Twitch and YouTube are working towards preventing the misogynistic harassment faced by female gamers uploading videos and broadcasting gameplay footage to the sites, according to a new report from the BBC’s Newsbeat.
Newsbeat spoke to female gamers who use sites such as Twitch and YouTube, with them stating that they receive regular sexist and misogynistic comments online from other users. As such, the BBC contacted both sites to see whether they were working towards tackling this issue, with both claiming that they are trying to stay on top of such behavior despite its prevalence.
The BBC spoke to streamer xCandyLashes, who has nearly 100,000 followers on Twitch, who detailed the abuse she has received from some commenters. “They tell me they’re going to find me and they’re going to rape me,” she said. “They say they’re going to kill me. Anything they can, just to stop me doing what I’m doing.
“It makes me feel terrified because I don’t know what to do about it.”
Image Credit: Twitter / xCandyLashes
Twitch programme manager Anna Prosser Robinson said that the company is “testing new technology” that will “provide a more nuanced approach to moderation,” adding that in the future the site will be able to “use technology to identify messages that might not be automatically banned, but might have a malicious intent or might have words that make someone feel unsafe.”
YouTube also released a statement regarding Newsbeat’s report, which reads: “Bullying and harassment have no place on the platform and we have clear community guidelines against it.” YouTube also recently debuted its YouTube Heroes program, which aimed to encourage users to take part in the site’s moderation in order to obtain “rewards” such as the ability to mass-flag videos, but unfortunately for the site this didn’t go down so well.
