Previous snapshot was a broken page load; full Twitch Community Guidelines now captured

Loading × Sorry to interrupt CSS Error Refresh twitch.tv ↗ Search Enter a search term and use arrow keys to navigate results. Press enter to select. Home Community Guidelines Reporting & Enforcement Moderation Account Security Resources News Home Overview Community Guidelines Reporting & Enforcement Moderation Account Security Resources News Blog Loading Article Introduction to Safety on Twitch Community is the heart of Twitch. From individual communities, built by streamers and their viewers, to the Twitch Community at large, the magic of Twitch comes from enjoying the things we love together. But before you can do what you do best, a very important prerequisite must be met: safety. Safety is the foundation beneath streamers, moderators, and everyone in chat. We want to foster a community that supports and sustains streamers’ ability to express themselves, and provides a welcoming and entertaining environment for viewers, free of illegal, harmful, and negative interactions. As a result, we take an approach to safety that combines the efforts of both Twitch and members of the community, working together globally to promote safety in real time. It starts with our Community Guidelines, which seek to balance user expression with community safety, and set expectations for the behavior that everyone on Twitch is expected to demonstrate. When we talk about harm, we mean actions that lead to physical, emotional, social or financial damage or loss to our users or to society. These guidelines set the guardrails for what behavior is and is not allowed on our service, and apply to all content on our service, including video, chat, whispers, and accounts. When we find someone has violated our Community Guidelines we take actions that can include removal of content, removal of monetization tools, a warning, and/or suspension of their account. If someone who receives an account enforcement believes it was issued by mistake or in error, they may file an appeal using our Appeals procedures. We consider our Community Guidelines to be a living document, and we work with streamers, mods, and external safety and policy experts to review and update them regularly. In addition to these guidelines, streamers and moderators can also use customizable Twitch safety tools to tailor their channel standards to meet their needs. Viewers, moderators, and streamers play a crucial role by reporting content or behavior that breaks our Community Guidelines. Reports are reviewed by our global Safety Operations team who work 24/7/365 to ensure a swift response. In this way, we all work together to promote a safe and welcoming live environment. Enforcement Notes For some of our Community Guidelines below, you will see an “Enforcement Notes and Clarifications” section. Enforcement Notes are additional examples of what is and isn’t allowed on Twitch, focused on clarifying existing policies already being enforced. Enforcement Notes are not new policies or new rules. We write these notes to share more information about our existing Community Guidelines and to answer commonly asked questions. Safety Self-Destructive Behavior Harming yourself, or discussing self-harm, can be dangerous for not only yourself but for viewers and those around you. We understand that streamers and viewers should be able to discuss sensitive topics related to self-harm or mental health, and we want Twitch to remain a safe space to do so. Anyone should be able to talk about their struggles, if they so choose. However, Twitch does not allow content that glorifies, promotes, or encourages self-harm. We also prohibit activity that may endanger your life, lead to your physical harm, or encourage others to engage in physically harmful behavior. We do not make exceptions for self-destructive behavior performed as a stunt or gag made in jest, or meant to entertain, when the behavior could reasonably be expected to cause physical injury to anyone on our service. Violence and Threats Acts and threats of violence are counterproductive to promoting a safe, inclusive, and friendly community. Violence on Twitch is taken seriously and is considered a zero-tolerance violation, and all accounts associated with such activities on Twitch will be indefinitely suspended. Terrorism and Violent Extremism Terrorism and violent extremism promote unlawful violence and spread messages of intolerance. Twitch does not allow content that depicts, glorifies, encourages, or supports terrorism, or violent extremist actors or acts. This includes threatening to or encouraging others to commit acts that would result in serious physical harm or significant property destruction. Adult Sexual Violence Acts of sexual violence are a serious offense. Content or activities that promote or threaten sexual violence may be reported to law enforcement. Sexual violence is not tolerated on Twitch and will result in immediate suspension of your account. Youth Safety Twitch prohibits any content or activity that endangers youth. This includes content that features or promotes child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and the sexual exploitation, sexual misconduct or grooming of youth (which is defined by this policy as minors under 18). We report all illegal content or activity to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which works with global law enforcement agencies around the world, and the consequence for engaging in such activity or with such content is immediate and indefinite suspension. Off-Service Conduct For streamers and their viewers to build vibrant and dynamic communities, everyone must feel secure and protected. We believe that some off-service offenses committed by Twitch users can create a substantial safety risk to the Twitch community. As a result, Twitch enforces against certain severe offenses that occur off Twitch when committed by members of the Twitch community. Users can contact the Twitch Off-Service Investigations team to report cases of any abhorrent and impactful off-service abuses listed above. These reports go directly to our global team responsible for investigating allegations of severe off-service offenses, and are handled with complete confidentiality. Evidence for Off-Service reports Because we have less context for behaviors that occur off Twitch, we require that evidence of these activities is verifiable before we will take action. This includes content directly uploaded by the violating user or direct reports from victims themselves sent to our Off-Service Investigations team with appropriate evidence. Screenshots and other content from groups not directly involved that may be edited, doctored, or falsified are generally not considered to be sufficient unless they are supported by other verifiable evidence that is accurate and not misrepresented or confirmed by our third party investigator as authentic. Additionally, we will consider law enforcement action(s) as an input when assessing the credibility of accusations and evidence. Off-Service FAQ Unauthorized Sharing of Private Information Sharing someone else’s sensitive data without their permission can be both a distressing and potentially dangerous experience. Therefore, Twitch doesn’t allow users to reveal personal information of others on our service. Civility and Respect Hateful Conduct Twitch aims to be a place where everyone can come together in shared, community experiences. This vision is threatened when people experience harmful rhetoric and abuse on Twitch. Twitch does not permit behavior that is motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance, including behavior that promotes or encourages discrimination, denigration, harassment, or violence based on the following protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, color, caste, national origin, immigration status, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, serious medical condition, and veteran status. We also provide certain protections for age, which are expressly noted in the examples. We define 'protected groups' as a subset of the population with a shared protected characteristic. Every Twitch user falls into multiple of these protected groups. Twitch affords every user globally equal protections under this policy. Harassment Harassment deters the growth of vibrant and diverse communities, prevents people from feeling safe on Twitch, and creates a gateway for more severe forms of harm and abuse. People experience harassment in different ways, including personal attacks, promotion of physical harm, and malicious brigading. Engaging in harassment will result in enforcement action taken against the relevant accounts. Please keep in mind, we expect streamers to take the necessary steps to mitigate harassing content that appears on their stream or in their chat. We will not suspend broadcasters that we find to be acting in good-faith (including by using tools such as AutoMod, timeouts, and channel bans) to remove abuse appearing from third parties and external sources. Sexual Harassment Twitch firmly opposes sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is never acceptable, whether these comments are directed towards others on or off Twitch. We define sexual harassment to encompass non-physical behaviors of a sexual nature that cause users to feel uncomfortable, degraded, unsafe, or discouraged from participation. We prohibit unwanted comments–including comments made using emojis/emotes–regarding someone's appearance or body, sexual requests or advances, sexual objectification, and negative statements or attacks related to a person's perceived sexual behaviors or activities, regardless of their gender. We also do not tolerate the recording or sharing of non-consensual intimate images or videos under any circumstances, and may report such content to law enforcement. Illegal Activity Breaking the Law For the safety of our community, we require users to respect all applicable local, national, and international laws while using our services. Any content or activity featuring, encouraging, offering, or soliciting illegal activity is prohibited and may be reported to law enforcement. Intellectual Property Rights In order to protect the intellectual property rights of others and comply with intellectual property laws, we do not allow users to share content on their Twitch channel that they do not own or otherwise have rights to share. Learn more about our policies regarding including music in your Twitch channel. Sensitive Content Extreme Violence, Gore, and Other Obscene Conduct Although we allow a variety of content to be shown on Twitch, content that features extreme violence or gore may be disturbing and distressing, especially if there is death, mutilation, or blood. Content that exclusively focuses on extreme or gratuitous gore and violence is prohibited. Additionally, websites that heavily feature adult content such as sexually explicit content, illegal content, or death and gore are prohibited. Sexual Content To ensure content on Twitch is appropriate for diverse audiences, certain sexual content is prohibited, regardless of the medium used to create it (digital or non-digital). Users are prohibited from broadcasting, uploading, soliciting, promoting, offering, and linking to pornographic content. Adult Nudity Users are prohibited from broadcasting or uploading content that contains depictions of real or fictional nudity, regardless of the medium used to create it. Incomplete censoring, such as pixelization, mosaics, blurring effects, sheer or partially see-through clothing do not constitute an exemption to this policy. Attire In order to set consistent standards that allow creators to express themselves without exposing our community to inappropriate content, we have an attire policy, with detailed examples below. We aim to be transparent around our standards and expectations to empower creative expression and boost creators’ confidence with a clear understanding of our guidelines. The list of contextual exceptions, outlined below, is not exhaustive. If you find yourself in a situation that is not described by an exception, then we expect you to follow the standard guidelines. Standard guidelines Contextual exceptions Account Usernames and Display Names In order to ensure that our community is safe and inclusive, inappropriate account names that violate our Community Guidelines are prohibited. We also recognize that an account’s username has more impact across our services than many other forms of content because they are persistent, cross-functional, and, in most cases, much more visible. Because of this, we have additional, higher standards for usernames based on reducing harm across our services. Username FAQ Tags You should only create tags that adhere to the rest of Twitch’s Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Prohibited Games In order to ensure that the content broadcast on Twitch abides by our Community Guidelines and is appropriate for a diverse audience, we prohibit games that contain developer-generated content that is clearly violative, as well as social platform games frequently used for unmitigated abuse. Broadcasting or showcasing content from these games will lead to enforcement action against your account. Using the Mature-rated Games Content Classification Label, setting the broadcast or VOD to a different title, setting the stream to subscribers only, or categorizing the stream under ‘Not Playing’ does not constitute an exemption from this policy. Games are restricted from broadcast if: - The game violates our Community Guidelines as it applies to hate speech, sex, nudity, gratuitous gore, or extreme violence - The official ESRB rating is Adults Only Alternate versions of Adults Only titles with an ESRB rating of Mature or lower are permitted, including Mature versions of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy. Game reviews are conducted following reports from the community. If the game is unrated by the ESRB and a wholly-comparable rated title cannot be found, the moderation team determines whether the game violates our Community Guidelines. Titles may be restricted if they are sufficiently extreme by a single element of the game (e.g. sexual content, violence, intent) or several elements in aggregate violate our policies. User accounts broadcasting or uploading content that feature gameplay from these titles can be reported via the user report tool under the option "Prohibited Game." Reported users may receive a temporary account suspension. In order to discourage sharing this content, all titles on the list are removed from the game selector found on the Creator Dashboard. Prohibited Gambling Content We do not allow users to share links or affiliate codes to sites that contain slots, roulette, or dice games. Furthermore, similar to our prohibited games policy, we do not allow the sites below to be streamed on Twitch, or linked to in chat. We consider many factors in determining whether a site is allowed, including whether the site includes safety protections, such as deposit limits, waiting periods, and age verification systems. We also take into account whether streamers use or encourage VPNs to evade geoblocking, and whether the site is licensed in the US or other jurisdictions that provide sufficient consumer protections. Authenticity Impersonation Impersonation is a malicious practice that compromises trust in our service and can harm the target of impersonation. Content or activity meant to impersonate an individual or organization is prohibited, including impersonation of Twitch staff, celebrities, companies, or friends. Spam, Scams, and Other Malicious Conduct Spam and other deceptive practices create a negative user experience, decrease trust in our service, and mislead viewers, creators, and advertisers. Any content or activity that disrupts, interrupts, harms, or otherwise violates the integrity of Twitch services or another user’s experience or devices is prohibited. Suspension Evasion Circumventing our enforcement actions undermines the integrity of our service. For suspended users, any attempt to circumvent an account suspension or chat ban by using other accounts or identities will also result in an additional enforcement against your accounts, up to an indefinite suspension. For non-suspended Twitch streamers, you may react to a VOD or a livestream from another service of a suspended user, but you may not feature them on your stream as a guest (for example, streaming in the same room or using collaboration software to feature a suspended user as a guest, even in an ensemble). For purposes of this violation, “feature” is defined as 1) streaming with a suspended user, 2) streams of a group that include the suspended user. We understand that there may be instances where suspended users appear on your stream due to circumstances beyond your control, such as through third-party gaming tournaments or limited engagement while IRL streaming. However, we expect that you make an effort to not actively promote them in a manner intended to bypass their Twitch suspension. Please remember, that you are responsible for all content in your streams, including policy violations by third parties. Harmful Misinformation Actors In order to reduce harm to our community and the public without undermining our streamers’ open dialogue with their communities, we prohibit harmful misinformation superspreaders who persistently share misinformation on or off of Twitch. We remove users whose online presence is dedicated to (1) persistently sharing (2) widely disproven and broadly shared (3) harmful misinformation topics. This policy is focused on Twitch users who persistently share harmful misinformation. It will not be applied to users based upon individual statements or discussions that occur on the channel. We will evaluate whether a user violates the policy by assessing both their on-platform behavior as well as their off-platform behavior. You can report these actors by sending an email to our internal investigations team with the account name and any available supporting evidence. Content Labeling You are expected to accurately label your content to the best of your ability. When choosing a category or tag, please choose whichever best describes your content.