Last Wednesday, the U.S. livestreaming platform Twitch released some new policies around "Artistic Nudity." By adding rating tags, you can show certain forms of "artistic" nudity in your live stream, such as body painting, dances, and more. Sculptures, paintings, and other non-real close-ups of the human body, which had been banned before, were also classified as "safe".
This policy change can be regarded as an unprecedented "relaxation" of live broadcast content. Until then, Twitch had been strict about adult content. Sometimes, even if a streamer accidentally shows a close-up of their chest, buttocks, or crotch area while they are wrapped in clothing, they may be banned.
But at the same time, its criteria are extremely confusing. For example, for a long time before, "hot tubs" (hot tubs), in which female anchors wore bikinis and chatted with the audience while taking a bath, were popular as traffic passwords for a long time.
The term "Hot Tub Meta" was coined by the user community to satirize this phenomenon
On the one hand, because of the unclear criteria for the platform's judgment, some anchors openly played side balls, causing many viewers to express disgust at it. On the other hand, Twitch prohibits the human body from appearing in sculptures, paintings and other works of art in live streams, which is often criticized by users for overkill.
In such a situation, the "boundary between acceptable and sexually suggestive content" on Twitch has become a long-standing point of contention among viewers. Basically, the user community is squabbling over the topic of "scrubbing" every day.
And just this month, a female anchor, Morgpie, quickly became popular by filming the sidelines - through specific angles, creating an illusion of nudity in the live broadcast screen. This sparked outrage among many users, with netizens questioning why Twtich allowed such content.
The user community gave birth to the new term "Topless Meta" (Semi-Naked Universe)
In the opinion of some users, "female streamers on Twitch have a much easier time than male streamers" and that they can gain an unfair advantage over other streamers based on their appearance and pornography. And Twtich's connivance with side-scraping anchors is tantamount to aiding and abusive, which is a sign that the platform is gradually breaking through the lower limit, and the emergence of more such anchors will inevitably lower the quality of the entire platform.
After angry complaints from netizens, Morgpie was banned three days later. Unexpectedly, however, the user community soon set off another wave. In the eyes of these people, Morgpie's popularity relied on "shooting creativity", and she wore a low-cut top all the time during the live broadcast and did not violate any rules.
On top of that, some users questioned why topless streams don't have any impact on male streamers, and whether Twitch punishes female streamers more harshly than men.
The quarrel intensified, and in an effort to calm the situation, Twitch admitted that the punishment for Morgpie was too heavy and reformulated the standards for live streaming: "We received feedback that our policy on pornography is not clear, so we have drawn a clearer line"
Hence the initial policy of "artistic nudity". Twitch envisions that previously banned content can be streamed with just the right type of content, which is clearly going to expand the streamer's streaming space and attract new users. At the same time, the live tag also ensures that viewers don't stumble into a live broadcast room they don't want to follow, further avoiding controversy.
Unfortunately, Twitch is clearly underestimating what users are capable of "creating".
After the "art nudity" policy was revealed, the number of people who created unscrupulously under the protection of the classification label increased dramatically, and a large number of outside "fun people" poured in, which turned the entire art category on Twitch upside down.
For example, if you opened this category before, the live broadcast style you saw was likely to look like this:
And now browsing through this category, you can see countless hip dances, pole dances, stripteases, as well as naked two-dimensional figures and explicit AI images. The content is not blurred in the slightest, and the nudity is clearly visible even if you are just browsing the page.
The phenomenon of the swarm has clearly gone beyond the so-called "art", and Twitch users have reacted so strongly to all these new "artistic nudes" that the team has had to urgently remove the content.
Just two days later, CEO Dan Clancy apologized on his official website and quickly reinstated the nude ban.
The Twitch team admits that they lack a long-term plan and a clear definition of the platform's policies, but so far, Twitch has not been able to solve the problem of new "artistic" content constantly emerging. But for the sake of your eyes, I suggest you don't look at it.