Twitch adds explanation to bans and suspensions for streamers

The days of Twitch mysteriously suspending popular streamers are coming to an end. The Amazon-owned streaming platform announced yesterday that it will now tell streamers who are temporarily banned why they have been punished. It only took 10 years, guys.

“Starting today, app notifications sent to suspended users will include the name of the content and the date of the violation to ensure they have better clarity on what content action is being taken,” Support Twitch wrote on Twitter. Based on an example screenshot, these new explanations will include what the streamer did that violated Twitch’s Terms of Service or community guidelines and on which stream that happened.

Temporary Twitch bans are one of the main sources of drama and intrigue on the social media platform. When someone with hundreds of thousands of subscribers is randomly shut down, people immediately begin to speculate as to why, and because Twitch has been so vague in the past, the streamers in question rarely have anything clear to see. tell their audience.

In March, Minecraft streamer George “GeorgeNotFound” Davidson was banned for “harassment via a username”, then quickly cleared, then briefly banned again. In June, Twitch provocateur Amouranth and model indiefoxxlive were temporarily suspended after suggestive microphones and licking plastic human ears. There is a whole long section in the Twitch Community Guidelines on sexual content, but it’s still impossible to predict exactly where the business will draw the line. In theory at least, these new explanations will allow us to understand a little more when and why streamers are sanctioned.

It is also long overdue. Twitch was founded in 2011 and later acquired by Amazon in 2014 for nearly $ 1 billion. It’s a big deal, but only because of the content put there by others. Telling the creators why they’ve sometimes been left out of what some say is de facto work is the least Twitch can do, although it’s still a far cry from what many users would ideally like. Even now, Twitch Support’s announcement tweet for the ban’s explanations is littered with complaints about the lack of transparency and communication around things like the appeals process.