Twitch clarifies its ban on terrorist and extremist content
The service reinforced that there's no place for such material on its platform.
Twitch has updated its community guidelines to clarify its ban on terrorist and extremist content. It said that it’s doing so to “reinforce the fact that this type of content has no place on Twitch.”
We’ve clarified our policy prohibiting terrorist and extremist content.
View the Violence and Threats section of the Community Guidelines for further details: https://t.co/E2LKDBPnBv pic.twitter.com/OFe0NOwOUC— Twitch (@Twitch) October 5, 2020
Last year, a shooter broadcast their attack on a German synagogue live on Twitch. Other terrorist attacks have been livestreamed on other platforms in recent years.
Tackling extremist and terrorist content is a difficult problem for platforms such as Twitch and Facebook. An outright ban on such material probably isn’t enough to prevent attackers from livestreaming their assaults or bad actors from encouraging other users to commit heinous acts.
Still, platforms need to use every tool at their disposal to clamp down on such actions. Though Twitch has long had a zero-tolerance approach to hateful content, spelling out what is and isn’t allowed as explicitly as possible can’t hurt.
Here’s the language Twitch added to its guidelines:
Twitch does not allow content that depicts, glorifies, encourages, or supports terrorism, or violent extremist actors or acts. This includes threatening to or encouraging others to commit acts that would result in serious physical harm to groups of people or significant property destruction. You may not display or link terrorist or extremist propaganda, including graphic pictures or footage of terrorist or extremist violence, even for the purposes of denouncing such content.
