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Twitch launches safety advisory council to help clean up its platform

The group includes streamers, academics, and non-profit leaders to draft new policies and develop products

Adam Smith
Friday 15 May 2020 10:06 BST
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This illustration picture taken on July 24, 2019 in Paris shows the US live streaming video platform Twitch logo application on the screen of a tablet
This illustration picture taken on July 24, 2019 in Paris shows the US live streaming video platform Twitch logo application on the screen of a tablet

Amazon-owned video game streaming platform Twitch is creating its own Safety Advisory Council.

The council will help Twitch draft new policies, develop products, protect the interests of marginalised groups, identify “emerging trends” and promote healthy streaming and work-life balance habits, according to the company’s blog announcing the board.

The board is made up of a number of Twitch streamers including CohhCarnage, Cupahnoodle, FerociouslySteph, and Zizaran, who collectively have an audience of approximately 1.6M followers.

It also includes the deputy CEO of the non-profit ‘The Diana Award’ Alex Holmes, which aims to help prevent bullying in schools, and Emma Llansó Director of the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Free Expression Project which supports “Internet users’ free expression rights” and has worked on counter-terrorism, disinformation, and radicalising content.

Finally, the board includes two academics: Dr. Sameer Hinduja, a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University and Co-Director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, and T.L. Taylor, a Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and co-founder and Director of Research for eSports organisation AnyKey.

As a platform Twitch has struggled with its own terms of service. It has been inconsistent with streamers it has or has not banned, among claims that there is a “level of inconsistency coming from the platform and favouritism”. Zizaran, in the press release, says he “looks forward to helping Twitch make rules clearer and reducing community confusion, specifically when it comes to bans and suspensions on the platform.”

Twitch has also come under criticism for controversial streams the company has platformed; this includes a streamer who assaulted his pregnant partner during a stream, a streamer suspended after accidentally shooting a gun at his computer during a live stream, and a 35-minute mass murder video that was shared on the platform.

Twitch faces competition from Google-owned YouTube Gaming and Microsoft-owned Mixer, which last year got world-famous livestreamer Ninja (Tyler Bevins) to leave Amazon’s platform for their own.

Since Ninja left, his Twitch channel was used to promote adult content, with CEO Emmett Sheer having to issue an apology.

The largest live-streaming platform on the planet is not the only one suffering with these issues. Recently, Facebook had to introduce its own independent advisory board in order to deal with controversial issues on the social media site about hate speech and harassment.

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