Twitch has committed to releasing data on its safety efforts.
The streaming platform has begun its new approach through the release of its first transparency report.
“We believe that providing greater clarity about our approach to safety, the actions we took to enforce our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, and our response to government requests for information is crucial to building trust in our efforts to improve the safety of our service,” said Twitch in a blog post.
To create a safer environment for streamers, staff, and viewers, Twitch has made a number of changes to policies and added new features to the platform, such as automod.
The new tool allows streamers to filter their chat automatically. Other features enable creators and modders to view messages before they are public, meaning they can be deleted ahead of time. Moreover, temporary or permanent bans from the channel can also be issued.
On the flipside, viewers have also been provided with tools to allow them to filter and customise interactions they may have with other people.
Reports galore
In 2020, there were more than 13.3 million reports across a range of areas, including hateful conduct, sexual harassment, adult nudity, pornography, violence, gore and threats.
However, in both halves of the year, viewbotting, spam and other community issues proved to be the most popular complaints on Twitch.
Yet, despite the staggering number of reports, Twitch only acted upon 1.9 million. However, the number detailed in the report does not take into account multiple complaints in the same case, nor does it consider the three waves of bot disables that Twitch undertook in 2020.
Besides spam and community guideline issues that saw 1.7 million violations for every 1,000 hours watched, hateful conduct, sexual harassment, and harassment were the second most reported category with 80,700 for every 1,000 hours viewed.
However, Twitch did not break down an exact total for the number of use reports per category.
Making changes
“Creating a Transparency Report is an important measure of our accountability — it requires being honest about the obstacles we face and how we are working to resolve them to improve safety on Twitch,” said Twitch.
“Moving forward, we’ll be releasing two transparency reports a year so we can track our progress as a community. We also have a responsibility to help you understand the work we’re doing to make Twitch a safe, inclusive place for our diverse global community.”
In December 2020, the streaming giant made some changes to its hateful conduct and harassment policies. However, these alterations did not come into effect until earlier this year to give creators time to become accustomed to the new rules.
Moreover, to promote inclusivity, Twitch removed the “blind playthrough” tag.
From now on, Twitch has committed to releasing two transparency reports every year.
