TheQuartering [12/18/2020]
Gotta love out-of-touch boomer executives. This new rule was hilariously absurd in the first place.
It’s been yet another long 24 hours for Twitch—the latest in what’s shaped up to be an agonizingly long year for the company (and also everybody on Earth). Yesterday afternoon, Twitch held a live town hall with the goal of illuminating recent policy changes and features around DMCAs, sexual harassment, ads, and other hot-button issues. In the aftermath, however, many streamers fixated on one small portion of the two-hour presentation: Twitch’s decision to ban words like “simp,” “incel,” and “virgin”—at least, when they’re used in derogatory contexts.
Toward the end of the town hall, Twitch COO Sara Clemens elaborated on new Twitch rules set to go into effect next month. Clemens explained that one of the new rules outlaws “derogatory statements about another person’s perceived sexual practices,” which includes “negatively targeting another person with sexually focused terms.”
“Using terms like ‘simp,’ ‘incel,’ or ‘virgin’ as an insult to negatively refer to another person’s sexual activity is not allowed under this new policy,” said Clemens. “In addition to the policy change, we’re also proactively denying emotes that include the term ‘simp.’ We remove them when reported and will keep doing that once the policy changes.”
In an email to Kotaku, Twitch clarified that “simp,” “incel,” and “virgin” are not blanket banned and will only incur penalties when they “negatively refer to another person’s sexual practices.”