Even brief accidental glimpses of such images “will be removed and will result in enforcement,” the company writes. And if you intentionally promote, create or share deepfake porn, that’s grounds for an instaban: Doing so “may result in an indefinite suspension on the first offense.”
The company is not doing this on a whim – like BuzzFeed News And NBC news reported last month, Twitch recently had its own deepfake scandal. On Jan. 30, Twitch streamer Brandon “Atrioc” Ewing left a browser window open on stream that reportedly featured the faces of popular female Twitch streamers, including Pokimane, QTCinderella, and Maya Higa, “grafted onto the bodies of naked women,” such as Buzz feed tells it. In a tearful stream of apology, Atrioc admitted to visiting a deepfake site out of “morbid curiosity” about the images. “I just clicked a damn link at 2am and morale hasn’t caught up with me,” he said, vowing never to do anything like that again.
It’s not clear if Twitch took any enforcement action against Atrioc at the time — the company didn’t immediately respond to a fact-check request — but the new policy makes it clear that at least some action would be taken.
Twitch tends to crack down on accounts that share sexual images, even if they accidentally end up on a live stream. Atrioc himself was previously suspended for showing a flaccid penis on screen, according to streaming news site Win.ggand Pokemon famous got a warning (no ban) after accidentally opening PornHub in a browser tab. But Twitch’s previous stance on deepfakes was extremely limited: it only mentioned them in the context of “sharing negative spoofed or artistic content to abuse or demean another person.”
However, Twitch previously banned “broadcasting or uploading content that contains images of real nudity” and threatened instabans for “sexual assault and exploitation.”
Originally, QTCinderella had vowed to sue the deepfake porn site that brought Atrioc to the world’s attention, but she has since told NBC News that she’s given up: “Every attorney I’ve spoken to has basically concluded that we don’t have a case; there is no way to sue the man.
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