from artists that our content policies were limiting. In making this update, we were trying to be responsive to these requests and allow the thriving artist community on Twitch to utilize the human form in their art. 

First, we want to make clear that some streamers, in response to this update, created content that was in violation of our new policy. We’ve worked quickly to remove that content and issue channel enforcements.

However, there also was a great deal of new content that was allowed under the updated policy. Much of the content created has been met with community concern. These are concerns we share. Upon reflection, we have decided that we went too far with this change. Digital depictions of nudity present a unique challenge–AI can be used to create realistic images, and it can be hard to distinguish between digital art and photography.

This policy isn’t for everything though, as Twitch understands that there are several M-rated video games on the market that contain nudity and violence, something they will continue to allow to be streamed.

So, effective today, we are rolling back the artistic nudity changes. Moving forward, depictions of real or fictional nudity won’t be allowed on Twitch, regardless of the medium. This restriction does not apply to Mature-rated games. You can find emote-specific standards for nudity and sexual content in the Emote Guidelines. We aren’t making other changes to the updated Sexual Content Policy.

They closed the announcement, saying they wished they could have predicted this outcome, and apologized for any confusion the change created. 

For those keeping track of Twitch the last few days, you may have noticed a jump in NSFW (not suitable for work) content arising, with actual nudity playing out during some streams. These streams sparked much debate across social media platforms, with a divide between those attacking and those defending it. Twitch, which originally started as a streaming platform for gaming, has evolved over the last decade to go beyond that, which seems to be at the center of all the discussion. 

Regardless of your stance, we can agree that some streamers abused the policy and went too far. While this policy was meant to acknowledge and cater to certain artists, some saw it as an invitation to exploit. Twitch cites they went too far with the new policy, which allowed some of those streamers to abuse the system.

Source: Twitch