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Twitch, the Amazon-owned video streaming platform primarily used by gamers to livestream their games, announced a new policy Wednesday empowering the company to take action against users who display certain harmful behaviors entirely offline.
The policy represents a unique approach among social media peers at a time when the industry has been under escalating pressure to institute strong and consistent content-moderation policies. As lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have threatened to strip online platforms of their liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, many platforms have taken steps to place stronger guardrails on what users can post.
Under the new policy, Twitch can suspend users for up to an indefinite period of time after a third-party investigator determines there is strong evidence the person has engaged in certain offline behaviors. These actions include engaging in deadly violence, terrorist activities, grooming children for sexual exploitation, committing sexual assault or even "acting as an accomplice to non-consensual sexual activities." It will also continue to consider offline harassment in cases where a user alleges abuse online.
Twitch said it will work with "an experienced investigations law firm" to determine the validity of claims, which will rely at times on accessing evidence from law enforcement. The company said it would not take action on a user's account until it concludes its investigation and confirms evidence of wrongdoing.
The harmful offline behaviors do not need to involve another Twitch user to be considered a violation, a spokesperson confirmed. That's based on the notion that people who engage in these types of behaviors are more likely to create safety risks for the Twitch community, the spokesperson added.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @06:55PM (2 children)
It's become increasingly clear that the current approach is broken. (Granted, the whole CDA was a mess from Day 1, but even the remaining scraps are pretty broken.) Originally, it was all about letting those virtuous souls in the corporate 'net shield us from the heinous menace of rampaging nipples without legal repercussions, but of course the law of unintended consequences came along, now corporations feel bound to shuffle off all the naughty people before they contaminate li'l Bella with their evil red pills.
Of course, this only works for as long as nobody tells li'l Bella about IRC, Mastodon, or the Dark Web. But we'll gloss over that possibility before some misery merchant suggests that we take a seat.
It reminds me of the days of AOL, when people celebrated AOL's fabulous walled garden, while all the pagans cavorted in the wilds outside - of course, a whole bunch of AOLers would cavort too, and we can't have that.
So we're left with corporations desperately trying to gatekeep their walled gardens, while Bad People (tm) would be perfectly capable of creating a parallel 'net, even using their own numbers and naming scheme, in which they could re-enact all the net.Sodom perversions of prior eras.
Good luck keeping li'l Bella out of there, and being shown what's too hot for HBO or CNN. Fortunately, having her brain expanded will remove her from eligibility for Walpurgisnacht sacrifice, so there's an upside.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 13 2021, @01:22AM
Actually, if little Bella is *too* naive there is a good chance she will *become* Walpurgisnacht. Do not, do not, let her ask that devious little cat-rabbity-weaselly thing to grant her a wish, whatever you do.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @11:22AM
You are talking about Open Source. Don't you know that is what empowers white supremacists? Why would you associate yourself with technology that white supremacists use?