Twitch Updates Content Policies Again; X Tests NSFW Labels

LOS ANGELES—Amazon-owned live streaming platform Twitch has further clamped down on sexual content after a rash of new metas showing live streamers, primarily women, using intimate parts of their bodies as green screens. "Content on Twitch is always evolving, and we want to make sure our rules work as intended and keep up with emerging behaviors," Twitch Support posted on X. "When needed, we make updates to our rules to capture those shifts in behavior, and so it's clear to the community what is allowed." "Starting on Friday March 29th, content that focuses on intimate body parts for a prolonged period of time will not be allowed," Twitch Support added. This policy change comes after controversial streamer Morgpie live-streamed while playing video games by using her breasts and buttocks as a screen. She started streaming a playthrough session on the popular battle royale shooter Fortnite while projecting the game onto her butt. More recently, she projected on to herself playing another game while simply showing off her breasts and face. Morgpie, an adult content creator who streams on Jerkmate and won Top Squirting Performer at the 2023 Pornhub Awards (she's nominated in two categories for this year's show, taking place tonight), is known for pushing the boundary on the mainstream streaming platform. It appears that Twitch has updated the policy to clamp down on the meta that she popularized.  Morgpie has been at the center of other major Twitch controversies in recent months. AVN reported on the censorship bar meta where streamers simply appeared live with black bars censoring their breasts, buttocks and genitals to protest Twitch policies. Other controversies include cases of implied nudity. Several streamers, like Amouranth, were at the center of these controversies. Twitch previously issued a new sexual content policy that expanded the opportunity for streamers—particularly female streamers—to post mature content with the appropriate labeling.  On December 13, Twitch granted permission to post “artistic” depictions of nudity and sexual behavior, including art, animation and a variety of fictional styles. Then on December 15, the Twitch trust and safety team decided to withdraw the artistic nudity portion of the new sexual content policy. Social media policies pertaining to sexuality are hardly uniform and vary by platform.  In the world of X (formerly Twitter), Bloomberg reports that the Elon Musk-owned platform is "testing" NSFW tags and adult content groups. Analyst Daniel Buchuk of Watchful, a platform that tracks development testing on major platforms, indicates that users can create communities within the app that specify that their group contains sensitive content for adults. These X groups then feature adult content labels. Communities lacking this label could be removed. X senior software engineer Dong Wook Chung posted to the platform that the labels ensure X is safer for everyone. "To be clear, this setting is about making Communities safer for everyone by automatically filtering out NSFW content," Chung wrote. "Only users who have specified their age will be able to search Communities with NSFW content." X previously announced that it will start verifying the age of adult users. This feature is not mandatory right now.