Guidelines
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Twitch is all about building communities, and communities are only as strong as the people within them and the culture they create together. Nobody should feel hated or excluded because of who they are, on Twitch or anywhere else.
Unfortunately, Twitch isn’t immune to incidents that make people feel unwelcome — or worse, unsafe. That’s why we have a zero-tolerance policy for hateful conduct and slurs, meaning we act on every valid reported instance of hateful conduct.
What is hateful conduct?
Hateful conduct is any content or behavior that discriminates, denigrates, harasses, or encourages violence against someone based on “protected characteristics” such as age, race, ethnicity, color, caste, national origin, immigration status, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, serious medical conditions, and veteran status. Hateful conduct often involves harassment of members of a protected group, based on a protected characteristic. We define “protected groups” as a subset of the population who share a protected characteristic.
You can read our Community Guidelines for more, but some examples of hateful conduct include:
Hateful conduct–especially harassing conduct–is becoming increasingly common for people online. According to 2021 survey data from the Pew Research Center, 41% of U.S. adults have experienced some form of online harassment, and 25% of those respondents experienced severe harassment (e.g. stalking, physical threats, sustained harassment, and/or sexual harassment). Here are some examples of hateful conduct, as experienced by the targets, cited in a 2022 research survey by ADL (Anti-Defamation League):
Why is hateful conduct harmful?
Hateful conduct can do more harm than you may realize. Not only does it make people feel like they don’t belong in a specific channel; it can also make them feel like they don’t belong within the broader Twitch community. And the diversity of Twitch users, with all their unique passions, interests, and perspectives, is a big part of what makes Twitch a special place.
Even isolated instances of hateful conduct can quickly snowball and escalate into more severe forms of harassment and offline harms. In ADL’s 2022 research survey, more than one-quarter (27%) of respondents reported that the online harassment they experienced had led to more severe forms such as physical threats, stalking, doxxing (having your personal information shared without your consent), and swatting (having emergency law enforcement response teams sent to your home under false pretenses). The risk of escalation into severe harassment can be just as real if you yourself don’t plan to harass anyone. People often mimic others they respect in their community, and it’s not uncommon online for someone else to interpret an instance of hateful conduct as a sign that it’s ok—or even encouraged—to engage in something worse.
For some people, the threat of these severe forms of harassment can feel constant and inescapable. For instance, the likelihood of experiencing severe harassment is higher for people from marginalized groups—including women, people of color, LGBTQ+, Jewish, and Muslim people—than for non-marginalized groups. In fact, over half (54%) of all LGBTQ+ respondents in ADL’s survey reported being severely harassed. Marginalized groups were also 1.5 times more likely than non-marginalized groups to be harassed because of their physical appearance, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. In this way, hateful conduct online compounds broader patterns of social inequality and controls who gets to participate safely in a community.
Even when it doesn’t escalate into severe harassment, hateful conduct can be deeply harmful to other people. The ADL survey revealed that than 1 in 10 Americans who experience harassment report having depressing and suicidal thoughts, while others experience anxiety, trouble sleeping, difficulty concentrating, and fear of future harassment. These experiences once again are more common for marginalized identity groups who are subjected to hateful conduct, with nearly 40% of Muslim and LGBTQ+ people reporting difficulty sleeping and anxiety, and nearly one-quarter reporting depression and suicidal thoughts.
Hateful conduct can also be harmful economically by discouraging marginalized individuals from starting or building a career online. Nine percent of ADL survey respondents said that the harassment they experienced led them to withdraw from platforms or stop using them altogether. For Twitch streamers, hateful conduct and online harassment can create a toxic environment that drives away new community members, and it can cause creators to turn down opportunities that may increase their spotlight. When the behavior escalates to offline harassment, they may be forced to take drastic measures, like moving out of their home or giving up their online career entirely.
Law professor Danielle Keats Citron has studied this effect among women, concluding in a research paper that “[Anonymous online harassment] discourages women from writing and earning a living online. It interferes with their professional lives. It brands them as incompetent workers and inferior sexual objects.” In a Take Back the Tech report, an interviewed participant added, “My freedom of expression was really stifled by the messages. I decided to change my number and resign from my post.”
Here are some real examples where targets describe the impact of hateful conduct, as cited in ADL’s research:
What are slurs?
A slur is an offensive or degrading term that’s often used to discriminate, denigrate, harass, or encourage violence against someone based on the protected characteristics we listed above.
When thinking about slurs and their impact on others, it’s important to remember that languages and cultures differ and evolve. What may not have been a slur before may be regarded as one now, so it’s best to stay informed. Even if a slur may not be considered as offensive in your location, your stream or chat message can impact anyone, anywhere, and Twitch affords every user globally equal protections under our Hateful Conduct policy. Similarly, you may not consider something a slur in a certain context when talking about your identity group, but others might, including members of that group.
When it comes to slurs (and hateful conduct in general), people often prioritize intent over impact. This means that when harm is caused, we tend to emphasize what we meant by our words or actions, rather than how our words made another person feel or the consequences of our behavior. We might also excuse the offensive words or actions if we perceive them as unintentional or redirect the focus to a person’s intentions (i.e., “I didn’t mean it like that”), rather than focusing on the feelings of the person who has been harmed. Regardless of intent or whether actions and words were purposeful, the targeted or affected person is still harmed. That’s why it is critical to prioritize impact and acknowledge the harm that was caused.
Read our Community Guidelines for more details, but here are some examples of slur usage that is prohibited on Twitch:
Note: At Twitch, we allow certain words or terms, which might otherwise violate our policy, to be used in an empowering way or as terms of endearment when such intent is clear. We also make exceptions for slurs in music—and singing along to music—as long as the song itself is not hateful and the slurs are not combined with other discriminating or denigrating content.
Why are slurs harmful?
Similar to hateful conduct, slurs are harmful not just because they hurt someone in the moment. They can also lead to deeper and more significant damage over time. Psychological research has shown that being called slurs can have serious consequences on the targets’ mental health and wellbeing, including suicidal ideation, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. Targets also report feeling exhausted and frustrated by the process of “cleaning up hate,” which involves deep engagement with abusive images and messages, including slurs.
In addition to the impact on other individuals, using slurs helps reinforce societal inequalities or exclusion by normalizing negative and offensive perceptions about groups of people and the idea that a group of people are different or inferior. Slurs are tools for exclusion: They can communicate to someone else that they “don’t belong,” or worse, that they don’t have value, even if the slur isn’t directed at them. As philosopher of language Kent Bach observes, using or even mentioning a slur is “an in-your-face reminder” of the history behind it, that is, how it developed as a way for describing and directing hate at a specific group of people. In short, using a slur to describe a situation or even a video game character can be just as harmful as calling a specific person a slur.
Like hateful conduct, slurs are also often the first step toward dangerous and extreme forms of harassment. Following a series of posts about her on a neo-Nazi website in 2016, Tanya Gersh, a Jewish realtor in the US was terrorized by the site’s followers, beginning with antisemitic slurs before escalating to death threats left on her voicemail. As a result of the harassment, she experienced panic attacks, feared answering the phone or leaving her home, and her physical health deteriorated. The use of slurs to harass makes people understandably fearful.
It’s important to also remember that slurs are rarely experienced only once, and never in a vacuum. More often than not, the targets of slurs hear them again and again and again throughout their lives, compounding their impact. As journalist Catherine Mayer explains,
People always say of individual incidents, ‘that’s not very serious is it? Don’t let it bother you.’ But it’s the accretion of all of these incidents of low level abuse that matter.
In a similar vein, writer and activist Michelle Taylor has said:
There have been days when whole groups of people have descended onto my timeline to call me every slur and insulting name under the sun, just because I am a Black feminist woman.
The impact of hateful slurs is especially profound when people use them and hear no response from bystanders. Silence sends the signal that those hateful words are okay, encouraging others to use them or engage in other hateful behavior. Silence also harms the groups directly targeted by the slur. Not pushing back against slurs sends a message to others that they could be targeted next, potentially escalating harassment to doxxing, swatting, threats, violence, etc. They suppress the ability of people—especially vulnerable and marginalized groups—to fully participate in a community by making them fear what might happen if they do.
What can I do to learn more about hateful conduct and slurs?
You can educate yourself more about how hateful conduct and slurs affect online environments by reading some of these resources. Here are some to get started:
What if I unintentionally engage in hateful behavior and someone calls me out?
If someone confronts you, don’t react by getting defensive and invalidating their feelings. Try to listen by asking them to explain how and why they were harmed by the hateful behavior or slur, and withhold judgment. Treat it as an opportunity to learn about someone else’s experience.
What can I do to become a better citizen on Twitch and other online environments when it comes to hateful conduct and slurs?
Think about your behavior on Twitch as well as in other online environments, and ask yourself why you act in specific ways or use language that others might find hateful:
Is it out of habit? Is it because you didn’t know that it was hateful? Is it because you wanted to cause harm to someone else? Again, if you get called out, try to avoid being defensive. Instead, focus on the incident’s impact on someone else or the community.
None of us is perfect. We all make mistakes sometimes. Even if you think you were “just joking,” another person may not see it that way. That doesn’t make you a bad person. However, we all have a responsibility to reflect on how our actions affect other people in our communities and adjust our behavior so we can be more positive and responsible community members.
We also have an essential role as community members to shape community culture, and to not act as bystanders when witnessing hateful conduct and slurs. This is especially true for streamers. Research shows how online content creators tend to drive behavioral habits because they’re role models and leaders of the communities they create. Most people agree that hateful conduct and slurs are harmful and have no place in online communities—but taking action against it can be daunting. In a recent survey of online gamers, 76% of participants agreed that hateful conduct and slurs should be confronted, but less than 20% reported that they had actually confronted someone who was acting in a hateful manner or using hateful slurs. The reluctance is understandable, but unfortunately, it adds to the problem by normalizing bias, exclusion, and harassment. Instead, you can act as an ally by:
Note: If you’re a creator, you are responsible for ensuring that content that appears in your channel abides by our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. If hateful or harassing content does appear on your stream or chat, we expect that you take the necessary steps to mitigate this behavior and ensure that it does not occur again.
Additionally, you can also help by speaking out about hateful conduct and slurs and why they are harmful, applauding and amplifying positive content when people are acting respectfully, and reflecting on your behavior to assess how you can contribute more positively to the community.
Again, hateful conduct is too often normalized in online spaces, as we see in this example from a study by Dr. Stephanie Ortiz on how men of color have come to accept racism in online gaming. A gamer was asked how he copes with racism in online gaming and responded:
I don’t care [pauses].
Well, let me rephrase that. I mean, I cared about it for too long. . . .
Ignorance is exhausting to deal with. . . . I’ve heard it for so long, and I harbored a lot of resentment against these strangers I would never meet in my life. I had to make it stop hurting.
Stopping the hurt felt by so many vulnerable and marginalized communities in online spaces can start with you.