Enforcement of the Controversial Streaming Guidelines Will Start on March 5th Instead
Twitch announced on Twitter this past Sunday that they’ll be delaying the enforcement of the new, controversial community guidelines until March 5th.
The new guidelines, which caused immense controversy due to the new rules on what clothes streamers could wear while streaming, are meant to tackle several issues that many Twitch users have had with the site’s content.
“Thanks for all your insightful feedback on our new Community Guidelines!” Twitch’s account tweeted. “It’s important they’re clear to everyone and we need to better explain some sections, so we’re pushing back enforcement to start March 5. We’ll release an updated FAQ before then.”
The new guidelines were originally supposed to go in effect today, on Monday, at 9:00 am PST/12:00 pm ET.
The controversial new guideline that dealt with the clothing that streamers could wear while streaming set off a firestorm of criticism and debate, particularly this part: “Attire in gaming streams, most at-home streams, and all profile/channel imagery should be appropriate for a public street, mall, or restaurant.”
The guidelines’ detractors saw this specific rule as sexist since it seemed to be targeting female streamers who just happen to have certain body types while its supporters saw the measure as an effective way to stop inappropriate content (such as the streams of so-called “booby streamers“) from being on Twitch.
We previously covered the “booby streamer” issue in an article published last year.
There is also significant disagreement with the guideline that calls for the deletion of VoDs (basically saved videos of past streams) and video clips that violate the guidelines. Several Twitch users on the site’s subreddit brought up the issue of having to delete possibly hundreds of VoDs in order to not get in trouble with Twitch moderation.
What do you think of the new community guidelines? Do you think that it is a good idea for Twitch to dictate what its streamers should be allowed to wear during streams? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!