Twitch Introduces 350 New Community Tags for Race, Sexuality, Gender, and More
By Jack O'Dwyer
Popular streaming platform Twitch has implemented over 300 new stream tags creators can use to identify with their communities.
The announcement was made on Friday, May 21 on the official Twitch news blog. According to the post, the tags were created to "celebrate" streamers and their associated communities. These include several topics such as race, gender, mental health, ability, sexuality, and much more. They will go live next week and are, of course, completely optional. The tags will have no effect on how the system works going forward.
"They simply give creators more choices," the post read.
Twitch Introduces 350 New Community Tags
According to Twitch, the initiative steams from the platform's transgender community. They originally requested a "transgender" tag and continued to bring it to developer attention over a series of months. Finally, Twitch has not only listened but expanded on the idea, writing that they "should have done this sooner."
The new tags include a diverse and heavily researched list of terms and identities. In designing them, Twitch sought out the expertise of leading organizations focused on marginalized communities such as GLAAD, SpecialEffect, AbleGamers, and The Trevor Project as well as Twitch users, themselves.
"When viewers talk about why they love Twitch, they don’t just talk about the content. They talk about creators, what they care about, and the communities they have built," the platform wrote, "By expanding tags, we are giving creators more ways to be discovered and viewers more ways to find communities that they want to call home."
Indeed, they have several other aspects in the works to improve upon their 2018 broadcast classification system. Users are encouraged to reach out via UserVoice to suggest additional tags they feel should be included. Highly upvoted suggestions will be reviewed every week and added should they meet the appropriate standards.
"The Twitch community is incredibly diverse and the tags available to creators should reflect and celebrate that," it wrote.
Unfortunately, the platform is well aware of potential abuses by some less-than-compassionate users. They've instituted appropriate repercussions to this end as well as directly stating that any users "that utilize these tags as a means to harass those displaying the tags" will face consequences outlined in their Hateful Conduct and Harassment Policy. Twitch encouraged creators to learn the Moderation Tools at their disposal and not be afraid to use them.
A livestream to explain more about the new tags and answer any pressing questions will take place on Wednesday, May 26, at 12:30 p.m. ET on Twitch's official channel. More information about the new system can be found via the original post.