Good luck to moderators
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Twitch will no longer allow streamers and commenters to go around calling one another simps. The term a recent favorite in the Twitch community that nominally refers to men who seem desperate for a womans attention will be banned when used as an insult under Twitchs upcoming revamp of its harassment policy. Incel and virgin will be banned as insults too, Twitch COO Sara Clemens said during a live streamed town hall this afternoon.
The new policy, first spotted by e-sports consultant Rod Breslau, goes into place on January 22nd. It also includes stricter rules around sexual harassment and seems to give Twitch more leeway to ban streamers and commenters who make offensive comments.
Twitch is also rejecting emotes that include simp
The policy overhaul comes after Twitch was inundated with reports of sexual harassment within its community and complaints that the company had ignored the issue for years. Twitch said in June that it was committed to continuing our efforts to make Twitch a safer environment and that a review of its hateful conduct and harassment policies was underway.
Simp is being banned under a portion of the revamped policy that prohibits derogatory statements about another persons perceived sexual preferences. And that does include negatively targeting another person with sexually focused terms, Clemens said. Twitch is also proactively denying emotes that include the term simp.
Twitchs updated harassment policy lists a number of banned behaviors relating to sexual harassment. Among them is a ban on making derogatory statements about another persons perceived sexual practices or sexual morality. The policy goes on to say that would include Repeatedly negatively targeting another person with sexually-focused terms, such as whore or virgin.
There arent details on exactly how Twitch will enforce the ban around simp. But moderators may find it to be tricky, given just how often the term is thrown around on Twitch. The Verge has reached out to Twitch for more details.
Twitch is banning the terms simp, incel, and virgin when used to insult other people. The ban comes as part of the company’s updated sexual harassment policies going into effect in January 2021.
