Twitch changes rules targeting politics, ‘sensitive’ social issues after widespread backlash, but streamers remain wary

At the end of last week, Twitch dropped the precise form of notification a company tends to save for the end of a week: Going forward, it will require streamers to apply a “politics and sensitive social issues” label to broadcasts that include “discussions of elections, civic integrity, war or military conflict and civil rights,” as well as conversations about “legislation related to a sensitive social issue such as reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, or immigration.” The latter provision proved particularly unpopular. Twitch has since clarified some of the rules, though streamers still feel they set troubling precedents.

In the days following Twitch’s announcement on Friday, several streamers spoke out against this use of Twitch’s tagging system, which allows viewers to hide content with specific tags – thereby making it less visible – and lets brands exclude tagged broadcasts from their ad campaigns. Nearly 40,000 Twitch streamers and viewers voted a post on Twitch’s official feedback page calls on the company to remove the “sensitive social issue” clause the rules.

“LGBTQ+ people, immigrants and reproductive rights are not ‘sensitive social issues,’ these are common sense issues where one side simply wants their liberties intact,” read the post from a Twitch user. “The controversy is completely on the other side of the argument (that) involves taking those freedoms away. Especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ individuals, the notion that the discussion of their existence is political is absolute nonsense.”

On Monday night, Twitch locked down the feedback page and clarified its rules.

“We want to make it clear that you don’t have to label your stream if you’re talking about your lived experience,” Twitch wrote on Twitter. “We’ve also clarified that a label is only required if discussion of the listed topics is the focus of the stream. Our goal here, as with any (content rating label), is to give viewers and brands more information about what’s happening on a particular stream so they can make an informed decision about what to watch and where to engage.”

Twitch also released a revised version of the rules with the aforementioned clarifications, as well as a notable removal of the word “immigration”. The new bullet points include slightly more specific language like “streams focused about discussing topics such as gender, race, sexuality or religion in a polarizing or inflammatory way” (emphasis ours).

So reading between the lines, Twitch’s goal here is to make it easier for brands to avoid politically-focused streamers, just as it once did when it created an entire category for pools, hot tubs and beaches after advertisers made a fuss about Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa and other hot tub streamers in 2021. Twitch has been unprofitable for quite some time and has made many unpopular changes in pursuit of a stream it arguably deems more important than live- the variant: income. These include a significant focus on advertisements, shutter operations in Korea, and several rounds of mass layoffs.

The specific context here is more labyrinthine: In October, Twitch began facing criticism from Israeli media and pro-Israel content creators over a sign-up snafu in which the company accidentally blocked email verification in Israel and Palestine for an entire year , as well as a TwitchCon -panel where several streamers of Arab descent ranked other creators based on who is allowed to say “habibi,” an Arabic term of endearment — the top tier of which was “Arab” and the bottom tier was “Love Sabra,” an objectively bad brand of hummus from a company with Israeli military ties.

Big names like YouTuber Ethan “H3H3” Klein claimed this amounted to overt anti-Semitism, while streamers who attended the panel – including the tier list’s creator, Raffoulticket, who is Jewish – vehemently denied the allegations. Nevertheless, the Anti-Defamation League, a notorious supporter of Israelbecame involved, prompting Twitch to suspend Frogan, considered the panelist, and the other streamers who participated for 30 days. This after it handed out a two-week suspension to Asmongold following a much more undoubtedly racist rant against Palestinians.

There are some notable ties here: Klein used to regularly podcast with Twitch’s biggest political creator, Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker, until the two got into repeated verbal battles over Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Piker has been an outspoken opponent of Israel and – as he has repeatedly emphasized during broadcasts – not the Jewish people for years, as a result of what the World Court found to be an apartheid state in the occupied Palestinian territory. He has been instrumental in younger generations coming to the conclusion that Israel is responsible for human rights abuses despite years of propaganda linking anti-Israel sentiment to anti-Semitism – the latter of which is of course a problem, but not an inextricably linked one Israel.

Piker, whose streams and videos reach millions of viewers that rival traditional news networks in sheer numbers, is also partly responsible for politicians like Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez taking a shine to Twitch, starting with one Among us streaming in 2020 that peaked at nearly 500,000 concurrent viewers. This, as well as influencer-centric tactics by the Republican Party, has clearly informed the Harris campaign’s approach. In recent months, Harris has launched a Twitch channel, Bernie Sanders has learned what a vtuber is, and AOC and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has streamed Crazy taxi to an enthusiastically receptive audience (who at various times spammed Piker’s emotes in chat). As a result of anti-hate speech rules that are generally better enforced than on other platforms (with some admittedly glaring exceptions) and a more left-leaning audience, Twitch is home to few conservative political influencers.

Frogan is Piker’s former moderator and member of his community, as well as someone Klein has come after on several previous occasions. In the time since Frogan and her associates were suspended following Klein’s period of sustained outrage, Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres has taken up the case, publication of a letter last week expressed “alarm about the amplification of anti-Semitism on Twitch at the hands of Hasan Piker” and concluded ominously that “no company in America — not even Twitch — is above Congressional oversight.”

Additionally Digiday published a piece about a creator-led campaign that reached out to over 100 advertisers with evidence of suspected anti-Semitism on Twitch, including a clip in which Piker claimed that reports of mass rapes by members of Hamas on October 7 were never confirmed (Piker referenced a UN report from March 2024 who admitted lack of forensic evidence of sexual assault; the offensive clip is off a stream under which Piker nevertheless argued with a viewer that sexual violence likely occurred – the opposite of what the campaign, as well as others like Torreshave claimed – but also that none of that justifies the genocide of Palestinians.)

Not long after Torres spoke up, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy published his own letter says that “there is no place on Twitch for racism, hatred or harassment of any kind, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.” Now here we are, with Twitch suddenly lurching in a direction similar to other platforms like Instagram, which suppresses content it deems political as standard.

Some streamers are concerned that Twitch is pandering to outside pressure rather than seeking to solve real problems.

“I just think (Monday’s update to the policy rules) creates a lot more problems for them than it solves,” Bret “Cinemarxism” Hamiltona documentarian and streamer who spent time with pro-Palestinian protesters outside TwitchCon, who gathered in response to TwitchCon’s Chevron sponsorship deal, told Aftermath. “Making more rules around it and ‘clarifying’ is always going to require them to make choices and decide what does and doesn’t qualify, and subsequently people who are outraged by the enforcement or lack of enforcement. I think the former ( terms of service) was really fantastic and well enforced. … They are capitulating to bad faith actors who are not genuinely interested in justice or anti-racism; they just don’t like Hasan and want him banned.”

“I think the implementation of a separate category for politics to combat anti-Semitism is a flawed premise. Existence as a minority person, especially in a predominantly white male space, is a political act.” Austin “Gremloe” MacNamaraa left-wing politics streamer, told Aftermath. “If Twitch was serious about fighting hate speech on the platform, the five banned Arab content creators are a perfect set of people to talk to about it, considering they’ve all begged Twitch to add (the Middle East and North Africa) to their Twitch -census data to no avail It is cynical at best and cowardly at worst.”

Piker himself is also skeptical of the motivations behind the events of the past week, says to NBC that clips cited by Torres and others as evidence of anti-Semitism were taken out of context. Piker isn’t quite sure what to make of Torres’ actions, except that it fits a pattern for the politician who recently doxxed a university teacher for mentioning “Israeli genocide against Palestinians” during class.

“I think it’s a really strange thing for Ritchie Torres, specifically, to try to issue a takedown notice five or six days out from a massive election of consequence against a progressive content creator who is the biggest progressive voice not just on Twitch, but in general, in North America,” Piker understated a Monday broadcast. “Very strange way of functioning.”