Twitch clarifies \u201cN word\u201d policy due to confusion from streamers TwitchAfter introducing updates to their Hateful Conduct and Harassment Policy that were criticized by the community, Twitch has announced new guidelines surrounding the use of certain racial slurs on the streaming service. On December 9, Twitch announced an update to the platform\u2019s Hateful Conduct and Harassment Policy. The updates include more protections for groups on the platform, \u201cparticularly women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, Black, Indigenous, and people of color.\u201d Twitch stated then that their goals were \u201cto take a clearer and more consistent stance against hate and harassment, and to give you [the community] greater insight on what is and isn\u2019t acceptable on Twitch.\u201d Following that first announcement, Twitch issued a series of tweets on December 19 confirming their stance on the use of racial slurs, particularly \u201cthe N word.\u201d Additionally, regardless of spelling or pronunciation, slurs used for the purpose of hate or harassment are not allowed. \u2014 Twitch (@Twitch) December 19, 2020 Twitch has made it clear that any use of the word as a racial slur will not be tolerated, and it has already been blocked across the entire service. The platform\u2019s Twitter account issued a follow-up, stating that \u201cregardless of spelling or pronunciation, slurs used for the purpose of hate or harassment are not allowed.\u201d While many users posted positive responses and praised Twitch for taking action, others were critical that it took this long for the site to take action, blocking other phrases before apparently getting around to this. Okay but why was the full on N word hard R allowed to be said on Twitch in general and today is the day that is changed. HUH \ud83e\udd23 \u2014 iamBrandon \ud83d\udd1c Dreamhack Dallas (@iamBrandonTV) December 19, 2020 As a Black partner on twitch for 8 years I\u2019ve always wondered why it was even able to be typed in the first place. https:\/\/t.co\/jwywUUs9qE \u2014 Nick Polom (@nmplol) December 19, 2020 In another recent policy update, Twitch also added clarifications on the use of terms like \u201csimp,\u201d \u201cincel,\u201d and \u201cvirgin,\u201d and update that was widely criticized by the Twitch community, and actually led to a major increase in the use of all of the targeted terms. Twitch did issue another statement clarifying their position after that update too. Clarifying that they \u201cwill take action when words like this (amongst others) are used to harass and harm community members.\u201d The change in policy, which is scheduled to start on January 22, 2021, will apply to both chat and conduct on-screen. It remains to be seen what other phrases or words might be blocked as well, but Twitch has promised to answer community questions before the change goes into effect. Based on the responses so far, we\u2019d wager there will be quite a few come time for that Q&A.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twitch clarifies \u201cN word\u201d policy due to confusion from streamers TwitchAfter introducing updates to their Hateful Conduct and Harassment Policy that were criticized by the community, Twitch has announced new guidelines surrounding the use of certain racial slurs on the streaming service. On December 9, Twitch announced an update to the platform\u2019s Hateful Conduct and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}