Twitch Launches A New Controversial ‘Hot Tub’ Category Due To Advertisers Pushback, But Is It Worth The Risk?

Twitch which is a popular social video platform based in San Francisco had gained so much attention all because of the various famous gamers who can gain access and login and broadcast their video game matches and even talk and discuss other’s games. Have had a recent setback. As we all saw, they had taken down one of the advertisements of the famous and widely known Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa. That is when it all went down… there was a lot of noise created as her streams were tagged as not advertiser-friendly because of Twitch’s strict policy towards nudity on its platform. 

A lot of people had commented as they were against it because apparently a lot of Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa’s steamy hot tub streams were removed but to be honest here Twitch was also not entirely at fault as they were compelled to do it following their policy rules. Although with so many upcoming questions from the users all over Twitch had to respond to them so they said that they have updated their policy but no matter what they won’t be changing the content and any ‘sexually suggestive content and any kind of misconduct in and off the platform will remain banned but that will not be banning the users from posting in swimwear or in hot tubs but they have requested to the users that it will really be helpful if they could dress according to the content of their streams. 

The place where Twitch had gone wrong was that they had removed the advertisements without acknowledging the users which was the main cause of all this noise but it later did apologize as they realized that they should have informed before taking down specific advertisements. So to bring the situation in control and to get things back to how they were before Twitch launched a new category named ‘Hot Tubs, Pools and Beaches’. This is a good strategy as it is a win-win situation for both because the users can post anything they like and the company won’t even have to take it down as the new category will prevent it. 

Although they brought in this new category there will be a problem that they will still face which they are yet to combat as Hot Tub streamers are mostly women who have to face a lot of hate comments, criticism, and harassment from the viewers which is very inhuman of them so Twitch straightforwardly brought up the topic and wrote in its blog post that ‘Being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules, and Twitch will not take enforcement action against women, or anyone on our service, for their perceived attractiveness.’ But what they did do to lower the hate comments and harassment for women is that Twitch removed all the hot tubs and pools related streams from the “Just Chatting” section and shifted them under the latest category they launched being ‘Hot Tubs, Pools, and Beaches’. The only problem they have is that they will have less revenue in this new category so Twitch has to persuade advertisers to go for the ‘Hot Tubs, Pools and Beaches’ section so that they have a continuous flow of their revenue. The only question is can they do it? If so, how will they be doing it? That is only for us to wait and watch.