In a recent Twitch Town Hall that took place on December 16th, Twitch COO Sara Clemons announced that the words ‘Simp’ and ‘Virgin’ will be banned from Twitch, but the ‘N-word’ will not be – on certain circumstances only.
Twitch Town Halls are often held to address certain issues that have been happening within the Twitch community lately. One issue that was brought up during this was the current DMCA issues and lawsuits that have been arriving due to music being copyrighted in the background of streaming videos. Protests for this have been happening for months, but during this town hall, they decided to also talk about how they are taking steps to ban certain words or tags– and some only on certain occasions.
During the nearly 2 hour and 45-minute town hall, Sara Clemmons went on to talk about how they are going to be banning the terms ‘Simp’ and ‘Virgin’ from Twitch streams and chats. However, the N-word is not classified under Twitch’s version of derogatory terms. For them to ban the N-word, Clemmons explained that the use of it had to be taken with “context” and whether to determine if it was truly used offensively or not. Twitch themselves do not want to be taking away a streamer’s rights regarding how they might identify themselves, who might use that term in a self-directed way that isn’t derogatory. However, the use of the words ‘simp’ and ‘virgin’ are classified as derogatory words. In any case, Twitch has also promised that if the n-word is to be used in any sort of context with is hateful, then and only then will it be bannable from the platform.
While it does seem that Twitch is trying to be self-inclusive, as well as prevent further hate from spreading, this news seems a bit bizarre to hear. Twitch chats move quickly most of the time, so having those words tracked down would be hard enough as it is with whatever kind of machinery they might have to track down the use of those words. Twitch has never been known to have a super quick response to issues, but this one feels like it's a bit twisted in the way it is approaching the issue.
Twitch also said that it will be taking away emotes that are related to the word ‘simp’ or ‘virgin,’ which might also infringe on the creator’s rights because most streamers end up creating emotes that might make fun of themselves with the word ‘simp.’ In a way, that might also be classified as a ‘self-directed’ slur, so it’s a bit of a slippery slope.
Next: Twitch Warns Fornite Streamers To Delete Nexus War Clips Over DMCA Risk
Sources: Twitch, Rod Breslau - Twitter