Framing it as if they only ban aggressively for actual nudity is unfair. They ban aggressively on all kinds of fronts, including very subjective criteria, they just do it very inconsistently.
For all I care, they can do whatever they want. But I do feel like they are hard to take seriously until they decide to apply their rules equally. They do not. They have egregiously played favorites in a way that is surprising for such a big and respected entity as Twitch.
The thing that sucks is, the irresponsible ways that Twitch and YouTube behave hurts everyone, because they try to sell ads on content they know advertisers wouldn't like, and when advertisers wise up they overreact and become adverse to supporting small content creators. They would rather have "safe," big content creators instead, where they can feel like they're getting their money's worth.
Any examples that can help me understand?
Perhaps the advertising angle goes hand in hand with the above inequality. Ads are essentially buying real-estate in your brain. One way is to have exclusives (i.e., buying out the room), another is Yelp-style (pay-to-play).
Twitch Booby Streamers - A Crisis of Culture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySypTRw8AvY (50:06)
If you've got the time, the above two videos are a great rundown of the current 'sexual streaming' situation on twitch by one of the first ever professional streamers. He can be a bit edgy at times, and there's swearing in the video if that's not your thing, but he has a solid, well thought-out opinion when it comes to most things. The whole situation is a mess, with crazy misogynist incel types on one side and Twitch on the other just sort of ignoring complaints and being complicit in the mass harassment of some of the women on their platform.
If you want some examples of their inconsistent application of the rules, you could check out many of the things LegendaryLea was given short temporary bans for, then compare it to e.g. the stream IamSSunny was permanently banned for, which was later arbitrarily reduced to a temporary ban - driving home just how inconsistent they are with their own rules. Mildly NSFW though, so I won't post any direct examples here.
A cynic may interpret that as the desired outcome. From a business perspective, independent YouTubers don't have much to offer the platform.
If you stick to browsing Twitch by game you almost never see them, and the top game streams have 10k-20k viewers at all times. You have to specifically go to the IRL section of Twitch to find camgirl style streams, and most of these "sexual streamers" have under 1k viewers. It's hardly a mainstream part of Twitch, and is something you have to specifically hunt down.
I don't have a strong opinion of what should or shouldn't be allowed, but that statement is false.
For example, if you browse League of Legends in the evening, very often a couple of the top 24 thumbnails are girl streamers in sexy outfits who are not really focused on playing, and do provocative things when people sub / donate.
All that is needed is for Twitch mods to be a bit more active in retagging such streams to IRL instead of the game category. In general I think that they are doing a great job. You used to see a lot more League of Legends streams where a female host dressed in a revealing outfit had her cam much larger than the gameplay and it was clearly more focused on sex appeal than gameplay, but that type of stream is now mostly cordoned off in IRL.
A simple rule like "streamer camera can only take up X% of the screen, and gameplay must take up at least Y% of the screen" otherwise it gets retagged as an IRL stream solves the issue.
Compare the game focused sections like PUBG, or League of Legends, or World of Warcraft. These sections of the site are clearly the dominant and original viewing categories on Twitch from the beginning. If you just want to watch a game then you can go to these sections and do that.
On the other hand if you want to watch for the streamer then the IRL section is there to cater to whatever type of streamer you want to watch, including streamers who have followers based on sex appeal, not game finesse.
It feels like manufactured outrage to me if you are going to the IRL section and complaining about the contents. Because the IRL section isn't game focused in the first place. It is personality focused, and sexual appeal is going to be part of it. You also have streams of buff shirtless guys working out in the gym on IRL, just like you have streams of women in tight clothing. If you go the IRL section and start complaining about it not being game focused that's just silly.
Well, exactly that is debateable. Sexual appeal is often coupled with a completely flat or acted personality. And if they have somewhat of a personality, then usually the stream is constantly interrupted by them reading out donations or whatnot.
And this discussion is not just about the rest of Twitch. Some people would actually like to use the IRL section to find streamers whose personality they like. Having the top-viewed streams there being focused on sexual appeal generally makes it harder to find actual personality streamers. It also means that actual personality streamers often avoid IRL.
But then they don't avoid it completely either. Some artists now stream in IRL instead of Creative. The section Music has been pretty much dead since the introduction of IRL, because people making music now pretty much either choose between Creative or IRL, leaving Music for completely personality-devoid streams of pre-recorded music.
Of course, there's the other image problem with gaming competitions etc. who will hesitate a bit if Twitch was conducive to this behavior.
With less snark, advertising as an industry is famous for “sex sells”.
Twitch already has a reputation with gamers/streamers of becoming something close to a camsite slowly(while it seems hyperbolic, sentiments of most of people there usually are too), contrary to what it was meant to be - a purely game streaming centered site. Apart from infuriating other usual steamers on the site who will lose viewers to the 'sexual content' steamers (and will result in general discontentment). These streamers will most likely leave to YouTube Gaming or something else. If that doesn't happen, there are long term ramifications to consider.
Say Twitch accepts that section of streamers and continues with MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY labels etc. Now obviously those videos won't be monetized so they are more of an expense now. Then, if they become a significant part of the website, they'll get questions from upper management. Despite silicon valley considering itself 'progressive', none of them will be okay with this (see patreon).
Then comes the next step: Gaming competitions and other engagements. If a gaming competition accepts Twitch as a sponsor, people will see it as if the events agree with that part of Twitch, which is a no-no because those events have kids' parents to consider (remember, you still can't swear in most similar events and hosts get fined if they do).
While this may seem like a weak argument, a weak enough link to sex industry is enough for investors to pull out. That's because they fear the occasional articles from The Daily Beast and The New Yorker about the effects of Twitch on teenagers' sexuality and the world in general. Now say one of those lead to someone from the NYT or Bloomberg looking for a story, you've got investors making calls who read a lengthy piece about how Twitch is preying on adolescent kids.
Do you think this is too outlandish? Look at YouTube's 'weird videos aimed at kids' problem and how many people it is hiring and time it is investing to solve that problem. Twitch is more at risk since it is a newer brand still at the 'first impression' stage for many. And boy you don't want to get that wrong.
Ask parents if they are okay with letting their kids have (paid!) membership on Twich after that news gets out. Parents are a huge effect on revenue of services their kids use.
Twitch has a large number of sex workers who are just using it as a conduit to find "customers" and are not contributing to the community, but detracting from it. There are other sites dedicated to that.
This is especially problematic for female streamers who are community members and get constantly harassed with "tits or gtfo" or worse. They struggle to be taken seriously as gamers due to the cheap antics and "accidental wardrobe malfunctions" employed by the other women on the site, and are punished for it in terms of number of viewers.
Reiterating OP, the momentum of this thing looks more like -- whatever it was before -- it is becoming or has become an generalized attack on sex appeal in a realm where AO/R/18+-rated content is still frequently a kiss-of-death, if not something needlessly danced around. I get that some gamers may not want this kind of thing but, c'mon, let people be people. If it's really bothersome then leave the site and maybe management will make a change after enough follow suit. It's already buried in a ghetto of other banners under "Browse" and I didn't see and there doesn't seem to be any other way to get to it besides search.
Also the twitch community should really evaluate it's complaints about outsiders given that it exists in the husk of justin.tv's corpse.
On the other hand, they're a company so they're perfectly allowed to decide where they draw the line and enforce that.
I just hope we don't accidentally cause a regression with women in gaming by accidentally enforcing a dress code that mostly impacts women.
See the recent Naomi Wu controversy.
I don’t know if this is a joke, but that is a thing that happens.
Given how long I was blind to my own (relatively straightforward) bisexuality, I think the real answer is that people in charge literally cannot conceive of sexuality that far away from their worldview.
This makes no sense. Either Dad should take back the credit card or adults can make their own decisions. Either way, I can’t see how that would have anything to do with the person streaming the video asking for cash!
I mean, argue that cute girls have it easy getting cash for titilating their viewers. Argue that Twitch isn’t for tits. But arguing that boobs made someone spend money they couldn’t afford is just debasing to men everywhere.
Where the lines are drawn, how the limits are enacted, and whether or not something is harmful is of course a matter of opinion.
This is not any kind of fraud, or bait and switch. This is, I show you an image and ask you to send me money. No, the world I want to live in presumes a level of self discipline and self responsibility, and offers a freedom of speech which I think is antithetical to the level of thought-police that your idea of community policing would require.
How is a donor's financial wellbeing the solicitor's problem? Sexy cam streams may be a total waste of money but at least it's not going to give you cancer as well as a short-term thrill.