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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26832 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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Twitch allowing more nudity after disproportionately banning female streamers. Twitch confirmed its policy banning nudity was sexist.

Of course, on seeing this news I immediately wondered why it would count as "punishing" women to prevent them from doing something men don't generally have the option of doing (that is, making money by flashing breasts). Why don't we say it "levels the playing field" to prevent women from using their sex appeal to crush their competitors on a gaming platform? I was going to do a great Simpsons callback and everything, "Twitch became a hardcore pornography platform so gradually I didn't even notice," I had this whole post I was going to write about the sexual appeal of females versus males, maybe do a little amateur evo-psych ("as a treat!")--

--and then the whiplash hit.

Twitch Reverses Policy Allowing ‘Artistic Nudity,’ Citing AI’s Ability to Create Realistic Images

Here is Twitch's reversal of its... reversal? The meat is straightforward:

Moving forward, depictions of real or fictional nudity won’t be allowed on Twitch, regardless of the medium. This restriction does not apply to Mature-rated games.

I guess someone realized that if you allow streamers to turn your site into OnlyFans with Vidya, then the women are going to drop their tops and the men are going to just... use filters? (I don't actually know, I don't use Twitch because I play video games and have no interest in watching others do so, but I am decrepit and out of touch so whatever. I have an Amazon Prime account so sometimes I pop over to Twitch if there's an incentive or something but otherwise it's a mystery to me.)

Now I'm left pondering the apparent Fisherian runaway of human beings trying to become--virtually, at least--teenage-presenting (cat?)girls as quickly as possible. I hadn't previously considered the impact of AI on parasocial human relationships, and now I'm having a hard time considering anything else. But I also have to wonder--is the new policy re-sexist? Will it make any difference at all?

EDIT: From the helpful comments below, today I learned that Twitch is not just a video game streaming site, but also streams other activities like art creation; that the AI nudity concerns are not limited to filters/avatars but to art being produced on Twitch; and that Twitch's reverse-course was likely driven at least as much by AI "nudification" concerns as anything. I remain interested in the thought processes that led to the first change-in-policy, and in knowing what (if anything) actually happened on the server side to cause the rapid about-face! But I appreciate having the bits I did not understand explained to me.

Add this one to the realignment pile. Twitch presumably unbanned the nipples due to progressive pressure. (SWERFism ist verboten) And then got BTFO by payment processors, who for reasons I don't fully understand are absolutely dedicated white knights of online prudishness, to such an extent that much of the payment for online porn has been delegated to the Romanian mafia.

I think a lot of the whiplash came from how out of control the Art section and more porn-oriented virtual youtuber(vtubers) people were. So much of the Art streams with high viewership were just drawing straight up porn of basically all non-intercourse varieties. Vtubers were having non-animated displays of their models nude on screen as well. I imagine Twitch just did not quite realize what they were unleashing and decided to pull back.

If they didn't realize what they were unleashing then they're really not suited to running a huge internet platform. The old "rules" of the internet still largely hold, rule 34 in particular.

Not predicting this outcome is straight up incompetence.

I question why Twitch wants to boot a substantial proportion of their business from their platform.

Genuinely, thank you for making me feel old and out of touch.

men are going to just... use filters?

They become anime v-tubers, often with a feminine voice changer.

Failmales might, because they have nothing else to offer. Men who have actually put in the work to git gud at something, like Dr. K and Curtis will be fine.

Not normally a fan of Paul Joseph Watson, but @beej67 linked this video which I found funny and thought-provoking: https://youtube.com/watch?v=isafYIg0o3c?si=0G5YQUhdm4_KOJcf

Some of the controversy was essentially around twitch thots, who weren't necessarily bad at gaming but probably weren't attracting viewers for that purpose: Morgpie, the streamer that Ars Technica highlights, is also pornhub porn star, and her ouvre is... pretty clearly about her changing between various bikini-levels sets of clothes, interspersed with gatcha-level artwork.

((That's not to diss her on it. I'm kinda impressed, tbh. Five hours is a long fucking stream for everyone involved doing that. And I can empathize more with a casual nudity kink that a lot of others, even if her version's not my thing in a few different ways.))

Male versions exist, enough that /r/gaymers occasionally has people asking for recs. That said, the male streamers can and did get banned for doing 'the same thing': male nip slips or topless shots are prohibited. It's not clear how uniformly that's enforced, but they're also such a small minority that uniform enforcement would still be a vastly larger impact for direct numbers on women.

That said:

I guess someone realized that if you allow streamers to turn your site into OnlyFans with Vidya, then the women are going to drop their tops and the men are going to just... use filters?

I think the AI concerns weren't just about v-tubers using filters over their own actions to make nude- or nude-adjacent personas, but also about material unrelated to the streamer themselves, especially as photo-realistic portrayals get more achievable. It's probably not as good money as going after the parasocial paraphilias, but it's a lot lower-cost.

((I think there's also something going on with AI art at the Operation Choke Point level where the Ashcroft dissent and ML-gen specific concerns about data-as-'collage' are backstage threats, but I can't prove it and it's probably undisprovable.))

I was kinda hoping to see the Fisherian runaway of increasingly bizarre nude-but-not-sex-itself stuff, since the 'artistic' nudity policy still prohibited sexual content, even for in-game or illustrated. the average version would probably still be pretty boring -- teenage-presenting (cat)girls -- but the tails could go some interesting places pretty quickly (eg, there are some fantastic FFXIV mods that this margin is too narrow to contain). There's a limited extent of that already present on YouTube, since stuff like transformation [cw: no nudity, but you probably don't want it in your YT algorithm], macro, and vore kink can be so far from normal that it's just confusing to the uninitiated, but there's also probably a pretty wide space of simple casual kink that's getting underserved just because it's 'boring' by standard search term meanings.

There's a limited extent of that already present on YouTube, since stuff like transformation [cw: no nudity, but you probably don't want it in your YT algorithm],

As far as I'm aware, removing the video from your watch history should remove it from algorithmic recommendations in the future.

there is a good summary here as well: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/morgpie-topless-twitch-livestream

I don't know what you've described as I haven't had first person experience of any of this stuff but is it fair to say your summary is 'shit is weird, I'd like it to be weirder'?

I'm hesitant to go that far, since there's a bit of a Russel's Conjugation where my kinks are quirky, my interlocutor's kinks are extreme, those people over there have kinks that are problematic and harmful. And I'm in the furry fandom, so my ideas of what's weird are gonna be a little distorted. And there's definitely extant stuff like the emoji streams that creep me the fuck out.

But I think that, outside of certain specialized focuses, economic and social (and biological) pressures have largely pressed a lot of normie internet-visible adult content into certain extremes of either minimally-deniable-underwear-models at one and then gonzo-money-shots at the other. Yet for all the feminist complaints about mainstream porn as 'sex without being sexy', but there's a lot of space where you can have sexiness without being about sex. That doesn't necessarily mean weirder and kinkier (I'll again bring up casual nudism), nor does it necessarily mean calmer and fuzzier (the non-furry version of Changed's latex fetishism might already exist and might even squeak under Twitch's rules).

I'd like to make some high-minded argument about healthier sexuality rather than things going straight to 11, or a low-minded one about it being my kink, but it's mostly just an under-explored space I find fascinating.

Well there's no particular moral judgement from my side. Im just not familiar with much of this world and these things on the internet that pop into being seem so arbitrary - I mean presumably anything can become an object of desire and identification through conditioning. I'm left feeling overwhelmed that we will have any shared high level culture or values remaining, or whether the future is just atomised norms and behaviours.

I felt like this was a surprisingly complex problem when I started reading about it, but your replies (and others) are strengthening that sense dramatically. For want of a less politically-loaded word, "democratization" of technology seems to be taking our species to some pretty weird places already. How much further along this tech tree can we go before Something Breaks?

That's fair, although I'd caution in turn that people in the past could point the same way to the democratization of technology in our youth, or even in the past, as having had a massive impact on socialization of sex and sexuality (caveat: I'm not sure how much I trust the academic summaries).

Why don't we say it "levels the playing field" to prevent women from using their sex appeal to crush their competitors on a gaming platform?

It's not only a gaming platform, that's why. They have an art section where people spend their time drawing, or a just chatting section where people can do things like day trading or politics or whatever.

It's not only a gaming platform, that's why.

Thanks--today I learned!

...is that sarcasm? I have to assume you are at least aware that Twitch isn't only for gaming, right? I know you said you don't watch it, but the idea that Twitch or even live-streaming in general is just about gaming is trivially demonstrated as false.

I have to assume you are at least aware that Twitch isn't only for gaming, right?

Count me in as another ignoramus because I had only ever heard about it in the context of streaming games. Does anyone know if there's any kind of poll about "what do you know about Twitch/use Twitch for"?

And Googling "What is Twitch for?" gets me these results:

Mostly gaming

Gaming

Gaming

Used to be mostly gaming but other stuff as well now

FWIW I thought it was just for game streaming, so I actually did learn from your comment. I think I might have watched some pirated NFL stream on there a decade or more ago, maybe. When I hear "Twitch" I usually think of the LoL rat before I think of the streaming site. There are some of us who are really that out of touch.

Tbf, I’ve used Twitch for non-gaming purposes (FIRST uses it for kickoff), and I still think of it as a gaming service.

I have to assume you are at least aware that Twitch isn't only for gaming, right?

I was also unaware. My understanding was that Twitch is gaming streaming platform with some presence of soft/semideniable pornography.

(I do not care about Twitch at all and never used it)

It can appear that way because individual games often get their own category, but there is a substantial non-gaming presence on the platform.

Note that I never was on Twitch website.

...is that sarcasm?

Nope.

I have to assume you are at least aware that Twitch isn't only for gaming, right?

I was previously unaware.

I know you said you don't watch it, but the idea that Twitch ... is just about gaming is trivially demonstrated as false.

Yep. No one had ever demonstrated that to me.

or even live-streaming in general

I understand that many things are live-streamed, though I basically never watch live-streams outside of oral arguments before appellate courts. But I always thought Twitch was a gaming service. I even have a login through Amazon that I sometimes use to get gaming bonuses, and I never saw anything there that wasn't someone else playing a video game.

I understand that the question is relatively simple to answer, but I'm pointing out that the question itself never even occurred to me. I've never had any reason at all to suppose Twitch was anything but a video game streaming service.

I've used twitch for non-gaming purposes and I thought it was a repurposing of intended use, so you aren't the only one.

I see. I seem to have fallen for xkcd's "how much the experts people who engage with the topic" issue.

My mental model now has a Twitch "Lounge section" for non-gaming stuff.

Edit: And when I go to https://www.twitch.tv, it looks like Youtube For Games.

xkcd 2501

Of course, on seeing this news I immediately wondered why it would count as "punishing" women to prevent them from doing something men don't generally have the option of doing (that is, making money by flashing breasts).

The policy is broader than "don't flash your breasts." According to your link it prohibited any content that "deliberately highlighted breasts, buttocks or pelvic region." I have no trouble believing that women were modded for content that men got away with. If a guy did a squat stream that prominently displayed their ass (maybe for form demonstration reasons) would Twitch mod it for sexual content? What if a woman did the same? I have no trouble believing Twitch would mod the woman but not the man. I think there is a pretty straightforward sexist implication to "men are allowed to do this thing but women aren't."

Why don't we say it "levels the playing field" to prevent women from using their sex appeal to crush their competitors on a gaming platform?

Because the conception of Twitch rules as existing to level some competitive field between streamers is nonsensical? Should Twitch ban streamers who are too good at games, because they'll get more viewers by being better? Should Twitch ban face cams, because more attractive streamers will get more viewers? Or maybe mandate face cams! No hiding for you uggos, you might get undeserved views! Make everyone use a voice modulator to have the same voice, some people might have nicer voices that lead to more viewers!

I guess someone realized that if you allow streamers to turn your site into OnlyFans with Vidya, then the women are going to drop their tops and the men are going to just... use filters?

Wat? How many men on Twitch do you think are currently using filters to become women to get people to watch and sub?

I don't actually know, I don't use Twitch because I play video games and have no interest in watching others do so, but I am decrepit and out of touch so whatever.

You didn't need to put this here, it's apparent from the rest of your post.

Now I'm left pondering the apparent Fisherian runaway of human beings trying to become--virtually, at least--teenage-presenting (cat?)girls as quickly as possible.

Wat. What fraction of twitch streamers do you think are involved in this "Fisherian runaway?" What fraction of, say, the top 100 or 1000 streamers?

If a guy did a squat stream that prominently displayed their ass (maybe for form demonstration reasons) would Twitch mod it for sexual content? What if a woman did the same? I have no trouble believing Twitch would mod the woman but not the man.

I'm surprised everyone else just seemed to swallow this proposed injustice. Male and female squat demonstrations should be treated the same. A woman who has some kind of exercise stream and shows all sorts of movements in good faith trying to demonstrate fitness should be fine. But I think we all know that there would be a little bit of that "I know porn when I see it" going on in 95% of the woman squatting streams and like 5% of the male squatting streams.

Obviously, it's because there is a sexual element to a woman squatting but not the same for a man squatting. That's not Twitch's fault, or my fault, but the unfair reality that we live in a world where people find one situation titillating but not the other. And sure, it's unfair, but oh well.

Obviously, it's because there is a sexual element to a woman squatting but not the same for a man squatting.

For straight men or lesbian women or bi/pan people.

For straight women or gay men or bi/pan people, there indeed can be a sexual element to a man squatting, depending on the man. Nice thighs! Not too bulgy, not too weedy!

Many otherwise mundane activities can elicit a sexual response in some people. It doesn't follow that because of a minority of paraphiles, that those activities are sexual.

But this is not some unalterable fact of the universe. It is a fact about our minds, our social context. It is a thing we can and should change.

You are entitled to your opinion, but I think it's unreasonable to put the burden of realising that change on Twitch.

I'm... uh... not sure the best way to demonstrate this, especially if you're a straight man or a gay woman, but there's absolutely a lot to be looking at, from either front or back, when there's a guy in tighter clothing squatting.

I am a gay man, so it's not that I don't get it (though I'm more of a leg extension man myself). But then, some people are turned on by women shopping for wonder bread. That doesn't make it sexual.

Wat? How many men on Twitch do you think are currently using filters to become women to get people to watch and sub?

I doubt it's a large number, but it's getting easier by the year. I myself played around with Vtuber avatars, and voice changing apps and the results were surprisingly good. Sadly, the voice changing I was using only worked well in English, and I was trying to stream in another language.

It wouldn't surprise me if some successful Vtuber out there is already doing just this.

The policy is broader than "don't flash your breasts." According to your link it prohibited any content that "deliberately highlighted breasts, buttocks or pelvic region." I have no trouble believing that women were modded for content that men got away with. If a guy did a squat stream that prominently displayed their ass (maybe for form demonstration reasons) would Twitch mod it for sexual content? What if a woman did the same? I have no trouble believing Twitch would mod the woman but not the man. I think there is a pretty straightforward sexist implication to "men are allowed to do this thing but women aren't."

When women start getting treated equivalently to men for sexual assault/harassment, THEN AND ONLY THEN will women deserve "equality" in this regard. You don't get to simultaneously claim the same ability to show off while holding extensive privileges in controlling how people respond to your doing so.

I do not think one injustice justifies another. We can, and should, get rid of both.

You don't get to simultaneously claim the same ability to show off while holding extensive privileges in controlling how people respond to your doing so.

I don't understand this sentence. No amount of women "show[ing] off" justifies sexual assault or harassment.

  • -12

No amount of women "show[ing] off" justifies sexual assault or harassment.

Bullshit it doesn't. If I flash my fat stacks of cash and expensive sneakers in the gheto then get jumped by several thugs and robbed I would be getting what I deserve. Same with women.

You don't "deserve" to get robbed because you're stupid about flashing your cash. The people who robbed you are still criminals who should be prosecuted. People might say you were foolish and should have known better, and maybe some people would say you were "asking for it," but you did not literally deserve to have your money stolen. The same applies to women "showing off." A rapist is still a rapist even if the victim was flashing her tits in a back alley. If you think it's okay to harass and assault women because they're showing off, you think it's okay to steal someone's stuff if he's not guarding it sufficiently. And that would make you a rapist/robber, my friend.

The fact that ghettos in which having nice things means people can steal them with impunity exists is a societal failure state. That people should be encouraged to take precautions because certain police forces and judicial systems fail to to do their duty (or are prevented from doing so) doesn’t change that.

Someone who wears a Rolex into the ghetto and gets mugged may be stupid or naive, but they don’t ‘deserve it’. If they are robbed, it is the state that has failed them.

I do not think one injustice justifies another. We can, and should, get rid of both.

Empty words. Those pushing for gender equality have proven time and again that they only care about equality when women get the short end of the stick. You need to prove that you will actually get rid of both here rather than stopping once you get the benefits (EDIT:) if you want to convince me to support you.

I don't understand this sentence. No amount of women "show[ing] off" justifies sexual assault or harassment.

The problem is that behavior by men towards women that is perceived as sexual assault or harassment isn't perceived as such when done by women toward men. Men have to "justify" behaviors that women get to just do with no consequence. Women showing off therefore either needs to be more restricted than men doing so or women need to put up with all the behaviors from men that men have to put up with from women.

have to "justify" behaviors that women get to just do with no consequence

Please, please, when you make this argument explicitly name a specific example of a behavior women can do that men can't. It'd help the conversation so much, and prevent it from getting bogged down in each side repeatedly stating their beliefs without coming into contact with the other side.

See just about any instance of "sexualization". For some specific examples, see Julia Serano's Why Nice Guys Finish Last and my response at /r/theschism.

The problem is that behavior by men towards women that is perceived as sexual assault or harassment isn't perceived as such when done by women toward men. Men have to "justify" behaviors that women get to just do with no consequence.

I agree. Society does not take sexual harassment and assault of men by women nearly as seriously as it should.

Women showing off therefore either needs to be more restricted than men doing so or women need to put up with all the behaviors from men that men have to put up with from women.

I don't see how this follows. If the thing is bad we should want to have less of the thing, even if the improvement we make is not necessarily equally distributed among all impacted groups.

I agree. Society does not take sexual harassment and assault of men by women nearly as seriously as it should.

I don't think that's true; there just isn't enough sexual harassment and assault of men by women to justify taking it much more seriously.

I agree. Society does not take sexual harassment and assault of men by women nearly as seriously as it should.

Men don't need protection from sexual harassment by women. It's a trivial problem.

Men suffer different problems than women. Not necessarily more serious problems, but different ones.

If we are looking for men and women to have equal rights, we need to examine the ways in which each gender is currently harmed by society.

For example, in the current system, men are harmed by an anti-male education system which rewards female traits and punishes male ones. As a result of this anti-maleness, 60% of college students are women. Furthermore, this college experience, which is heavily funded by taxes, often rewards its graduates with tax-funded sinecures that provide little value to society.

Meanwhile, nearly all of dangerous jobs are performed by men. Men are 6 times as likely to die at work than women. The death rate for women at work is less than the death rate for accountants. Dangerous jobs, which are nearly exclusively performed by men, pay less on average than white collar work. Meanwhile white collar work is performed nearly exclusively by college graduates, the beneficiaries of anti-male discrimination.

Instead of worrying about women catcalling men, worry about the actual problems the affect men.

For example, in the current system, men are harmed by an anti-male education system which rewards female traits and punishes male ones. As a result of this anti-maleness, 60% of college students are women.

How would you make the current education system more pro-male?

IMO the reason most college students are women is women more strongly follow ideas they see others holding, and education is the thing everyone thinks you're supposed to do.

Put more emphasis on test results and less on subjective grades.

100% agree with all of this

I don't see how this follows. If the thing is bad we should want to have less of the thing, even if the improvement we make is not necessarily equally distributed among all impacted groups.

Sure, but I'm not going to waste my time and effort supporting improvements that are only seen by other people--especially people who have related privileges relative to me--unless they demonstrate a willingness to do the same for me. As I said before, people supporting gender equality now have a very high bar to meet in that regard, as they have a very strong history of saying they'll support men too to get my support and then never following through.

I don't understand this sentence. No amount of women "show[ing] off" justifies sexual assault or harassment.

Not justifies, is. You don't think a woman showing a lot of cleavage or leg at work might be analogous to other actions considered sexual harassment? That is, if it makes men think about sex or uncomfortable about where to look when talking to the woman, surely that's not dissimilar from men making overheard suggestive comments.

There's probably some line. A bunny suit or something is probably out. The vast majority of clothing women wear to work? Absolutely not.

I don't understand this sentence. No amount of women "show[ing] off" justifies sexual assault or harassment.

Women showing off: OK. Unattractive men noticing: sexual harassment.

Notice with your eyes, not with your hands.

  • -10

Nybbler expressed it in sneer-adjacent form, but I think he's right.

Why - from first principles, you're an alien looking down at the world - is it sexual harassment to make comments about the amount of clothing a woman is wearing? Especially if the clothing is deliberately designed to be sexually attractive.

"comments about the amount of clothing a woman is wearing" is a very broad category of statements, multiplied by a very broad range of contexts.

The vast majority of that space of events is definitely not sexual harassment.

If you precisely described the content and context of a specific comment in enough detail to determine which category it fell into, I think the 'why' would ussually be a lot easier to explain and most people would agree most of the time.

I think the biggest problem here is the part of that space where someone imagines that if they said a specific thing in a specific context, it would be considered sexual harassment by someone. I've never been accused of sexual harassment, but I share the experience of thinking carefully about the thing I say and holding back sometimes out of worry of giving offense, and can sympathize with people who are frustrated by it. But if you've also never crossed that line into actually being accused, consider the possibility that you're just wrong about where the line is, and the category of things that you think of as 'someone would accuse me of sexual harassment if I said this and that's absurd' are actually mostly things that no one would accuse you of sexual harassment for.

(In point of fact, I am involved in managing the ban list and safety complaints for a rather large social club with mostly young people, and I've never seen a complaint that didn't involve physical contact or explicit threats of violence lead to any disciplinary action. I really just think the situation on the ground isn't as dire as people imagine, as is true for most things in the modern world)

The second biggest problem is all the ambiguous parts of that space where the judgement isn't entirely clear-cut and some people may disagree, and how that space gets exploited by the typical culture-war driven mess of toxoplasma, ragebaiting listacles, 'engagement' reporting, inaccurate anecdotes, etc. etc. etc., same as every other topic we talk about. This has several parts to it:

-I don't think the laws against sexual harassment are actually dangerous in the way these comments imply, and in fact I think they're still heavily skewed towards defendants (as may be correct!). Not my area of expertise, but I definitely have the lived experience of, every time someone says that someone got sued for sexual harassment and lost and it was a crazy absurd thing that should have been fine, when you actually go to look at teh legal documents detailing the case they are much much worse and more justified than the anecdote that's being shared online (think the McDonalds coffee lady). Exacerbating this tenfold is the fact that many of these cases are settled in settlements where the victim signs a nondisclosure agreement that doesn't bind the defendant, ensuring that only one side of the story goes public (yes, even in states where those agreements are unenforceable, victims don't know that and are scared to push it)

-The online ecosphere has the usual incentives to lie, cheat, and steal on this topic. One side pushing absurd standards and stringency as a costly signal about how seriously they take this and how seriously you had better take it, the other side promoting absurd cherry-picked anecdotes to the forefront in an attempt to ragebait for clicks and to paint a skewed picture of the actual situation on the ground. People on tiny sights making outrageous claims in order to get attention, people on other tiny sights excoriating those claims out in order to get attention. Typical stuff.

-The actual idiots and bad actors, from young people with no perspective talking about things they don't understand, to manipulators and opportunists taking advantage of this range of charges for social or economic gain, to genuinely ill or disturbed people pushing their own distorted views or perceptions, to etc. etc. Again, the typical stuff.

The vast majority of that space of events is definitely not sexual harassment.

I agree. As I said in reply to someone on the other side, I think these discussions would instantly 100x in usefulness and connecting-of-disagreeing-ideas if people simply chose specific, detailed examples of scenarios where they think the standard for sexual harassment is too low or whatever, and then analyzed those.

I don't think the laws against sexual harassment are actually dangerous in the way these comments imply

It can both be true that most instances that are actually prosecuted are egregious, and that the law on paper criminalizes a wide variety of benign behavior and thus significantly discourages it. I also am not sure how important it actually is though.

More comments

That is still considered harassment.

What fraction of twitch streamers do you think are involved in this "Fisherian runaway?" What fraction of, say, the top 100 or 1000 streamers?

I'm going to go with "Enough that Twitch felt the need to substantially revise its policy twice in two days."

You don't seem to think this is a big deal, and probably that's true, but it's clearly a big enough deal.

I'm confused. Enough people were showing NSFW material Twitch thought was inappropriate that they reversed course. This seems quite different from your description of humans trying to become "teenage-presenting (cat?)girls."

I'm confused. Enough people were showing NSFW material Twitch thought was inappropriate that they reversed course. This seems quite different from your description of humans trying to become "teenage-presenting (cat?)girls."

I'm confused too, I guess.

My comment about Fisherian runaway was related to the AI stuff... like, if lewds are permitted and lewds get clicks, then yeah you're gonna get camgirls but also (I assume) you're going to get camboys using AI filters to present as camgirls for the views. But if that's not what was raising the AI concerns at Twitch then I guess I misunderstood something.

if lewds are permitted and lewds get clicks, then yeah you're gonna get camgirls

I think what you're really going to get is bots. Most of those bots will be female presenting because most of the dummies clicking botspam are thirsty simps. Some of the bots will be male presenting because some of the dummies clicking botspam are thirsty gay simps. From my experience in lonely hearts subreddit moderation, women are 100x less likely to fall for obvious spam accounts, even when they're lesbians. But every time we let a botspam post stay up longer than 2-3 hours, at least 5 male idiots will engage with it.

Bots can't (yet?) do "watch me play" videos, so SFW content creators are going to be easier to distinguish as real humans. NSFW stuff is so easily commoditized that bots can do it pretty well, especially if they also scrape real onlyfans accounts. Like all spam, the NSFW bot accounts only have to convert a handful of suckers to be profitable so if lewds are permitted, lewds will be overwhelmed with scammers. At this point, it's the equivalent of establishing a dedicated Viagra sellers group channel/board. That's going to be 99.9% spam instantly.

Gotcha. I think the AI concerns with Twitch are more like people using AI to create fake nudes of actual people. They cite to issues with people being able to tell the difference between photo-realistic images and photography.

AI-gen fake nudes of actual (non-consenting) people are a problem and probably the first to bubble up to Twitch's lawyers, but they're just one particularly palatable problem of many:

  • What about consenting people, even consenting not-nude-in-original people? There's a hard rule against Img2Img using a real person as the base, especially of yourself in the Furry Diffusion Discord, and it exists for a reason.

  • Do we care how heavily the ML-gen dataset has been curated, even if the output doesn't look like anyone specific? Is there enough of the essence of any input training image to count for copyright/legal problem causes, even if the outputs look nothing like it?

  • Do we care about possible highly-realistic outputs, even if they clearly can't be real-world?

  • Do we need to treat the people under an underlay like porn actors (which has significant overhead!), even if not a single pixel of their original real-world body goes through? Does this concern limit itself to AI redraws, or does it include photogrammatry? Do VR actors count, where the in-stream body might not even correspond to the positions of their real-world? What about voice-alone? What about only people who do tech side work, or art-side?

  • How all of this interact with much of Twitch's ouvre (game and otherwise) having a multiplayer or social component? There's people with a kink for using certain classes of toys while trying to achieve certain challenging tasks -- I can name some good gay fictional examples! -- but the real-world can into awkward questions of consent when a game might match-make you with randos. Same for someone being highlighted, even with good intent, by a nude presenter (of any gender) or in-series with artistic nudes.

This, along with other comments explaining to me that Twitch does more than video game streaming, was very helpful. Thank you!

I have no trouble believing that women were modded for content that men got away with. If a guy did a squat stream that prominently displayed their ass (maybe for form demonstration reasons) would Twitch mod it for sexual content? What if a woman did the same?

What would you estimate as the ratio on Twitch of women displaying their asses to men displaying their asses salaciously? 1:1?

I would agree that the man is less likely to receive a moderation action. But I also strongly suspect that the main factor here is the viewership levels: given a certain audience size, you're equally likely to be moderated regardless of if you're male, female, or other. Having a larger audience is the culprit, not gender. And that makes sense: if a company thinks it's in its best interests to ban porn from its platform and has limited moderation resources, best to use them to target the people who have the most reach.

What would you estimate as the ratio on Twitch of women displaying their asses to men displaying their asses salaciously? 1:1?

Would you expect this to be measured with respect to hours(?) of content created, or hours of content consumed? I would wager those metrics are quite different.

What would you estimate as the ratio on Twitch of women displaying their asses to men displaying their asses salaciously? 1:1?

Part of my point is that salaciousness is something we often project on women's actions that we don't on men's, including when the woman herself does not intend her actions that way.

Otherwise I agree that having a higher viewership, being more visible, is probably a significant causal factor in being moderated.

I do agree that people bring gendered preconceptions about salacious intent, which would probably result in a woman innocently squatting being more likely to be moderated than a man innocently squatting.

Most guys I see at the gym are wearing baggy basketball shorts or joggers. Most women at the gym I see are wearing yoga pants.

There used to be a middle aged flamboyantly gay guy at my gym doing squats in compression shorts and a crop top, moaning what felt like every rep.

Was a bit funny because it was one of these cheap unmanned gyms where almost only dudes go and where a high proportion take steroids and are fairly aggressive.

Well, uh, maybe he was hoping to convince one of the steroid popping freaks to question his sexuality.

in compression shorts and a crop top

Like the underwear and women's shirt?

Sure, or like yoga pants going halfway down your thighs and a shirt that exposes your midriff.

Of course, on seeing this news I immediately wondered why it would count as "punishing" women to prevent them from doing something men don't generally have the option of doing (that is, making money by flashing breasts).

Twitch management has generally been known to be sympathetic to what's widely called "woke," and in that worldview, any discrepancy in stats that seem to disfavor [certain classes of people] is automatically definitive proof of some sort of bigotry. We see this in stuff like hiring, school admissions, and crime as well. Here, more women than men get caught breaking these rules, so the rules must be sexist. The reason being that more women break the rules because women, unlike men, have greater opportunity to gain money by breaking these rules are irrelevant.

I must admit, I feel like this is a rhetorical point you're making, rather than genuine confusion, because the people of this ideology tend to be very open about this. I think Ibram X Kendi has a well known quotation that whereever he sees racial discrepancy, he sees racism. It's just that with sexism here.

Of course, on seeing this news I immediately wondered why it would count as "punishing" women to prevent them from doing something men don't generally have the option of doing (that is, making money by flashing breasts).

Was it previously against Twitch TOS for male streamers to be topless? That is news to me and surprises me if true.

Anyway, I think you're maybe misreading the second policy here, it seems to be aimed at art streams and/or people showing NSFW art on stream. The concern about 'realistic AI images' I think is about basically showing 'deepfakes' (realistic faked porn of actual people) without the subject's consent on-stream.

Twitch has been full of PG13 camgirls for longer than it was a game streaming site. Turns out having e-girls thirst trap kids who, for whatever reason, aren't already hooked on the vast ocean of actual internet pornography is more profitable than streaming rapidly aging men playing games. I'm not sure why they bothered to reverse course. Maybe they honestly were worried that the intersection of a tech savvy and disgruntled creator base, along with recent advances in generative AI, would result in them being utterly embarrassed and the platform going up in flames. It's one thing to allow twitch thots to camwhore on your site. There are certain natural limits to how endemic a "problem" that can be. There are only so many women blessed with the "endowments" to do it, and they age like milk, not wine. With generative AI, the platform could literally wind up being 95% AI camwhores forever more.

I feel like Twitch has a good sweet spot. The PG13 camgirls grab your attention, but they're not the same as actual porn. There's a million other sites where you can watch porn, but not so many where you can develop a parasocial relationship with a hot chick. And I also think that, for a parasocial relationship, it works better if your fake girlfriend is hot but not too slutty- most people don't want their girlfriend being an actual slut.

I'm not sure why they bothered to reverse course.

Advertising. Advertisers are set on the family-friendly image, they are thus highly averse to anything associated with "adult themes". Their analysis of such things is often shallow, but that's a separate issue.

So Twitch has to be family-friendly safe while also catering to the audiences of these e-girls who spend money through Twitch on subs and whatnot.

I no longer believe this one iota. Advertisers don't seem to mind one bit having obscenity pushed on children. In fact, complaining about obscenity getting pushed on children is usually enough for advertisers to punish you. The last several years of groomer discourse have proven it so, at least to me.

Why are you assuming your standard is the same as theirs?

Well, there's no objective standard for what constitutes obscenity. I think that obscenity you see being pushed on children that adverisers have no problem with are things that those advertisers don't consider obscene. Which is to say, if I'm reading you right, you might consider both Twitch nudity and, say, sexually explicit ideological educational books for children to be obscene, but many advertisers only consider the former to be obscene.

I suspect it's parents and general public perception more than advertisers. There's a very thin line, that if you fall over, you're just a porn site. I read the flip flopping as uncertaintly about the right mix combined with futher uncertainty due to AI coming crashing into all content platforms.

Imagine you're a convenience store that decides to start selling drugs. Hey these drugs are a huge cash cow, more consistently profitable than anything else in the store. You end up selling a lot of drugs to people who otherwise came looking for groceries or groceries and drugs.

But if you follow this to conclusion and 90% of your transactions become drugs, then you're not a grocery store, you're a drug dealer, and your entire marketpresence might fall apart.

With generative AI, the platform could literally wind up being 95% AI camwhores forever more.

Won't it anyway? Generate the video, generate the parasocial voice and text, generate the gameplay. Maybe hire half a dozen laid-off call center workers in the Philippines to oversee the hundred different brands targeting different niches at any given moment. If one brand gets shut down for violating some policy or another, replace it with another.

I think in the long run, that's definitely gonna happen, but without human call center workers. But there's still a lot of uncertainty about whether that's next year or next decade, so they might believe that it's far away enough in the future that they need to make short and medium term plans.

This is the new zoomer take on that old saw about sleeping under bridges. Male and female alike, nobody's allowed to show their tits for simps.

As for the sexism, I think it was a fig leaf from the start. Someone thought they could monetize the skanks. My guess is that the lawyers weren't consulted first and they had to be the guys to remind twitch that their average user is like 13. In any case, you can find better nudity on a bunch of better sites. And players worth watching don't have to get naked.

This is the new zoomer take on that old saw about sleeping under bridges. Male and female alike, nobody's allowed to show their tits for simps.

I don’t think this was about topfreedom/bare nipple advocates. I think it was about twitch not wanting to be a porn site.

This is the new zoomer take on that old saw about sleeping under bridges.

That old saw was absolutely correct. We ban sleeping under bridges because it imposes a cost on society, and a rich person sleeping under a bridge imposes the same cost on society that a poor person sleeping under a bridge does hence doing so is banned for everyone.

But a rich person wouldn't sleep under the bridge, which is the whole point of that saying. Namely, that what counts as a universal ban can often just be a targeted ban at a select group of people, even if that was never the intent.

There's nothing wrong with a targeted ban. All bans are targeted bans. Murder bans target murderers. Theft bans target thieves. Not all people would engage in all banned activities were they not banned. This has no bearing at all on whether such activities should be banned.

The point of the saying is that targeted bans are not seen for what they are, and that what may be an ostensibly universal ban is only focused on one particular group more than others.

It is, as you say, those with murderous inclinations who are most affected by bans on murder. But the existence of good targeted bans shouldn't be a shield for any particular one.

Framing it as a targeted ban at all, or as "focused on one particular group", is dangerously misleading, because it strongly implies intent.

The way I see it, the saying is a classic motte and bailey. The motte is that we should be careful that our universal bans are actually universal. The bailey is that any disparate impact is intentional, and any actually universal ban would not have disparate impact.

Yes, and if this was a more casual conversation, you would rightfully call me out on it. But I am not lying when I say that I only believe in the motte.

I think both you and @BurdensomeCount demonstrate the different perspectives one can approach this from. For one, it's about the relatively minor suffering diffused among all the rest of people of society, for the other, it's about the acute suffering of a much smaller and distinct subset of society. I feel like so much of the culture war is around who prioritizes which higher in what context. Personally, in this, I'm sympathetic to the point of the original quote, but unfortunately the point can't really be made convincingly to people who see it from the other angle.

Personally, in this, I'm sympathetic to the point of the original quote

Really? I wouldn't have expected this for someone who accepts:

For one, it's about the relatively minor suffering diffused among all the rest of people of society, for the other, it's about the acute suffering of a much smaller and distinct subset of society.

If you accept that framing you must accept that what is happening here is no different to the tragedy of the commons. By choosing to shit on the commons you are causing a minor suffering diffused to everyone in society while by choosing to behave properly and pay for the disposal of your waste you are taking a much bigger hit upon yourself and keeping the commons nice and feces free.

Pretty much everyone I know consider the tragedy of the commons to be an actual tragedy, they think that causing the minor suffering diffused upon the rest of society (in our example sleeping under bridges/shitting on the commons) in return for reducing the suffering upon yourself is a net bad and should be strongly discouraged, even if it leads to people having to pay more for their personal costs. Here that position translates to forbidding sleeping under bridges; it's directly isomorphic to the original tragedy of the commons and yet a large amount of people have the opposite views here than they do with the TotC.

I've seen a lot of takedowns of that obnoxious construction, but yours is the most clear and concise. Well done!

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