Twitch recently released its first-ever Transparency Report, which is meant to cover everything Twitch does regarding safety, privacy and more.
“…it takes a hard look at how we think about safety; the product choices we make to create a safe space for all our communities, and how our safety staff, community moderators, and technological solutions help enforce the rules we set…Future reports will build upon our endeavor of making Twitch an even safer place.” – “Transparency Report 2020”
Twitch wants users to feel comfortable with expressing themselves on the platform while remaining respectful of one another. The goal is to create a sense of community, one that supports creators and viewers while keeping harmful content and users at bay.
The report covers the following topics: safety, moderation and law enforcement/government requests.
Safety on Twitch
In the report, Twitch states that they have a layered approach to safety that requires teamwork from both the Twitch team and members of the community. There are four levels of safety enforced and encouraged by the platform, which include: community guidelines, service-level safety (user-reporting, machine detection), channel-level safety (moderators) and viewer-level safety (blocking, chat filters, content warnings).
Twitch also updated safety guidelines in 2020, including nudity and attire, terrorism and extreme violence and harrassment and hateful content.
Moderation in channels
As far as moderation goes, many Twitch streamers ask trusted members of their community to moderate the chat during their streams. These moderators can assist creators in removing any harmful content or users from the chat — they can issue temporary or permanent bans. Moderators have access to tools such as AutoMod and Blocked Terms. AutoMod pre-screens chat messages and holds potentially harmful messages that must be approved by the moderator.
Law enforcement and government requests
Twitch has a dedicated team that handles all cases relating to any harm against a child, violent threats and terrorist acts and anything else that must be legally reported to law enforcement. Twitch strongly emphasizes that they don’t tolerated child exploitation and immediately investigate any sort of suspicious activity involving children.
This report is quite extensive, read more here.