[chevill]

What's funny is that they insist on pretending that these streamers aren't trying to sexualize themselves. The streamer that caused this blog to be written basically uses her twitch channel as a front to sell her nudes on another site.

If people want to sexualize themselves for money that's their business, the problem is they keep trying to find loopholes in the conduct policy to transform a site about videogames that children frequent into something sexual.

They mention the tools that allow you to filter channels on their website. They make it really easy to block channels that are recommended to you. Why not extend that functionality to the entire site so you can just click 2-3 times and get rid of any channel for any reason forever? The answer is simple: Money.

[derefr]

> The streamer that caused this blog to be written basically uses her twitch channel as a front to sell her nudes on another site.

As long as the content on Twitch isn't sexual, I don't think it matters to Twitch (or advertisers) if it's serving as lead-gen for something that is sexual. Content produced as lead-gen can be valuable for its own sake.

(See also: every YouTuber who provides some professional service for a living, and films themselves doing that service as a way to make people interested in employing them, such that their channel doubles as a professional portfolio of their work.)

[chevill]

>As long as the content on Twitch isn't sexual,

It is though and that's why ads were banned and that's why Twitch wrote this blog post. There's no nudity, but the entire point of her stream is for her to show off her body in exchange for money.

>(See also: every YouTuber who provides some professional service for a living, and films themselves doing that service as a way to make people interested in employing them, such that their channel doubles as a professional portfolio of their work.)

This is valid thing for people in many professions, but Onlyfans and patreon are used as a kind of a loophole for Twitch's policy on pornography. There are also some former/current adult film actresses that did/do actual hardcore pornography for a living and they aren't allowed to shill pornhub on their channel page because it violates terms of service. Some of them keep their clothes on because they go to twitch to make non-sexual content and don't even want anyone hinting that they are aware of their background in adult film, but some of them are indeed on twitch because its just another outlet for them to sell sexualized content.

Also a reminder that I'm not judging people that want to sell sexualized content of themselves. There are communities for that. If show HN was 90% muscley dudes in g strings writing things about their latest tech project on their inner thighs it would diminish the quality of the community as a whole. There are lots of people that are OK with porn existing that don't want the primary places they hang out on the Internet to become known as places where people go primarily to masturbate.

[busterarm]

This is an extremely comical take because Twitch is notorious for banning creators from their platform for their behavior and content off-platform that runs afoul of Twitch rules.

They just don't do it for sexual comment. If the creator is female.

udysof got a one day ban for his hot tub stream.

[ohhelloxoxo]

Twitch's TOS bans 'solicitation' of sexually explicit content, and from a quick anecdotal sampling of streamers in this category 8/10 of them have direct links to or aggregate link pages to OnlyFans profiles where they do sell explicit content. Guess it depends on your definition of 'solicitation'?

[ttt0]

> As long as the content on Twitch isn't sexual, I don't think it matters to Twitch

They're banning people for off-site behavior.

[Siira]

Has there been any good meta analyses on the effects of suggestive content on children? My prior is that seeing sex was common enough in the ancestral environment, both human and animal sex, and children won’t be much effected from this content floating around.

[idiotsecant]

The difference is that hot tub twitch isn't an actual interaction between two people, its a dopamine feedback loop that warps an un-jaded mind into thinking it's reality.

[belltaco]

Is that also true of VR games, games in general, multiplayer games, concerts,TV, videos, watching a streamer play games, movies, social media etc. etc.?

[idiotsecant]

Yes, I think so, just to a lesser degree. People playing VR half life Alyx don't actually think they are part of a human insurrection fighting alien overlords but an alarmingly large number of people watching these hottub streams think they have some legitimately romantic connection to the streamer, or a chance of it. Young men can be remarkably stupid in this way.

[Siira]

How is this your problem? The streamer is taking on all the risks.

And we were talking about children.

[jimmygrapes]

A little late to the thread, but wanted to add my 2 cents anyway. It's not exposure itself to sexual that is the issue, it is encouragement (implicit or explicit) that the children emulate or partake in the same behaviors. For every ancient civilization that mated in front of their kids, how many also mated with their kids? Don't be too quick to dismiss the long term mental effects on exposure and normalization of sexuality to the sexually immature.

[emsy]

I think you're right with the ancestral environment, however I don't know whether the types of contents you can find on the internet are in the same ballpark and whether or not they have a negative impact on a child's development.

[breakfastduck]

24/7 available video streams available on any internet connected device is not comparable to real life authentic chance encounters.

[bombcar]

People don’t want to dig too much into it as either it will show it’s a problem, or show that advertising is ineffective.