Last week, Twitch announced that they were revising their Community Guidelines and changing them to match the ever-changing world of streaming. Well, those changes are now released, and they cover a WIDE range of areas. It’s worth a read but, in StreamerSquare fashion, we’re going to break down the article for you and cover the heavy points to give you all the knowledge you need to know!

Anti-Harassment and Hate Speech

What is defined as Harassment in Twitch’s terms? Harassment is:

• Any content that can be found offensive to someone of a specific race, ethnicity, origin, gender, age, medical condition, or even veteran status.
• Any content that attempts to intimidate or bully another or creates a hostile environment where one is threatened. This violation may actually ban you for life from the website if severe enough.
• On that note, Twitch cannot be used to facilitate any actions that result in hate or harassment as well, including if they are actually a part or Twitch or not. This means that your actions outside of Twitch can affect your status with Twitch.
• Self-Destructive behavior falls under this category as well, which includes drinking excessively, illegal drugs, physical harm, and suicide threats. All can result in a permanent ban.

Violence and Threats

Violence is never the answer and threats can lead down a very bad road if taken seriously. Twitch is taking all threats and acts seriously in their new guidelines, with zero tolerance for violators. Acts that are included here can include:

• Physically harming, both attempts or threats
• Hacking, DDOS, or SWATing
• Weapon usage to harm or intimidate another

Suspension Evasion

The act of Suspension Evasion is when someone’s account is suspended or terminated due to breaking the guidelines of the website and they create another account to avoid it. Any attempt to evade suspension will result in an increase in current suspension or an indefinite suspension.

Law Breaking

All laws in the area that you choose to stream must be upheld at all times. Even if you travel to another city, state, or country, those laws will apply to you at the current time of streaming. Failure to do so will result in a suspension.

Private Information and Privacy

Privacy is taken very strictly on Twitch and they will protect the private information to the utmost degree. Streamers may not share:

• Someone else’s information such as name, location, ID, social profiles, or anything of a personal nature
• Content that reveals any type of personal information

Furthermore, you cannot impersonate someone else either. Any attempt to represent yourself as someone else, whether that be another personality or a member of a group (such as Twitch) will result in an INDEFINITE suspension.

Sexual Content

All content that includes a sexual matter, such as pornography, sexual acts, intercourse, nudity, are prohibited. Sexually suggestive content or content that promotes sexual advances or violations are prohibited as well. Basically, keep the sexy times to your private lives or you will see a suspension that can go indefinitely.

Unauthorized Content Sharing

Others work hard to produce the content that they do. They devote many hours, days, weeks, months, and years to creating it. So it is against the Terms of Service to represent content that you do not have the rights to first. If found, it makes you liable to be taken down by the third party rights. Items that cannot be shared include

• Pirated Games
• Other Broadcasters’ content
• Third-party movies and TV shows
• Sports matches
• Other site’s materials

Categorizing your content

All content created needs to be properly categorized into the appropriate area. For example, if you broadcast yourself walking around town, you will fall under the IRL category.

Cheating, Closed Alphas, and Pre-releases

Cheating in a video game is a zero-tolerance offense. This includes hacking, botting, tampering, or cheating. You may also not broadcast another streamer’s content to gain an advantage (stream sniping).

Closed Alphas and Pre-releases will be respected to their embargoes or NDAs. If violated, your channel will be subject to be taken down according to the DMCA guidelines.

AutoMod

The trusty bot that is Twitch’s creation is getting a facelift as well. It will be greatly improved over the coming weeks to help with the new enforcement.

These new Guidelines go into effect on Monday, Feb 19th at 9 AM PST. For more information, check out the complete list of Twitch Community Guidelines.