Comments on Twitter could now lead to punishment on Twitch

What you say off of Twitch could now affect your standing on Twitch. (credit: Getty Images)

Video game streaming platform Twitch has long taken a proactive stand against harassment, with a detailed set of community guidelines and tools like AutoMod intended to protect streamers and viewers alike. But an update to those guidelines announced on Thursday caught our eye because it expands that protection to encompass other online platforms, to some extent.

As Twitch put it in a blog post announcing the changes, "we will now consider verifiable hateful or harassing conduct that takes place off-Twitch when making moderation decisions for actions that occur on Twitch. If you use other services to direct hate or harassment towards someone on Twitch, we will consider it a violation of Twitch's policies."

In other words, harassing comments left on a streamer's YouTube or Twitter account (or anywhere else "off-Twitch") could now contribute to the harasser being banned from Twitch. As far as we're aware, it's rare for a content-moderation policy to extend beyond a platform's own virtual walls and to conduct on the wider Internet.

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