this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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the degree to which humans are terrified of their own bodies is ridiculous.
At this point it really has become a site that provides soft core porn to children though, or where loners go to have some titty steamer exploit their desperation.
It’s just not the platform for it. Do it on a porn site, not where kids go to watch video games.
This is kind of an intentional cognitive dissonance for Twitch due to its having a conflict of interests.
On the one hand, it wants to tell viewers and advertisers that it cracks down on adult only content.
But on the other hand, the more adult content they let through, the more money they make.
It would be very easy to either make an age restricted section where adult stuff would be allowed, or to completely banish streamers who are the modern equivalent of burlesque. But one is bad PR and the other is bad for revenue.
It's not that simple. Porn is a huge risk for a company, especially if it's user-generated content. You have to police access against underage kids who want to watch that content, and also have an enormous team devoted to immediately take down CSAM.
Lots of payment processors and advertisers do not want to associate themselves with porn because there are too many PR risks. Ask Pornhub how difficult it is to be a porn company on the internet, they've had lots of thorny problems. Or look at Reddit and how it's handling porn content before the IPO: they can't outright ban it or they'll lose users (e.g. Tumblr, another great example of what I'm talking about), so they are trying to hide it as much as possible.
Basically trying to monetize porn is not worth the headache. Last but not least, because there is so much free porn around. Risking so much to gain a few users that could go somewhere else in a whim is REALLY not worth it
I've seen the payment processor argument a lot about this regarding twitch specifically, but I really don't think it holds any weight in this one specific case. This is Amazon we are talking about. They are one of the 3 entities in the whole goddamn world who could dictate terms to Visa, not the other way around.
Some of them may not have a choice, though, if their internal rules say that they can't be associated with porn. Also it's not only payment processors, but also advertisers and, most importantly, investors. Imagine if all the stock holders, overnight, effectively found themselves investing in porn. Lots of them would be (or feel) obligated to sell their stock. Remember Amazon is an American company, and porn is not taken lightly in the US
Amazon suddenly and officially operating an "adult entertainment" site would change quite a lot for them. How many funds and asset managers would have to drop Amazon stock because their asset allocation states that they can't invest in the production of pornography.
Won't someone think of BYU's endowment!!
It's not like they don't have any age restrictions, the streamers that do that stuff have to mark their streams 18+ and add 'sexual themes' tags or they get banned. If chatters even imply their under 18 they must be banned or the streamer gets banned. Im pretty sure you cant see 18+ streams unless you tell the website you're 18, which would mean it's about as much of a gate that pornhub makes you jump through. They make gambling streams have the same rules but their tag says may contain gambling.
I agree. If you want to have a "nude gamer" format on one of the adult streaming sites I don't think that's forbidden.
There actually was a platform called Plex for exactly that, but it seems to have gone bust.
~~Edit: Why on earth would anybody downvote this fact? Plex Streams was definetely a thing.~~
Edit2: Just remembered it was called Plexstorm, apologies for the confusion.
For further clarity on why this was a funny mixup, to anyone who sees this, Plex is also a thing, but it is a very different thing, just with a very similar name.
https://www.plex.tv/
I had to specifically search out any of the "titty streams" that you speak of.
If kids are going to seek it out, they're going to seek it out. The problem is that porn sites generally have a much lower quality level, as people just sweep it under the rug and expect it to be seedy and gross.
Sex is not evil, peoples bodies aren't shameful. The entire reason these streams are so effective at exploiting that is because of the shaming and ostracizing of sex positivity. This isn't a good thing, it's just damage control as they lose advertising revenue as pearl clutchers whine about it in their monthly letter to the editor.
You could make similar arguments about gambling being a moral panic and they shouldn't ban that on the site. Selling sex to kids is just as exploitive and repugnant. Maybe selling violence to them is too. You'll eventually find a line to draw for something being a vice, even if you don't think this is it.
Now you're equating violence and gambling to sex? Sounds like you're doing exactly what I described in my comment. Equating sexuality with filth and disease.
Yes, there will always be people who do their best to exploit base desires (especially in our current economic systems), that doesn't mean what they use to exploit people is inherently bad. Maybe if we stopped trying to hide sexuality under the carpet like dust bunnies when your mother-in-law visits it wouldn't be nearly as exploitable.
You're being too European dude stop it /s
I think the fact that it is exploitive should ban it. I don't particularly view twitch as the vanguard of a sexual revolution. I view it as a profit extracting arm of a megacorporation. It's explicit selling sex to kids. It shouldn't be normalized. You could argue that sex should be normalized, but exploitation (particularly in a sexual context) of children should not be.
Why are we nuking implied nudity entirely off a website to solve a different problem, i.e. kids having access to their parents' credit cards?
I don't understand how any of this is a problem. Just, like, parent your fuckin kids.
This is one step from "take the books out of libraries" level of paternalism
I have yet to see any of this so called soft core porn. Granted I only watch a few streamers regularly. But I don't think the problem is as wide spread as it's been made out to be. I can click on any random twitch channel streaming (and have before more than a few times), and I've never seen any of this issue.
Go to the IRL or Hot Tub sections and find something that isn't softcore porn.
... why is there a Hot Tub section on a gaming site, and what else would it be for?
It's there to get it away from the other categories. Every category isn't just a game, there's other stuff like events, just chatting etc to cover any content that isn't specific to a single game (like a gaming related podcast for example), so playing a game isn't required you can just talk at the audience. People who make the sexual content were using those more generic non-gaming categories (as well as popular gaming categories but having the game running in a tiny box in the corner) but advertisers took issue with advertising on the sexual streams, so Twitch made ways to segregate them from the content advertisers wanted to pay for.
Steaming makes your titties healthier compared to frying
If the issue is age appropriate content, that should also apply to the games being played. Yet children can watch people playing GTA just fine and nobody cares.
This is the part I don't get. Let's let 13 year olds chat with strangers while watching a dude brutally beat a hooker with a baseball bat in a game, but let's draw the line when streamers have nipples off camera. I have a 13 year old and hell no he isn't allowed on twitch, youtube, or any social media sites.
Correction, 'the degree to which humans are terrified of the outer layer of their bodies is ridiculous'
Blood. Guts, and brain matter are a Saturday staple in America, but keep those nipples (of the female variety, male nips are mmm-hmm a-okay) hidden.
To be fair, if somebody starts streaming without their skin on I'm going to nope the fuck out really quick.
And I sadly would decide that's my time to check out Twitch.
quick screenshot, then close window
lol, fair point
But video games where you violently kill people? 100% cool and good.
Remember to subscribe pogchamp monkas omegalul and to buy my shitty supplement powder and lewd anime girl cups
Whatya mean? You can twitch combat games all day that show every component of the human body flying through the air, appendages, intestines, no problem. Just gotta make sure there's no nipples rendered on the flying parts...
No female nipples. Bare male chests are perfectly fine.
Get someone like GG Bridget or Poison from Final Fight and the website implodes though.
It's highly country specific... America's puritanical roots seem to still hold sway. Go to Western Europe and nudity is commonplace
Meh, we've been negatively influenced by the puritans I'm afraid.
Meh. Advertising is. They just don't want to become butthole Oreos.
Buttholes are Leather Oreos, and they can't take that away from us.
Pretend for a moment we live in a world where sex occurs as commonly as a handshake or a hug. In this world sex is everywhere. You grow up and see your parents have sex openly perhaps hundreds of times. When you go to your friend’s house you see their parents doing the deed. You and your friend even did it a few times.
Perhaps a half dozen times you see grandma and grandpa doing it after thanksgiving dinner. No big deal, you’ve seen it so many times now, you barely even look. There is sex in clubs, sex in a city bus, sex at lunch at offices. But amazingly no sex in bathroom stalls or rest areas, or dirty hotels, what few that even exist in this world.
You personally have sex maybe 20 times with various peers before you reach your 18th birthday. You struggle to even remember. You lost count a while ago because it is honestly like the question “how many times did you have eggs for breakfast.” By the time you reach your thirties it’s anyone’s guess.
This is the world where no one would care about implied nudity or even full on sex on Twitch. And forget about the taboo-driven sex addictions that are problems. We’d have other taboos, sure, but they wouldn’t be about sex.
Nudity does not equal sex. People could give up clothes completely and continue with their lives as normal and I bet there would not be any noticable uptick in sex. People have sex, usually in private, even if they would be straight up nudists.
My guess is it would de-sexualize the naked form somewhat.
I can imagine it but what point are you trying to make here?
Someone read the first chapter of "Brave New World" and thought it was a true indictment of modern culture.
So I'm not the only one to have that idea cross their mind! Thank you sir, for making me feel less weird.
It would still feel strange to open twitch just to discover dozens of streamers shaking hands though.
nobody here is advocating this, nor would this be necessary to address or to even reduce irrational/outmoded taboos surrounding nudity and sex.
going to all the trouble to illustrate such a bizarre extreme only proves the point that you’re willing to imagine such a thing out of fear (or to scare others) rather than address the actual problem.
Wasn’t any trouble, but one ridiculous extreme can sometimes shine a light on another…
It's a North American passtime since at least the Witch Burnings.... 😕
I think it's less about the nudity and more about the sexualization. People are trying to replicate an OnlyFans account on a platform designed for kids, which is where people take issue. Considering streaming is so competitive, they're trying to stand out from the crowd by getting as close to porn as they can.
What do you mean for kids? You can play Mortal Kombat 1 fine on twitch.
They're not replicating OF, their advertising their OF, and there's nothing about twitch or these streams that explicitly advertises to children.
Ok so hide it behind a mature content wall. Oh wait it already is.