Twitch’s New Conduct Policy Can Apply To Behavior Outside Its Platform

In a move that should surprise no one with a functioning organ between their ears, Twitch announced today that its conduct policy can and will be enforced for extreme behavior – even if it happens outside of Twitch.

Per the Washington Post, this includes “deadly violence, membership in a hate group, terrorism, threats of mass violence, nonconsensual sexual activity, exploitation of children, threats against Twitch staff, and any threats of violence at a Twitch event”. All of these things seem like no-brainers to me!

Twitch has already taken action based on out-of-platform behavior in the past, but up until now there were no hard-written guidelines in their TOS that explicitly covered these actions.

Once again – should come as a surprise to no one. Movie and TV studios, record labels, and sports franchises all have very similar rules for their “talent”, and Twitch is a major entertainment platform that’s growing larger and faster than most of them… Why shouldn’t they have rules in place for their “talent” as well?

At first glance this may seem extreme and out of the blue, especially given the scrutiny Twitch has faced in the past for favoritism and forgiveness for some creators – and not for others. This will only exacerbate these issues if Twitch doesn’t tighten up its in-house mod and community policies to match these new conduct standards. This should be a sweeping change that effects internal Twitch staff and the things they say and do outside of the platform as well as content creators. (It may already be this way – but I don’t have confirmation one way or the other on that).

What’re your thoughts on these changes? It was a matter of time before these came down, but this is surely going to turn some heads and raise plenty more questions on the future of their conduct policy and how (and where) it’ll be enforced.