Twitch makes its complicated rulebook easier to follow

Twitch is striving for more clarity about why and how it executes its policies. On Monday, the company said it’s adding Enforcement Notes, which it describes as “additional clarifications and examples within the Community Guidelines designed to make our rules easier to follow.” The notes come on the heels of (and complement) the company’s recent promise that it would do a better job of telling rule-breakers why their accounts were suspended.

The company says Enforcement Notes will outline how its rules apply to the trends you see on the platform. For example, if a new trending topic violates one of Twitch’s policies, it will publish a note under that rule, clarifying precisely which behaviors are and aren’t out of bounds. It will also publish new notes in response to data spikes it observes, widespread community confusion or trending discussions on social media.

Twitch has already added some enforcement notes to its community guidelines safety page. For example, one note says selling activities that could cause harm in exchange for money (like taking shots for subscriptions) is forbidden under its “Self-destructive behavior” rule. In addition, it states under “Sexual content” that direct links to websites that primarily provide intimate content aren’t allowed on the platform. Under “Impersonation,” it states that if someone else is posing as you, you can report the imitating stream to Twitch when it doesn’t qualify for a DMCA removal.

Twitch says its enforcement notes won’t replace any of its existing methods of communication with users, like blog posts or tweets. Instead, the company describes the notes as “a source of truth for all policy and enforcement updates.”

Right now, the easiest way to learn about Enforcement Notes is through a browser page search on the community guidelines page. However, Twitch says it will eventually add a visual symbol to indicate new ones. It’s also working on a built-in search feature to make the notes easier to spot without using Cmd-F or Ctrl-F.