Twitch is cracking down on sexual harassment in chats

Twitch has introduced new policy and moderation updates that aim to help curb sexual harassment. The streaming platform announced in a blog post which made its sexual harassment policy “easier to understand” by more clearly describing prohibited conduct. Twitch’s moderation tools will now also allow streamers to more easily filter inappropriate chat messages.

Twitch says the policy itself “is largely unchanged,” but now better defines what the Amazon-owned company considers sexual harassment — including “non-physical behaviors of a sexual nature” that would make users feel degraded, uncomfortable or generally undesirable on the platform.

“We prohibit unwanted comments – including comments made using emojis/emotes – about someone’s appearance or body, sexual requests or advances, sexual objectification, and negative statements or attacks related to a person’s perceived sexual behaviors or activities, regardless of their gender,” Twitch said. “We also do not tolerate the recording or sharing of non-consensual intimate images or videos under any circumstances and may report such content to authorities.”

Twitch streamers who use AutoMod, the autonomous moderation feature built into the platform, can also now enable a new category that filters out “unwanted comments about someone’s appearance, sexual requests or advances, and sexual objectification.” Just like the previous categories released for aggression and bullying, users can customize how strict they want moderation to be and decide whether to report the users behind the messages. The new AutoMod category is available in English for now, with additional language support in development.