Community Guidelines

These are the Community Guidelines that Twitch users are asked to follow in order to promote a positive experience for all. Last modified on 09/26/2018

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At Twitch, our mission is to provide the best shared social video experience created by our growing community where creators and communities can interact safely. To achieve this goal, we ask that all users participate in such a way that promotes a friendly, positive experience for our global community.

To protect the integrity of our community, as the provider of the service, we at Twitch reserve the right to suspend any account at any time for any conduct that we determine to be inappropriate or harmful. You are free to appeal your suspension, but we are not required to provide a reason for our decision.

For minor first and second suspensions, your access to the site will be restricted for 24 hours, but there is no fixed time for the length of subsequent suspensions or suspensions for severe violations. We will consider appeals of indefinite suspensions based on our review of your conduct, account standing, and any other information we have. Our Customer Support and Moderation teams review all requests for reinstatement, and we process these along with all other support requests.

In addition to our Terms of Service, we provide the following guidelines for all user conduct and content on our services. These guidelines fall under a common sense philosophy and apply to all user generated content and activity on our services. Violating our Community Guidelines may lead to the suspension of your account and access to our services, as well as the removal of any associated content. This is considered a living document that we regularly update based on the evolution of the Twitch community and service.

Additional guidelines or specific exceptions may be applicable for certain services or properties under the Twitch Service. At present, please refer to this page for such details: Curse Website Links and Resources

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Breaking the Law

You must respect all applicable local, national, and international laws while using our services. Any content or activity featuring, encouraging, offering, or soliciting illegal activity is prohibited.

Suspension Evasion

All suspensions are binding until expiration or removal upon appeal. Any attempt to circumvent a site-wide, community, or chat suspension by using other accounts, identities, personalities, or presence on another user's account will also result in suspension. Suspension evasion will not only increase the length of suspension, but may lead to an indefinite suspension.

Self-Destructive Behavior

Any activity that may endanger your life or lead to your physical harm is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: suicide threats, intentional physical trauma, illegal use of drugs, illegal or dangerous consumption of alcohol, and dangerous or distracted driving.

Violence and Threats

Acts and threats of violence will be taken seriously and are considered zero-tolerance violations and all accounts associated with such activities will be indefinitely suspended. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Attempts or threats to physically harm or kill others
• Attempts or threats to hack, DDOS, or SWAT others
• Use of weapons to physically threaten, intimidate, harm, or kill others

Hateful Conduct and Harassment

Hateful conduct is any content or activity that promotes, encourages, or facilitates discrimination, denigration, objectification, harassment, or violence based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, medical condition, physical characteristics, or veteran status, and is prohibited. Any hateful conduct is considered a zero-tolerance violation and all accounts associated with such conduct will be indefinitely suspended.

Harassment is any content or activity that attempts to intimidate, degrade, abuse, or bully others, or creates a hostile environment for others, and is prohibited. Depending on the severity of the offense, your account may be indefinitely suspended on the first violation.

We prohibit using Twitch to facilitate hateful conduct or harassment, whether the targets are on or off Twitch. Individuals, communities or organizations that do so are not allowed to use our services. We may take action against users for hateful conduct or harassment that occurs off Twitch services that is directed at Twitch users.

Learn more about our hateful conduct and harassment policies and enforcement.

Unauthorized Sharing of Private Information

Do not invade the privacy of others. It is prohibited to share content that may reveal private personal information about individuals, or their private property, without permission. This includes but is not limited to:

• Sharing personally identifiable information (such as real name, location, or ID)
• Sharing restricted or protected social profiles or any information from those profiles
• Sharing content that violates another's reasonable expectation of privacy, for example streaming from a private space, without permission

Impersonation

Content or activity meant to impersonate an individual or organization is prohibited. Any attempts to misrepresent yourself as a member of Twitch representatives is a zero-tolerance violation and will result in indefinite suspension.

Spam, Scams, and Other Malicious Conduct

Any content or activity that disrupts, interrupts, harms, or otherwise violates the integrity of Twitch services or another user's experience or devices is prohibited. Such activity includes:

• Posting large amounts of repetitive, unwanted messages or user reports
• Distributing unauthorized advertisements
• Phishing
• Defrauding others
• Spreading malware or viruses
• Misinformation (such as feigning distress, posting misleading metadata, or intentional channel miscategorization)
• Tampering (such as artificially inflating follow or live viewer stats)
• Selling or sharing user accounts
• Reselling Twitch services or features (such as channel Moderator status)

Nudity, Pornography, and Other Sexual Content

Nudity and sexually explicit content or activities, such as pornography, sexual acts or intercourse, and sexual services, are prohibited.

Content or activities that threaten or promote sexual violence or exploitation are strictly prohibited and may be reported to law enforcement. Child exploitation will be reported to authorities via the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Sexually suggestive content or activities are also prohibited, although they may be allowed in educational contexts or for pre-approved licensed content, in each case subject to additional restrictions.

Learn more about our sexual content policies and enforcement.

Extreme Violence, Gore, and Other Obscene Conduct

Content that exclusively focuses on extreme or gratuitous gore and violence is prohibited.

Unauthorized Content Sharing and Other Copyright Violations

Uploading any content that you do not own, do not have the rights to, or are otherwise not authorized to use, violates our Terms of Service and may make your account liable to DMCA takedowns by third-party rights holders. We do not tolerate, for example: rebroadcasting other Twitch broadcasters' content, playing pirated games, showing third-party movies and television shows, rebroadcasting a sports match, playing on unauthorized private servers, or uploading content from other sites without permission of the copyright owner.

Additional Content Guidelines

Content Labeling

You are expected to accurately label your content to the best of your ability. When choosing category or tag, please choose whichever best describes your content. Deliberate or extensive misuse of titles, tags, games/categories, or other metadata are prohibited.

Respect Intellectual Property Rights

When broadcasting on Twitch, you should create content that is original or you can share content that you are authorized to broadcast. Content that involves replicas, derivative creations, or performances of others' copyrighted content may violate another's intellectual property and be subject to a takedown by a rights holder. We encourage creators to assess their content for adherence to applicable copyright laws, including fair use, and to secure all appropriate rights if needed, before sharing the content on Twitch. Also, keep in mind Twitch applies a repeat infringer policy; multiple copyright strikes on your account will lead to a permanent suspension of your account.

As this policy applies to music and other performance arts on Twitch, please note the following:

• Performance Arts: Performances of pre-existing works require that you have all appropriate rights to share the content and/or your own performance of that work.
• Live Music Performance & Creation: Music content should focus on live creation and performance of original music. You may also stream a live performance of a "cover" song (i.e., a song written by someone else) so long as it does not incorporate recorded musical or other audio elements created or owned by someone else (e.g., the instrumental track of someone else's recording).
• Recorded Music: Radio-style broadcasts featuring recorded music are reserved only for approved music labels. Live music performances such as karaoke, covering someone else's music, and lip-syncing/impersonation cannot be the focus of your music content.

Additional Gaming Content Guidelines

Cheating in Online Games

Any activity, such as cheating, hacking, botting, or tampering, that gives the account owner an unfair advantage in an online multiplayer game, is prohibited. This also includes exploiting another broadcaster's live broadcast in order to harass them in-game, such as stream sniping.

Closed Alphas/Betas and Pre-Release Games

We ask that you respect all publisher/developer-enforced release dates, embargoes, and NDAs by waiting to broadcast these games until everyone else gets to. Unless given prior approval, your channel may be subject to DMCA takedown by a rights holder. Rights holders should report violations in accordance with our DMCA Guidelines. We ask that users refrain from reporting possible violations via the user report tool.