[nubinetwork]

Twitch seems quite content with being a front for onlyfans. They recently started blurring stream thumbnails, and have never cared about linktree/etc links despite them being used as a "hide it under the carpet" for onlyfans as well. (Direct links bad, a link to a link is okay though?)

They may as well stop pretending and fully allow adult content, because it's pretty obvious that these streamers will keep pushing the limits until they get permabanned or twitch gives in to the "women streamers did nothing wrong" crowd.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

“Allowing adult content” is easier said than done for any organisation. This is incredibly common knowledge at this point. For example, orgs dealing with adult content need to work a little bit differently. Some employees may just be personally uncomfortable with being around “big titty goth gfs” all day every day, and their job might change to require it. Internal HR disputes can also become more complicated, as lines of appropriate behaviour can ever so slightly blur. I’m sure there are a hundred other things that I haven’t thought of. The part that’s common knowledge is that payment processing becomes orders of magnitude more precarious and complicated. Anyone who was paying attention to this area remembers what happened to OnlyFans itself recently, where they were running out of ways to make payments work.

This is all ignoring what Twitch would be giving up by embracing this. What’d be the impact of the negative optics when it comes to parents? Do they stop letting their kids on Twitch? How important is that to their bottom line? What about the consoles / platforms that have a Twitch integration? Is that now seen as an endorsement of or gateway to adult content that the platform owners didn’t sign up for?

Even if Twitch were actually able to pull that off, there’s a whole lot on the line, and certainly market segments that they know that they’d be saying goodbye to.

[mariusor]

They only need to incorporate a separate entity that deals with the adult content, which then has to deal with the legal side of the problem and reap in the (probably) considerable rewards.

[vsnf]

Honestly, why not. That would allow them to get more aggressive with enforcement for untagged streams, allow them to keep the obviously impression generating engine of the "Just Chatting" OnlyFans crowd, and maybe even with the weight of Amazon behind them, force the credit processors to lighten up a bit.

Or it would be nice if they could, anyway. In reality with the age verification laws popping up in more places, they probably want to stay far away from the impending bureaucratic and legal nightmare.

[nubinetwork]

> In reality with the age verification laws popping up in more places, they probably want to stay far away from the impending bureaucratic and legal nightmare.

One could argue they are already there, putting an unblur button on streams is basically the same as an "I'm over 18" button on adult sites. No verification, no auditing, the button does nothing but make it look like they care.

[selivanovp]

Allowing adult content will move them to a state wide ban list in many countries.

[mariusor]

Frankly I don't understand why all the naughty streams don't get moved to a sibling platform, call it Twitch Red that only deals with those. They can share 95% of legal and operational costs, but it has the benefit that it isolates the game streaming platform for any questionable content that might raise the eyebrow of sensitive jurisdictions and advertisers. There must be something obvious I'm missing otherwise this is a very large missed opportunity.

[danaris]

In part, I would guess, because if they did that, there would be a much higher likelihood that payment processors would decide to blacklist the Red version of the service—something they can't really do with just the adult streams on Twitch as it stands.

I would further guess that this would only be one aspect of the broader marginalization of the Red version of the service—they wouldn't be promoting it openly on the main Twitch, because that would antagonize the "think-of-the-children" types, and it would no longer benefit from cross-recommendations and from people watching a Call of Duty stream until 11PM, and then noticing in the sidebar that their favorite adult streamer has come online and switching over to them. They would probably even suffer from the one quasi-legitimate excuse the payment processors have for banning adult sites: much higher rates of chargebacks, as people with overly judgmental and insufficiently communicative significant others try to hide them on their credit card statements (or any of a bunch of other reasons).

It would be great if we could collectively treat sex work as work, just like any other form of selling our bodies and minds to support ourselves—and, indeed, for the time being that is effectively what Twitch is doing, and in doing so benefits both themselves and these streamers, who otherwise would have to use more stigmatized platforms with much less reach.

[mariusor]

> doing so benefits both themselves and these streamers

And annoys the hell out of everyone else that just wants to watch people playing video games.

[danaris]

Speak for yourself. It doesn't bother me, and I'm someone.