It’s Twitch’s turn to play the inclusion card. To give its users the opportunity to better express themselves on its platform, Twitch is offering more than 350 new tags.

Keywords around gender, sexuality and ethnic origins are intended to help users more accurately represent themselves and find channels tailored to their searches.

Give more choice to creators. That’s the explanation Twitch gave when it announced the creation of more than 350 new tags to better define its streams: “The list of tags include transgender, Black, disabled, veteran, and Vtuber, among many others. We will also remove references to “ally” from the LGBTQIA+ tag, and are instead creating a standalone ally tag.

”These additions won’t change how tagging works and are completely optional. They simply give creators more choices,” explained the platform via its blog.

More representation

To propose these new tags which reflect current movements, the platform outlined that it collaborated with organisations like The Trevor Project, GLAAD, SpecialEffect and AbleGamers and other experts specialised in the progress of these underrepresented or marginalised communities.

The streaming platform has also turned to its own community for feedback and ideas. Users will be able to use the UserVoice site to share their suggestions for new tags, the most popular of which will then be analysed before being validated if they comply with community rules, Twitch said.

“Still, we understand that, as comprehensive as we have tried to be, we will inevitably miss tags that our community is looking for, and we encourage you to share your suggestions via UserVoice to let us know what else you want to see.”

Importance of moderation

Twitch is aware that the issue of harassment is a key one. To avoid “trolls”, Twitch has emphasised its intention to establish firm policies and moderation tools: “As with any means of discovery, there are bad actors who may use the ability to find streams for malicious purposes. Users that utilise these tags as a means to harass those displaying the tags will be subject to enforcement of our Hateful Conduct and Harassment Policy".

Recently, many female streamers have denounced the insults and other sexist and racist behaviours they have been victims of during their livestreams on the platform, pointing to a lack of moderation.

Could these new inclusive tags help Twitch improve its image, while other social networks pull out all stops to attract more young users, who are deeply concerned by such current issues? Recently, Instagram decided to let its users choose and display their pronouns.

 - AFP Relaxnews