Twitch, the Amazon-owned live-streaming platform, announced a major overhaul of its suspensions policy on Tuesday, moving away from a blanket ban system. The company will now implement two distinct suspension types: streaming suspensions and chatting suspensions, aiming to better match penalties to specific community guideline violations.
Previously, any temporary suspension resulted in a user losing all access to Twitch, including the ability to watch streams while logged in, chat, or access basic account information. Under the new system, announced in an official blog post, the restrictions will be more targeted.
New Targeted Enforcement System
If a user violates Twitch’s Community Guidelines during a livestream, their account will receive a streaming suspension. This prevents them from going live and temporarily disables chat on their channel. However, they can still watch other streams, chat on other channels, and access their user dashboard. Their existing video-on-demand content remains viewable.
Conversely, if a violation occurs within a chat, the user will receive a chat suspension. This prevents them from participating in chats on other streams, but they retain the ability to stream their own content, watch other streamers, and chat in their own channel.
Severity and Escalation Remain Key
Twitch emphasised that higher severity violations, which present a greater risk to the community, will still result in both chatting and streaming suspensions simultaneously. "There is no place for serious violations on Twitch," the company stated, noting that the most serious offences will continue to lead to an indefinite suspension, removing all platform access.
The duration of temporary suspensions remains unchanged, ranging from 24 hours to 30 days. Twitch confirmed that with each new violation, the length of the suspension will increase, and accumulating multiple temporary suspensions can still result in an indefinite ban.
Defining Harm and Future Updates
The platform determines violation severity by assessing the extent of harm caused or with the potential to be caused. Twitch defines harm as any action leading to physical, emotional, social, or financial damage to a user or to Twitch itself.
The company stated that this new approach, while more complex to implement than the previous all-or-nothing system, allows for fairer and more proportionate enforcement. Twitch also confirmed it is developing additional suspension types that will be introduced in future platform updates.