Amazon has announced that it will be forming a new advisory council to oversee the online activities on its video game live-streaming platform Twitch. The announcement comes just days after Facebook had established its own oversight board to moderate content on its social media platform.
The new advisory council on Twitch will reportedly be comprised of experienced users, anti-cyberbullying advocates, and online safety experts. The team will be tasked with ensuring the safety of all Twitch users and audiences, while also helping it improve the site's content quality.
According to a blog post published on Thursday, the team will have a total of eight members, all of whom have been given the power to enact necessary product and policy changes on the platform. Twitch stated that the group will mainly be focusing on controversial areas such as online harassment, racism, and hate-related activities.
The council members include the co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, Dr. Sameer Hinduja, deputy CEO of the youth charity firm The Diana Awards, Alex Homes, MIT sociologist T.L. Taylor, and the director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Free Expression Project, Emma Llansó. In its blog post, Twitch stated that it was important to form a group of different experts in order to provide varied external perspectives on sensitive topics and content.
The move comes after advocates had raised concerns over the uncontrolled content on the live-streaming platform, particularly after it was used to stream live footage of a shooting attack in Germany last year. Since the incident, Twitch had reportedly doubled its efforts to moderate content, adding new tools, and hiring more personnel to check up on channel activities. Twitch stated that it has also been using automated moderation software to supplement human moderators on its platform.
Twitch is a rapidly growing livestreaming platform boasting more than 15 million daily users. The platform is mostly used to stream video games, sports, music, and politics. Last year, US President Donald Trump officially created an account.
The formation of the advisory council adds Twitch to a growing number of online platforms that have stepped up their efforts to weed out unwanted content. Twitter was one of the first companies to form its oversight committee called the Trust and Safety Council in 2016. In March, TikTok operator ByteDance announced that it has formed a group to moderate content on its platform.
Last week, Facebook officially announced the members of its new Oversight Board to moderate content on its website. Facebook gave the committee unprecedented control over moderation decisions on its platform, including the power to overrule content decisions made by its founder Mark Zuckerberg.
