Controlling Community Identity:Twitch's platform policy and the politics of streamer communities

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Controlling Community Identity

Twitch's platform policy and the politics of streamer communities

By Jip Kaandorp, University of Amsterdam (10431004) jip.kaandorp@student.uva.nl Bachelor's Thesis Media and Information by Bogna Konior 10 October 2019

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Abstract

Content creation and livestreaming on social media has grown to dominate the way we consume our entertainment with corporations and traditional media swiftly make a move on the platforms. The early adopters and most users of our well known social media platforms however are unaffiliated "amateurs" who employ these platforms as a creative outlet and a way to achieve monetary gains doing what they love. The questions and controversies surrounding the increasing professionalization of amateur community culture by way of monetizing community participation, interaction and loyalty deserves attention. One of the most established forms of professionalized communities exist on the platform Twitch.tv which has existed under different names since 2007. In this paper I aim to show the involvement of Amazon in 2014 has lead to the transformation of the platform, its streamers and communities on Twitch. By doing this I will show the exploitation of the produser in a field of employment that is too bound by the often arbitrary rules and varying enforcement of those rules by the platform the content creator is active on. Through providing a historical and platform analysis of Twitch I want to claim that if we are to introduce corporate money into the field of streaming, the rights of amateur users should be universally defined and protected.

Keywords: Twitch, streamer, social media, platform economy, community

TwitchCon: An Introduction

On September 27th, Emmett Shear, CEO of Twitch and co-founder of Justin.tv enters the stage at the opening ceremony of TwitchCon 2019, a yearly event that celebrates 'the Twitch community'. Emmett Shear dressed dapperly sits down with Twitch streamer 'Ezekiel III' to discuss the progress Twitch has made over the years. Fifty minutes of dialogue ensues, met with ironic laughter and cries of disbelief across the internet as they discuss their policy and clarify their stance on frequent community controversies. The first topic of discussion, symbolic for this paper, is the complete overhaul of Twitch's visual interface trading in the purple overtones of the colloquial 'old Twitch' for that of the universal sleek white (or black if you use night mode) colors we see being adopted by every big tech controlled platform. Proudly, Emmett restates that all these changes are implemented as brand strategies that will benefit the communities on Twitch. Any person with a skeptical bone in their body will of course read "good for the platform" as "good for Twitch". Thus, not acknowledging that the extraneous rebranding efforts Twitch corporate has been trying to push since being acquired by Amazon required the slow and painful strangling of its old traditions, culture and discharging of problematic employees who keep reminiscing about the 'good old days'. The self-reflection segment of the keynote touches upon the inconsistencies and loose interpretations and applications of their community guidelines, something that they are working on changing, Emmett promises the streamers hoping to see their future career be more secure. For this is not the first time Twitch has been trying to enforce new policy onto the platform that was heralded with promises of clarity and safety for its user base so they would have all the tools needed to protect themselves and prevent prosecution by the Twitch

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moderation team. Back in February 2018, Twitch hosted a conversation on their own corporate channel explaining their new community guidelines that were supposed to clarify Twitch's stance on hateful conduct, anti-harassment and sexual content ("Twitch - New Community Guidelines"). These categories, along with self-destructive behavior are the bedrock of controversy on Twitch and it's ambiguous moderation enforcement. Since that announcement of the new community guidelines ('Twitch.tv - Community Guidelines'), there has been a plethora of inconsistent moderation choices that I will extrapolate in depth later in this thesis. It is necessary to address these issues in order to show that corporate entities who own social media platforms are destroying culture by virtue of the undemocratic changes they make to the platform in pursuit of brand optimization. Banning a single content creator, or streamer in Twitch's case, appears to be warranted if it benefits the platform. Legal battles have followed from moderation on Twitch, such is the case with streamer James "Phantoml0rd" Vega who was permanently banned from the platform on July 2016 (Alexander, 'Popular CS:GO Streamer'). According to Phantoml0rd, there was a lack of clear information regarding the ban conditions and despite his alleged involvement in suspicious gambling promotion, the termination of his contract was not handled like one would expect from a primary employer. Recently, judges have ruled in James Vega's favor and stated that his prosecution against the unethical Twitch contract clauses gave him ground to sue for damages (Saed). These and other legal arguments surrounding social media governance (Suzor) give us grounds to start shifting the discussion from expected conduct of the moderated to permitted enforcement of the moderators, especially when livelihood dependency is at stake. Therefore a closer look at the Twitch's conduct in regards to monetization and moderation is required.

It is important to state that Twitch believes some responsibility lies with the community itself and for that we need to understand how Twitch communities originated before the 2014 Amazon acquisition. Twitch was founded in 2006 as Justin.tv without a clear identity other than the live vlogging content the co-founders were enthusiastic about (Kan). It was alongside the rise of e-sport popularity that the platform rebranded itself for the first time as a platform for gaming content, mostly events at the time. Only these events could not provide around the clock entertainment. Thus slowly the 'Let's play' movement of that existed on Youtube who would upload long gaming sessions in video format started to migrate to Twitch. Here they could play live in front of an audience for as long as they wanted where people could watch your unedited, unfiltered reactions and communicate with you in real-time. It became quickly apparent that broadcasting directly from your browser to thousand of viewers with a live chat requires some moderation. This brings me to the topic of platform governance and who is responsible. The level of awareness and care that is involved in a stream with a huge viewer base as young as thirteen1 seems like an impossible task. Something that I will argue is an impossible task in light of the platform changes that Twitch has seen since Amazon's involvement. Following this one step further to the task put upon the fractured safety-departments in charge of handling streamer suspensions who are asked to assess whether a streamer and their community are culpable. In the same interview, Emmett Shear explains it is crucial for their safety teams to employ context to assess whether a

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community and it's streamer are too controversial for the platform by virtue of the violation it has made. This while keeping in mind previous violations, similar violations by other streamers, stream content and agreements made between streamers and (previous) partner managers, who act as intermediaries between Twitch and said streamer. This level of oversight is impossible to reach for the splintered moderation departments described by Shear. The lack of transparency and communication surrounding sanctions placed on channels creates an antagonistic atmosphere between Twitch corporate and the Twitch community. As such, the unsteady work environment for streamers has become stressful and taxing. The clash between a growing business, corporate interests and internet culture has resulted in a cry for normativity from streamers without job security.`

In this thesis I hope to contribute to several fields of discussion that have existed traditionally in other forms, but since the internet have raised new concerns in light of changing dynamics. The first element in this thesis will be community participation and particularly the way Twitch features affect those communities. While Hamilton et al. have done great work at exploring community participation on Twitch from an audience perspective alone, I feel this ignore large parts of the platform ecology. It is vital to understand before we explore how Twitch community have evolved, precisely what strengthens and sustains a community. My personal experiences and qualitative observations over thousands of hours of Twitch related content enable me to supplement previous work on Twitch and communities as a whole by supplying concrete examples of the issues I will be discussing here. When looking at communities as a whole, Bateman et al. defined three key pillars of sustained community activity. Their research concluded that in order to maintain a healthy community that is satisfied with itself and continues their activity, the online community needs to pay attention to continuance, affective and normative modes of participation. Namely the desire to read, post and moderate discussions in equal parts contribute to the notion of community sustenance. To maintain communities and manage their members, significant time investment and coordination is required on part of its leaders as Butler et. al (25-26) have stated. They did not find however any reason to belief that community leaders, were responsible for more contributions to the community after infrastructure was constructed. More importantly however yet mentioned as an off-hand comment, the group activity was significantly increased by group size and similarly social control and social encouragement, also known as peer-pressure, gained more of a prominent role in these communities. This explains Twitch large communities that put in a large amount of community labour through not only Twitch, but also associated platforms like Discord, Reddit and Twitter to maintain the relevancy of their community. I argue however that these three key pillars are continuously playing out in a feature unique to Twitch, the live chat. Academic work of social conformity was expanded on in an literary overview by Cialdini and Goldstein. Here they introduce several academic concepts surrounding the Social Identity model for Deindividuation Effects (SIDE; Reicher et al. 613) which discusses the process of ignoring your own individual identity after rationalizing the benefits of the group identity. In addition with relevancy for what will be discussed here, further evidence suggests that groups that share a common-identity are more inclined to conform to group norms when they are anonymous (Sassenberg 29). Additionally, a further expansion on the role identity theory from Callero et al. confirmed that by way of making community members feel important

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through roles their desire for contribution increases. Similarly, I will explore how communities on Twitch are formed as a group of previously anonymous strangers who come together to form a a strong collective who all contribute and stand out by taking up role identities through their community contributions. However it should be noted that communities are not valuable only to active contributing members. Answers have been given to questions on the presence of lurkers in online communities by Nonnecke et al. In their findings they note that not all community members are active contributors to the communities otherwise known as posters. Implying that they benefit off the activity of posters by way of information gathering in order to understand the community and the subjects it discusses (17-18). Further discussions relevant surrounding the choice to seek out certain communities to be informed is work by Woelfel et al. surrounding political radicalization. The findings indicate that people generally engage in the process of finding news and information as a consequence of pre-existing dispositions to the kind of people they prefer to hear from (258-259). I aim to show that Twitch communities in present day serve as a modern example of places of information to engage with political and social ideas which form as a cyclical way of molding personalities..

The second element of discussion is the platform governance, or online more commonly labeled as moderation, on Twitch. The discussion here is two-fold, whether moderation is successful and how it needs to be structured. Moderation explanations are a key factor in studying practices as communication appears to directly and positively impact the results of moderation according to work by Jhaver et al. (20-23). Explanation, publicity and linking the offense to specific rules leads to a lower number of recidivists. Liao et al. (56) underlined the importance of work atmosphere against internet misuse by showing that a productive, clear and positive work environment leads to a higher chance of cooperation and adjustment to proper conduct from employees. Recent work from Suzor (4-8) has brought to light the problematic rules of conduct on platforms that are not enforced with the fairness of rule of law. As the core inspiration for this work, statements made regarding the arbitrary, unclear and unilateral presence of the rules and their enforcement that Suzor criticizes highlights will be supplemented here with examples to make the clear the complications involved in the moderation Twitch communities as a sign of similar problems other platforms have or will face more often as social media becomes more dominant and prevalent.

Returning to the central question I ask, what impact did Amazon's acquisition of Twitch have on the formation of communities and behavior of streamers on the platform? In order to answer this question, I need to deconstruct the sequence of events that followed the take-over by Amazon in 2014. First I must ask how the platform changed functionally by looking at site features and monetization changes, in order to highlight Twitch's intended use. I will be using blog posts from Twitch to identify new feature introductions, while at the same time using archived web pages through 'WayBackMachine' to track changes in interface and user features on the channel of streamer 'Sodapoppin' who is a long time partner on Twitch. Then, I will look at the actions from Twitch to maintain their intended use by way of moderation practices and ban policy, to ask what impact did these changes in platform ecology have on platform governance? I will do this by doing interface analysis of both moderation features, textual analysis of revisions in the community guidelines (formerly rules of conduct) and textual analysis on noteworthy but more importantly controversial streamer

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bans. Finally, I want to briefly argue the changes in platform ecology Twitch has made and how they relate to the formation of audiences and the exploitation of communities. Through this I aim to argue that a platform like Twitch should not have the capability of unconditional and absolute platform governance over who is allowed to exercise a new form of freedom of speech, the freedom to stream.

1. Twitch Corporate Revolution

When Twitch made headlines in 2014 after Amazon bought the streaming platform for over nine-hundred million dollars, the rest of the world reacted with some surprise. Sneers and scoffs over this kind of news are not uncommon from the large parts of the population that did not grow up with or have not grown to love gaming related content. As DOTA, League of Legends2 and Fortnite3 have been making similar headlines, this acknowledges the large sums of money circulating in the e-sports industry. There can be no doubt that despite the debate of whether gaming is niche or mainstream, gaming is going to continue growing and the economical and political stakes for the people involved are increasing. Twitch however started as Justin.tv, a platform created by four entrepreneurs with not much of a plan (Warner). For them, the rise of the possibilities that the participatory culture of the Web 2.0 brought forth, was the right time to start experimenting with new ways of bringing content to users and affording amateurs the option to produce content themselves. The platform started out with a single channel led by one of the founders Justin Kan livestreaming himself by strapping a camera to their head. Justin.tv grew quickly, acquiring a variety of amateur streamers. Many of the early adopters of streaming platforms and social media (Web 2.0) in general have been linked to younger users (Blank and Reisdorf 546-548). As such it can be assumed that many of the content provided by early content creators on platforms like Justin.tv related to the interests of younger audiences. It is then no surprise then that Justin.tv found itself used as grounds for gaming content. At the same time gaming content started to find ground on YouTube and this meant the beginning of questions surrounding fair use in creation of video content out of games by companies such as Blizzard and Nintendo (Xie 409-410). General consensus was formed around the argument that the content produced had to be transformative enough to warrant it being labelled as fair use content, which provided an opportunity for live content to distinguish itself from YouTube's video format. Emmett Shear, now CEO of Twitch, put forward the idea to create platform separate from Justin.tv that could cater to gaming specific audiences and therefore build ties with developers and grow alongside the rising world of e-sports. Curran (42) states that after pornography, gaming is one of the biggest contributors to commercialization of the web. No doubt why early collaborations by Justin.tv, developers and e-sports organization to start e-sport specific channels eventually led to the release of Twitch.tv (Lynley; Wilhelm). This as a result of the high amounts of gaming related traffic to the site which needed its own place. Alongside this new platform came the opportunity for gaming streamers to make money off their streamers

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Two popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games

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by partnering up with Twitch if a large enough amount of viewers and followers was gathered (Tassi). From the beginning Twitch wanted to establish itself as the hub for competitive gaming by partnering with e-sport events to primarily broadcast on Twitch (Rao). However, it is generally not the game itself that is believed to lead to the popularity of e-sports. Where the enjoyment of a game starts with one's personal interests, the motivation for viewing other people play at a high skill level tends to stem from being drawn to the expressive personalities of gamers who participate in these events (Hamari and Sjöblom 20-21). Furthermore, the enjoyment for viewing these events are positively associated with seeing the reactions and interactions of the personalities involved in these events. This is where I argue that when starting their platform, while Twitch was actively pursuing a stable relationship with game developers and e-sport organizers, it in turn created the path through which we now understand the attraction to personality streamers. To a streamer, these professional avenues are used as a way of publicity for their own brand. In the same way, when a streamer becomes publicly associated with a certain game, it will improve their discoverability when the viewers looking for a combination of entertainment and information need a stream to watch (Shao 18). While Hamari and Sjöblom (20) argue that social interaction is not as strong of an indicator of why people view e-sports, I argue that this is supplemented by offering a personal community, something that Twitch has promoted during the early years through early press releases and feature updates that go back as far as 2012. This is supported by Shao (18) who states that sociability is a secondary benefit to viewers seeking user-generated media for information. While I will be discussing the importance and development of communities on Twitch in depth in chapter two, it is important to understand that even in the earliest stages of Twitch a break existed between the approach in regards to corporate entities and the users (streamers and viewers) of their platform.

1.1. Controlling the Market

This break lies at the heart of what I aim to address in this thesis. The disconnect between corporate interests for the platform and the interests of a community to diversify and attract new audiences is the exact dilemma that social media platforms are facing. As a platform advertised as a celebration of gaming culture, it started by providing gaming streamers a place to proliferate their following by creating communities. More importantly though, as touched upon in the previous chapter, it allowed Shear to hone in on a rapidly growing industry and further monetize gaming communities. By building relations with game developers, it would create a monopoly on the e-sports broadcasting market as gaming organizations create their profiles on Twitch, attract a large following on the site and as a result making it more difficult to abandon Twitch for another platform. Even more so, when other parties have attempted to corner the streaming market by partnering with gaming companies to stream games directly to their site through convenient in-client4 streaming options, those deals weren't very fruitful. Such is the story of Blizzard and Facebook, who joined forces in July 2016 to allow viewers to stream their gameplay easily through their 'Battle.net'-client to Facebook (Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.). Despite Blizzard providing these tools to stream directly to Facebook,

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Refers to being able to access features within the software that generally need to be accessed through a browser, such as confirming payments, watching streams and checking game statistics

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discoverability on Facebook is lacking with its interface not being created for livestreaming and without core ties to the gaming industry. Compare this to Twitch who attracted a viewership over twenty-six-million hours in World of Warcraft in November 2019 alone, only one of Blizzard's several games ('World of Warcraft - Twitch Statistics'). I argue that this is an example of brand loyalty, resulting in consistent return to features and services offered by Twitch despite benefits that other platforms might provide (Jacoby and Kyner 7). Furthermore, tradition, product delivery, nostalgia as described by Gladden and Funk (74) contribute to my point in a similar way. As memories from gaming events become more bountiful when people in the gaming industry continue to choose Twitch as the platform of choice to host their gaming related content, whether it be developers or user-generated media, the associations between Twitch and gaming grows larger. This is a classic example of the phrase 'early bird gets the worm', where Twitch due to being an early provider for this specific content has been able to grow hand-in-hand with the aspirations of the gaming industry.

I must return however to the start of Twitch, which started as a mere experiment and then transitioned to a platform that could introduce gaming specific site features for their growing list of gaming-focused streamers. The growth of the platform was noticed by many big tech giants, yet also deemed to be going too fast by Twitch itself to keep up with (Byford, Lopez). Amazon acquired the company in 2014, after Twitch previously was in talks with Google who also owns YouTube. I argue here that the explanation for the large amount of money paid for Twitch is due to their marketable position. Twitch had the connections within the gaming industry and Amazon had the infrastructure needed to expand these connections to professionalize the platform. In recent years, after making their API public through their developer pages, Twitch has been able to introduce more features that allowed game developers to integrate their product for a Twitch streaming experience through extensions and drops5. Both of these elements, seek to introduce game-like options to the interface, typically by game developers, that incentivize users to actively pay attention to the broadcast interface. As such by Amazon providing their technological infrastructure to Twitch, Twitch has been able to strengthen ties with game companies and through interface integration promote long-term corporate relationships. The proliferation of marketing strategies surrounding activity that people seek out for social gratification, unbiased information and identification can be insidious however. Anderson and Rainie outline several troubling consequences of the 'gamification' of our daily life throughout their work. 'Gamification' in this contents implies the calling on competitive nature of people to achieve rewards through game-like activity. Though the fun of games can hide manipulative promotions and the gravity of money transactions (301) while generally being targeted at young users (300). I argue that the introduction of features on Twitch that artificially keep users participating in communities, for incentives whether social or in-game rewards, results in this same addictive and dangerous behaviour. Systems such as channel points, that require users to keep an eye on the chat and click a green box that appears at intervals to keep people tied to their screen do not contribute to organic participation. This is done to gain a channel currency which is then used to redeem channel perks. These perks generally are redeemed for services that allow the user to stand out from the rest of the viewers or use an exclusive feature. By doing this Twitch

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is creating an environment that is training their streamers to apply successful manipulative techniques laid out by Hracs et al. They argue that exploiting consumer demand for uniqueness is one of the driving factors that binds and attracts users, in addition to the inherent promotion of community participation that this also entails (1157-1158). As a result, I argue that Twitch by way of its professionalization is changing its platform to monetize user activity in ways that exploit the interests of its users and their drive to be part of a community.

1.2. Thanks for the Prime!

Twitch hasn't only changed the way user activity with the interface is monetized however. The drive to increase viewership is a goal that is shared by both Twitch and streamers in the end. When Twitch was launched, the primary methods of streamer monetization that both Twitch and streamers benefitted from were partner contracts and ad rolls6. Other means of earning money for streamers either came from donations, merchandise or sponsorships that streamers acquired. These are generally handled through third-party entities without direct control from Twitch. It is not until mid-2016 where I argue influence from Amazon started to rear its head. Here I aim to highlight major features introduced to the platform ecology which

changed the relationship between Twitch and its streamers.

The 'commodification' of user-generated content and the ethical distribution of generated wealth between the owners of the platforms and its content 'produsers' has been a growing discussion in new media research (Fish and Srinivasan). In most cases the platform create the means, provides the means and controls the means to earn revenue on their platform (Postigo). No different is Twitch as a driving force behind new features with the self-proclaiming intent of supporting communities. It is however through features like 'cheering' or 'bounties' that evokes a growing concern about the control Twitch aims to exert over the way streamers earn their money. Where I started this chapter by acknowledging some methods by which streamers could earn money without interference from Twitch, new efforts have been made to control these cash flows. Cheering introduces a method to integrate donations into Twitch interface by using shiny animations, dedicated screen space and chat messages to incentivize users to purchase Twitch's virtual currency. Additionally, this virtual currency can be accumulated by watching ads on Twitch, encouraging viewers to voluntarily subject themselves to features that disproportionally benefit Twitch. Bounties are on-the-fly sponsorships that are distributed to select partnered streamers who can earn money from playing games, reading advertisement scripts or showing advertisements as part of their broadcast. With Twitch declaring itself an intermediary in these processes, these platform changes affect distributions of power, self-sufficiency of streamers by trying to encroach on ways for streamers to make money outside of Twitch. In a larger context this puts into question the dominance of big platform corporations and the freedom at which they can introduce price changes and monetization rules to adhere to their morphing platform governance (Nieborg and Poell 4282-4288).

When Amazon acquired Twitch, one of its prominent features Amazon Prime would be combined with Twitch Turbo, to create a new force of nature Twitch Prime. Where before

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Ads on Twitch generally play when starting a stream (pre-roll) but can also be played on command of the streamer (mid-roll)

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subscribing to a channel was directly correlated with intent by a viewer to give money to a streamer, Twitch Prime's functionality added an additional dynamic to gathering subscribers that did not start directly with viewer admiration. If you have an Amazon Prime subscription, it gives you a collection of game-related rewards through Twitch but in this context it's important that it also gives you a free subscription to one streamer on Twitch every month. As such, streamers are now encouraged to engage outside of their fan base even more for monetary gains. Kapin and Ward lay out three sets of audiences; community, network and crowd representing decreasing levels of association to a certain brand from former to latter. I want to translate this to Twitch by changing the terminology to subscribers (community), followers (network) and 'lurkers' (crowd). Subscribers pay a monthly subscription to gain subscriber benefits from the channel and show most signs of willingness to support a community. Followers watch the content without obligation to pay any money but might still be inclined to donate occasionally. 'Lurkers' do not get notified when your channel is live nor does their profile show any connection to the streamer's profile other than watch time in metadata. It is argued that reliability, trust and a consistent schedule contributes strongly to the growth of a channel and a strong subscriber base (Johnson et al. 7-8). This level of understanding can only be garnered when a group of viewers watches the content creator in question regularly enough to make a fair assessment of said streamer's dedication to their streaming career. As a result, I argue that every viewer is at three stages in their decision to support a streamer; positively decided to show support, negatively decided to abstain from supporting or undecided. For a streamer, with monetization features that target 'lurkers' it becomes more important now to target those that are undecided about using their Twitch Prime on the streamer's channel. I want to highlight here the inverse correlation between sacrifice from streamer and sacrifice from viewer when subscribing. Apart from donation goals on screen, it is unlikely for a streamer to directly beg for new regular subscriptions but is usually paired with a donation goal on screen to indicate goals that go to benefit community events upon reaching those goals (Johnson and Woodcock 337). Thus subscribing done by a viewer using their actual money warrants a monetary sacrifice to pursue goals for the community with only a passive indicator of desire by the streamer. However, when addressing 'lurkers' or followers without close affiliation to community goals, streamers are required to actively remind them of the opportunity to subscribe for free with their Twitch Prime if they have Amazon Prime. While technically this still requires a choice to activate from the viewer, I argue this is a passive action as it does not require any additional monetary sacrifice from the viewer. As a result a streamer is encouraged to actively pursue new 'free' subscribers without strong community ties, appealing to users who have not identified organically with the value of the community. This ultimately leads to a weakening of the unified identity of their community and the possibility that a community has members who lack the desire required to maintain a community for its social benefits (Butler et al. 25-26). In the same vein, features such as mass subscription gifting7 introduced post-Amazon do not actually contribute to group identity by organically introducing new community members through appreciation and feelings of closeness that viewers experience (Johnson and Woodlock 338). The

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The ability to gift subscriptions to a random number of people that have at one point typed a message in the live chat of the corresponding streamer

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consequences of this professionalization has made Twitch shift their focus from community stimulation to exploitation of a streamer's efforts to earn a living by pursuing new subscribers in way that does not correspond with characteristics of strong community building. In the next two chapters I aim to show how communities find their identity on Twitch, how professionalization affects moderation and ultimately how this controls cultural identity.

2. I Love This Community

Despite efforts to control Twitch communities effort to support and connect with their favourite streamer, it is beneficial for Twitch to stimulate the formation of communities even though I argue throughout this thesis that motives behind this are being corrupted. While primary associations with Twitch have generally favoured words like broadcast and channel (Hamilton et al.), I argue that is not seen as social media often enough for what the features of Twitch might suggest. Despite differences in popularity, every user that makes a Twitch account gets their own channel page. The personal information (or profile if you will) is listed directly under the broadcast window and the live chat prominently featured next to the broadcast window provides a stronger opportunity for direct sociability that viewers of streams are seeking (Shao 13; Hamilton et al.). While there is an inherent hierarchy present between streamer and audience, generally viewers seek out social activity on Twitch from both the streamer and the associated community. This includes but is not limited the pursuit of information seeking, sharing in like-minded discourse and entertainment through online social engagement (Nonnecke et al. 17-18; Hamilton et al.). Watching streams, making accounts and participating in live chat typically do not require the payment of any money to Twitch however. This implies that the personal pursuit of social interaction does not automatically result in monetary investment to grow one particular community. For streamers and Twitch this means that additional motivation is required to incentivize followers and 'lurkers' to invest in growth of a community that benefits both parties monetarily.. I argue that the boundary between community member and outsider is crossed at the point of subscription. This is because subscription is tied with community-specific rewards which indicate status in two different ways, through emotes and subscriber badges. While both can be considered to have roots in concepts of brand loyalty described in chapter one on a smaller scale, I argue these to be connected more strongly with desire of self-identification with a streamer by becoming important community member through status symbols (Fraser 200-203, O'cass and McEwen 33-25). Taking up the role of a subscriber makes it also more likely that these members will contribute again to the community in the future because they enjoy the benefits of the role identity (Callero et al. 258-259). The emotes subscribers gain access to exist in two varieties, global emotes and subscriber-specific. Global emotes can be used by any user on Twitch in any chat. These emotes require a string of symbols (usually letters) to be typed in the live chat to show up. While it is general knowledge that a colon followed by a closing parentheses indicates a positive emotion, it would be less clear to new viewer on Twitch what the

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associated emotion of an emoticon like 'DansGame'8 or 'HotPokket'9 would be. Knowledge of the use and history of these emotes would only become apparent through regular exposure of these emotes. Despite widespread availability, symbolism has shown to rarely be interpreted consistently over time and associations tend to vary widely based on personal experience (Reichl). As a result, the subscriber emoticons that are generally based of themes or trends that can only be seen on that specific channel, will invoke even less recognition and accurate interpretations. From this follows a form of exclusive language use, that I would call

'community dialect' through exclusive emotes.

In addition to subscriber emotes, subscribers also are awarded subscriber badges that display in front of their name with dynamic appearances based on amount of subsequent months they have been subscribing to the community. Now both streamer and other viewers are made aware of the level of commitment that user has shown the community, further enhancing the status of the community role identity. Other badges are also active in front of usernames in chat based on several factors such as; amount of bits donated through the 'cheer' system and amount of subscriptions gifted to others, which also function as a status symbol within the community. In an anonymous, virtual setting where your username in live chats is the primary way other users interact with you, these badges are the equivalent of digital possessions or digital fashion, both of these are shown to have correlation to identity formation more strongly in men (O'cass and McEwen 35). They function as symbolism to identify community members who take active roles in growing that same community. While badges are a form of community identity that is contained to the channel community members are subscribed to, subscriber emotes can leave the channel and be used in the chats of other communities. As a result, community reinforcement of identity within a community then becomes community expression once they leave their place of origin to post the emoticons of their community leader in other channels. It is Anderson who argued that nationality is nothing more than a community of people separated by time and space who do not inherently share a destiny, yet work towards common interests as a family of strangers (37-46). I argue that the argument can be made for communities on Twitch, as the subscriber identification and status symbolism creates a culture of digital patriotism among Twitch communities united in efforts to grow their collective. In a way, this ties the fate of the community member's identity to the fate of the streamer when moderation action is taken against the streamer.

2.1. Sorry, Unless You Got a Time Machine, That Content Is Unavailable.

While the metaphor of comparing community identity on social media platforms to national identity might appear dramatic initially, I do so not without reason. For what happens on these platforms has become increasingly integrated in our lives and play roles in formation of our children into young adulthood (O'Keeffe and Clarke-Pearson). As our leisure time transitions to activity on platforms that are constructed by the same big organizations that employ us, we should start to ask questions about whether we agree with the politics of these businesses. For

8_{Emoticon of Twitch streamer DansGaming making a face of disgust, generally used in Twitch chat to imply}

that same emotion

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Emoticon of Twitch streamer Pokket making a face of heavy frustration and annoyance, frequently used in Twitch chat to indicate that chatter's aversion to moments of female empowerment or social justice narratives

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a platform like Twitch that is free to use, it is not a question about access but one of restrictions. These restrictions are formulated in the community guidelines, formerly known as the rules of conduct. By way of archived web pages, a trend is noticed that seems to run parallel with Amazon's involvement and the subsequent professionalization of Twitch outlined in chapter one. Over time these platforms will become aware of their public image and will adjust their control of users accordingly to make commercially oriented choices on what behaviour is accepted (Gillespie 352-357). While there are grounds that result in suspension that can be universally agreed to as being harmful content, such as violent or traumatic content being broadcast through Twitch (Graham and Haselton), many of the guidelines detailed in Twitch early rules of conduct appear to be arbitrary. One of the most obvious examples and most controversial things to moderate is the clothing of streamers. While in 2015, Twitch stated that nudity or partial nudity, such as lingerie, bathing suits and pasties are absolutely not allowed on the platform under any circumstances accompanied by a hyperlink to a volleyball scene from the movie 'Top Gun' ('Rules of Conduct 2015'). In 2016, this section was reduced to a simple line of text stating that nudity and overtly sexual conduct or attire is prohibited ('Rules of Conduct 2016'). Later in 2019 this was expanded to its own page with several sections that explain what would be reviewed when reports of sexual or suggestive content have come in. However, the stated location where this content can be judged is now expanded to chat logs, behavior, metadata, location and music to name a few ('Twitch.tv - Community Guidelines'). The updates made to these community guidelines are often driven by banning controversies that then lead to modification of the community guidelines. Such was the case in the breastfeeding debate that now allows women to reveal their breast to feed their baby on stream (Alexander, "Breastfeeding"). This joins a list of exemptions that also permits women to show their breasts with pasties that cover their nipples, or show breasts in an educational context, while wardrobe malfunctions remain a

bannable offense on the platform.

A buzzword that Twitch likes to employ when referencing these issues, such as during the TwitchCon opening cerenomy with Emmett Shear, is context ("Going Live!" 51:31-01:31:33). According to them, this is done to make the rules more clear and reliable. I argue however that this approach brings in a multitude of complications that feeds into the problems that Twitch is currently experiencing under their new moderation approach. I have made it clear that the worries that exist in our professional life have become mirrored in our personal life as the same companies that structure our working hours, now affect our leisure. I argue that this requires then applications of moderating methods that mirror the standards we know from our judiciary rules of law, especially when judging the continuation of careers on social media platforms. Following that logic, there is currently no reconciliation possible between the structuring of Twitch's community guidelines which are arbitrary and subject to undemocratic change. As an analysis for the validity of these community guidelines, work by Suzor (2018) has been done which I will use to test the structure of Twitch's guidelines as an example of these antiquated form of platform governance. First, equality and predictability stand at the heart of procedural protections. This flies in the face of everything that I have exemplified regarding the Twitch's evolving community guidelines thus far. As a set of rules, with addendums driven by incidents and enforcement that is handled by subjective judgment of global moderation staff without independent accountability, these community guidelines do

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not serve as a reliable document for streamers. In this light, the easy dispensability of one streamer over the other without due process reveals the dangerously subordinate position that content creators on social media platforms without proper protection find themselves in (Nieborg and Poell 4285-4287; Suzor 7-8).

Secondly, application of law should be in pursuit of a common good. This means that implies that punishment has to be enacted with clearly stated intent, communication should exist prior to enforcement and these processes are subjected to surveillance by independent controlling bodies (Suzor 5-6). Furthermore, making rulings a transparent progress and being able to link specific sanctions accurately and consistently to corresponding rules through constructive penal processes leads to a lower amount of repeated offenses (Jhaver et. al 20-23; Liao 56). As communication from content creators to their audience tells me, communication processes between Twitch and streamers tend to be one-sided notifications by e-mail with limited information after a suspension. These will include a referred link to a section of the guidelines as ban reason, a reminder that the content which contains the violation is subject to removal, and the length of the suspension (@SleepyMia145; @PaymoneyWubby). Aside from lack of communication this shows, the community guidelines also state Twitch's freedom to removal of content without being required to provide additional explanation. During suspensions Twitch denies streamers and viewers access to their product, while subscriptions and additional payments by subscribers run for their set duration. I argue that sets a poor precedent for an impartial process when judged by a for-profit company.

2.2. Time Out

So far I have addressed community and moderation, but what of community moderation. While Twitch does have their own global staff who frequent streams, marked with a wrench icon in front of their name, these staff are not under any obligation nor are they expected to police specific channels live chat. Twitch through the release of their moderation tools make a statement to streamers that they are responsible for how they police their chat ('Twitch - New Community Guidelines'). Streamers that require any moderation in their chat due to the size of their community have to delegate this responsibility to chosen moderators, often loyal viewers and not professionals (Butler et al. 25-27), or automated 'chatbots' with pre-assigned protocols for moderation. While 'Nightbot'10 has been a popular choice for many streamers for years, Twitch has made API public to allow custom bots to be created that can handle the actions desired by the streamer. While this affords methods to ease moderation, it requires some technical skill from streamers which is not inherently assumed to be a skill that all entertainers have.

Behaviour exhibited by communities are directly connected to what influence the streamer projects upon them and what they allow in their channel. This influence is guided by the strength of a community grown from the identification with the personality of the streamer described earlier in this chapter. Community members have placed an importance on the morals and values of the streamer and wish to emulate them (Fraser 200-203). Streamer is then elevated to a parental figure who must regulate or delegate to amateur moderators in order to avoid personal prosecution. The harassment section of the guidelines state that

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creators are role models that "should consider the consequences of their statements and actions of their audiences" ('Twitch.tv - Community Guidelines'). For many larger streamers this means that they are responsible for the behaviour of their audience, both on the platform and off. If a community identity does not align with politics of Twitch, can it survive? After all, a community generally aims to maintain the social benefits that have allowed them to grow affection for the community (Bateman et al. 850). These social benefits can be the freedom of expression of a politically incorrect narrative or the use of a provocative emote. An example of this would be an emote by the name of 'squadW' which uses a zoomed in image of streamer Tyler 'Trainwreckstv' Niknam. In the past, Niknam has been suspended for sexist remarks against women on the platform (Murray) but is still active with around ten-thousand subscribers ('Trainwreckstv - Overview'). Due to Niknam's controversial history, Niknam's emote is now used as a form of dog whistling across the platform. Niknam himself claims that the emote is meant to be used as a way to point out 'double standards' in society (@Trainwreckstv). If Niknam is to be believed, the use of his emote influenced by his previous narratives no longer reflect his current beliefs. Yet, under Twitch's community guidelines Niknam remains responsible for the actions of his community or anyone that was gifted a subscription to his channel. These gifted subscribers can use emotes in a way that do not benefit the continuation of Niknam's community. While studies have confirmed the transformative power of emoticons in combination with language and their ability to lead to more ambiguity (Derks 385-387), they have not addressed the replacement of language through emoticons that exists on Twitch. As knowledge of community dialects is very limited, even to Twitch's global moderation staff, it is incredibly difficult to judge and enforce action against individuals when there are emotes used that do not have universal connotation. While efforts have been made to detect hate speech using algorithms, this proves to be incredibly difficult to judge even when using something as well archived as language (Djuric et al., Davidson et al.). How then are there to be fair and accurate judgments made against streamers on something so ambiguous as emotes with varying symbolic interpretations widely used through community dialect?

While including as many references to lack of liability is a common practice among social media platforms (Suzor 5-6), it is worrying that the Twitch has made both personal action and community behaviour the responsibility of the content creator. When moderation takes place, whether it is action against the streamer or another streamer they know, this is generally made public through Reddit, Twitter or Discord. They witness the consequences of drawing attention in a negative light and grow caution, like quiet children learn the adversity of speaking, by seeing the trouble loud children get into (McCroskey). Along with the non-disclosure agreements and partner managers that larger streamers deal with, this leads to a lack of transparency, misinformation and speculation across communities. This while it has been shown that clear and open communication regarding online moderation leads to significantly lower recidivism by making the process of moderation a public one (Jhaver et al. 20-23). For a community leader (streamer) who is universally loved by their community, the community has a stake in its continuation out of affective reasoning. They generally perceive contributing formally and informally to the maintenance of the community as a beneficial process (Bateman et al. 850). Furthermore, the affinity they experience for their community leader makes compliance an easier process (Cialdini and Trost 174-175). This means that in

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order to sustain a community, members are restricted in their identity expression because of the consequences it could have for the community's continuation. Having to adhere to the ambiguous community guidelines, it becomes a priority for community moderators to control community identity on behalf of Twitch. As I will explore in chapter three however, the conformity and culture in Twitch communities has not grown parallel to Twitch's intended platform governance.

3. Brand Risks of Twitch

Not only does Twitch platform policies affect streamers and communities, but also the formation of audiences and their relation to Twitch as a company. For streamers and Twitch, as I have explored in previous chapters, the primary concerns of their monetization model does not inherently promote creating well-intentioned communities. I argued monetization has become about acquiring large numbers of unnatural subscribers through Twitch Prime and subscription gifting. Zuckerman (383) has stated that there is significant correlation between audience members who prefer to engage with live entertainment content while also being classified as high-sensation seekers. These audiences also tend to be more engaged with a variety of content and will switch channels more often than low-sensation seekers. They will also be more drawn to unpleasant and sexually explicit content. I argue that in a market of selling oneself, these factors are impacting the behaviour of streamers and push them towards creating a streaming atmosphere that seeks to appeal to these high-sensation seeking audiences. While I have indicated throughout this thesis that Twitch is very much a social network, of interconnectivity and sociability between online individuals looking for community identity, this was not widely acknowledge through streaming categories on Twitch until late 2016. While the broadcasting of non-gaming related content on Twitch was frowned upon before this point, streamers tended to circumvent these guidelines by showing the game while primarily engaging with their audience instead. This trend was eventually acknowledged by Twitch by introducing an 'IRL' category where streamers were free to engage with their audience in their own unique way. This opened the door to a new form of content production, that would soon demonstrate what kind of communities were being fostered and attracted to the platform. As content genres developed more and more beyond gaming, the 'IRL' category was later broken down into a plethora of popular subcategories such as 'Just Chatting', 'Talk Shows & Podcasts', 'Art' and 'ASMR'. Embracing the social satiation it had been providing to audiences through communities for years, these same communities would lead to reveal the issues at the heart of this thesis. The personality of streamers are now accurately represented by being the focus of the broadcast, instead of the games that streamers pretended to play. According to Zuckerman (383) however, to captivate their community and find monetary success, they are encouraged to focus on unpleasant, explicit and sensational content to ensure high-sensation seeking 'lurkers' use their Twitch Prime before they switch channels. I want to stress that in this context, unpleasant and explicit do not have a specifically negative connotation. Unpleasant can refer to having political debates surrounding sensitive topics and explicit can refer to art forms like body painting. I classify this type of content as sensational or drama. Nonetheless, seeking out novel 'IRL'

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content in order to satiate these audiences introduces questions that continue to challenge the fairness and consistencies of how the community guidelines should be applied. This puts a lot of streamers who are pursuing content creation in diverse ways at a difficult crossroad.

As streamers are continuously encouraged to seek out new audiences through monetization methods that do not cater to people who have the best interests of a community as a priority, streamers run the risk of having to deal with 'lurkers' who feel that the stream is not unpleasant or explicit enough. By way of text-to-speech11 donations, links in chat and 'mediashare'12 streamers are confronted with racist or pornographic content donated by these 'lurkers' who are not satiated by the level of drama the stream is providing. Even though in this case the culprit is the user who provided the offensive material, the streamer is the one who will receive a ban for showing the content on stream. This however proves a complicated question to answer for Twitch when it has to determine what the intent of the streamer is, how much they did to prevent the situation and what their reaction was to the situation. This creates adversity between streamer and community, leading to further control of community identity. In this way, interacting with community can risk subjection to moderation guided by the interpretation of Twitch staff. If Twitch wants to become a place that gives people the freedom to express and diversify, giving voices to unique and marginalized communities (Johnson 510-512), it cannot allow the rules of their platform to be guided so strongly by the corporate interests that have consistently been criticized for the oppression of these voices. Especially not when they are being threatened by community outsiders that wish to undermine the community expression that can still exist on Twitch under its current platform governance. This fear of suspension because of viewer action creates an uncertain work environment for a workforce of teenage and young adult streamers trying to make a career out of their hobby

3.1. Yeah, But BTTV Is Like a Third Party Thing

While these problematic issues surrounding work conditions are often made public by victims of Twitch's platform policy, they are made viral by the communities involved. Not surprising as the labour in a community is often done by mostly unpaid volunteers who take up roles as moderators, creative workers like editors or informal contributors that have received enough personal benefits from the community to have a stake in its continuation (Butler 25-28, Bateman et al. 850). The primary way of standing out in Twitch communities is to become classified as a 'regular' through visible contributions and recognition over time (Hamilton et al.). While it has been acknowledged that this can be done by becoming a moderator, I argue that providing contributions that are beneficial for a streamer such as moderating tools, creative content dedicated to the streamer and direct large monetary support results in similar recognition from a community. They all share a common characteristic though, which is making investments into growing the community and enhancing the benefits to the community's members. Moderating tools provide streamers a way to shape the user experience to fit the atmosphere of the stream. Creative content provides the streamer with community-specific content to entertain the audience. Large monetary support serves the

11

A robotic voice that reads out messages submitting when a viewer donates a message

12

A method to display videos and music on stream where the media is played for an amount of seconds equal to a donation amount set by the streamer (i.e. one second for every dollar)

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platform's function of generating revenue for streamers. Additionally, a lot of creative content is created through third party applications that supplement the user experience. With browser extensions like FFZ and BTTV, streamers are allowed to add custom third-party emotes only available and visible to other users who also use these extensions. This adds further to the development of community dialect by circumventing the limited emote slots and inconsistent emote approval process as demonstrated in emote controversies (Rankovic), both grounded in the same platform governance issues the rest of Twitch faces. These investments are threatened in two ways however. First through inconsistent and unexpected shifts in platform governance and secondly through the appropriation of browser extensions and tools made by communities.

While I referenced these briefly in chapter one, it is helpful to acknowledge the exploitation of 'playbour' in the context of community efforts. Making community labour publicly available for Twitch users leaves community modders vulnerable to the appropriation of their efforts. As enthusiastic amateurs intend to solve problems left by streamers 'platform dependence' on Twitch, they in turn allow Twitch to integrate widely adopted third-party features into their own interface (Kücklich; Nieborg and Poell 4276-4277). This has happened on Twitch on multiple occasions by trying to control the ways streamers earn revenue as described in chapter one, but also by appropriating third party extensions such as 'ReChat'13 which allows viewers to also see the reactions in chat in addition to 're-watching' the missed stream. As a third party extension this allowed for user-hosted archiving of user activity but when it was integrated into Twitch's interface it has become subject to the same censorship as other content when it is removed for violating the community guidelines. This means that as a community, the integration of community efforts into Twitch's universal platform is giving away control of the data and defense against future sanctions. Legally this is a dangerous precedent for streamers as the only way for them to publicly defend actions against their channel is through archived evidence of the content they were suspended over.

Conclusion

Since 2011, Twitch has seen incredibly growth surmounting to hosting over two million channels producing over thirty-tree million hours of live user-generated content. In those years, it has found ways to celebrate gaming culture while similarly innovating livestream content by giving spaces to podcasts, artists and people with prior forms of employment to show their talents alongside the gaming personalities that have captivated audiences since Justin.tv. In those years, they have allowed relatively small players in a large industry of gaming to find like-minded individuals and garner communities. In a world where heavy internet use is shown to correlate with low self-esteem (Zuckerman 380), it is vital to provide a place for people to engage in social activity and connect with people who share their interests. That necessity makes it even more critical however, that we take a close look at the structure of the platforms that are offering this luxury. How do these platforms benefit from our continued activity on the platform? How does our leisure contribute to their goals?

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I have laid out how Twitch's growth was inexplicably tied to that of the social media in the participatory culture of the Web 2.0 and the gaming industry's innovative ways of monetizing gaming fandom. By working closely with gaming developers, Twitch was getting their foot in the door at the stage of development to create viewing experiences that would contribute to the already inclusive experience of Twitch. By working closely with e-sport organizers, Twitch made itself the status quo for live-streamed (gaming) events for being able to provide the type of web traffic that attracts advertisers. By working closely with gamers, Twitch showed that making long-form user-generated video content is a realistic way of monetizing oneself to a large audience. This is what made the platform attractive to Amazon in 2014 and despite growing competition from Mixer, Youtube and Facebook, it still delivers over seventy-five percent of the livestreaming content in the third quarter of 2019 (Khalid). Despite efforts in recent months to buy-out streamers from Twitch, such as Ninja and Shroud by Mixer (Goslin), and Jeremy 'DisguisedToast' Wang by Facebook (Valentine) who no doubt received generous compensation for their move, viewer conversion to these platform appears to be problematic. While there are definitely opportunities for other platforms to find their own market, such as Youtube becoming a popular choice for mostly non-English-speaking mobile gamers (Pannekeet), we have to ask ourselves whether Twitch is encroaching on monopoly status. This is mostly supported by the economic theory surrounding direct network effects, that theorizes the attraction of a platform based on the size of its user base (Haucup Heimeshoff 51). When streamers transition platforms, they lose community strength and inverse direct network effect occurs that dwindles down the high-sensation viewer base that came for the large communities and their abundance of stimuli, which only Twitch is

currently providing in its genre.

Like other social media platforms with a near monopoly in their market, it brings into the question the way these platforms use that power. I have highlighted throughout this thesis that Twitch is increasingly trying to appropriate methods of self-sufficiency for streamers and community efforts from viewers. This form of control means that Twitch relative power further strengthens the platform dependence of users. Furthermore, through this control they have an easier time to deny users services without consequence, as their community guidelines deny users transparency during bans. As streamer 'PayMoneyWubby' pointed out in a video ('Twitch and Their Abuse of Power') after being banned for several days over an administrative mistake on Twitch's end, many streamers are afraid to comment on Twitch's inconsistencies when speaking out could have implications on their standing with Twitch. This standing is directly tied to access to monetization features such as bounties and better partner contracts. The professionalization of Twitch by employing monetization features that are criticized by streamers for lacking fair and consistent methods of access has created a harmful power struggle where streamers are relying on social credit with Twitch to sustain

their community.

Twitch has the opportunity to offer a unique culture by way of its emotes, live chat and other features that contribute to building diverse communities. The millions of viewers involved in these communities are responsible for creating the culture that makes it difficult to say goodbye to Twitch. This culture comes in the form of user-generated content that I have argued is too diverse to moderate consistently and Twitch has shown that it is not capable of performing or out-sourcing this task. Furthermore, because of its recent monetization features

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and changes in platform ecology, streamers are encouraged more often to appeal to viewers who do not have the best intention for their community. Where once it was dealing with questions about games that were too violent or too sexual, since the growth of non-gaming related content on Twitch, questions about what is allowed to be streamed is becoming too tied in political or social issues that I argue should not be judged by a corporate platform. Relying on legal review of platform guidelines by Suzor, it is clear that Twitch community guidelines, the basis for their moderation, is focused on removing liability from Twitch and trying to make arbitrary judgments on what people cannot say, wear, show and where people cannot go. Furthermore, subsequent communication generally demonstrates a lack of responsibility indicative of a corporation trying to avoid being sued over unfair working

conditions and unfounded contract terminations.

This leaves communities with a dilemma of expression, where once their diversity and unique memes were celebrated as community building, now they risk becoming brand risks in a platform ecology where marketability has priority. Twitch public statements since 2014 seem to express an intent to move to a more inclusive, broader and exciting platform where users can support, engage with and experience streamers in a new ways. It however appears that their expression is confined by Twitch's platform politics, caring more about rebranding the culture of their own communities to align with what appeals to advertisers. In my analysis here, I am limited by the same forces that I am criticizing. For the lack of transparency from Twitch over their moderation choices when applying them inconsistently, makes it difficult to be incredibly thorough about highlighting all aspects of the moderation. In addition, Twitch's wide variety of channels and ban cases are as diverse as any court case that brings with it the personal history of those involved and context leading up to the offense. These exact limitations that inhibit me from providing a completely inclusive overview of the dynamic of these issues are however exactly why it is so important that the way bans on Twitch are handled are done in a public and fair way. Only by bringing discussions about platform restrictions of specific users to the public stage can we judge whether these are applied in a way that sufficiently protects users against the control of communities that platforms have the

power to exert.

In the end, I have shown that Twitch has become professionalized by the increasing monetization of user activity like a true social media platform. In turn, this has resulted in a growing concern about Twitch public brand and the interests of corporations involved in social media revenue generation. Finally, I have shown that Twitch community guidelines and enforcement of those guidelines are more in line with Twitch company politics than providing consistent and transparent processes of platform governance. This in turn impacts the community identity and social control platforms can apply to users. When platforms like Twitch are not held accountable by an independent surveillance structure, platform governance will be a growing problem that risks us corrupting digital working standards, freedom of speech through streaming and the community identities that help shape the social life of many of Twitch's users.

Controlling Community Identity:Twitch's platform policy and the politics of streamer communities