Culture

Twitch streamers celebrate as brand-new transgender tag goes live: ‘I’m happy it’s finally here’

Twitch tags

Let’s Chat. (Twitch)

There are now over 350 new Twitch tags available to use on the streaming platform, covering multiple identities.

Twitch announced the news of the tags last weekend and streamers were elated to finally be able to tag their streams accordingly. Now those tags are officially available to use.

In their latest “Let’s Chat” stream hosted by Senior Director of Marketing Erin ‘Aureylian’ Wayne, Twitch went into detail on the tags.

“I also wanted to take a moment on behalf of Twitch and personally to sincerely thank our community and especially our trans community for their persistence, for the continued feedback and for the patience that they’ve displayed over the past several years while we have been working on the launch of these tags,” said Wayne.

“Your contributions and especially your activism have been incredibly powerful and absolutely inspiring and it’s the work that you do, the work of our community, that continues to make Twitch the place that it is and better and better as we go forward.”

The stream included guests from Twitch to discuss the purpose and reasoning behind the new Twitch tags and address why it took so long.

“We were wrong not to have done it sooner,” admitted Tom Verrilli, VP of Viewer Experience, who said they spent too long seeking a “great” solution instead of going ahead with a “good” one that can be improved.

The list of tags was also chosen to be as inclusive as possible, which took time to put together. This involved speaking with the community and third-party organisations to ensure tags are culturally appropriate.

The video also includes a chat with Global VP of Trust and Safety Angela Hession who enforced the importance of Twitch’s existing code of conduct and moderation tools in notifying Twitch of toxic behaviour that could arise from using the tags.

There is more to be done, but Twitch is listening to feedback from its community. You can watch the full video on Twitch here.

The full list of Twitch tags can be found here, which includes individual tags for multiple identities within the LGBT+ community. 

It’s a long list but not exhaustive, as Twitch has recognised. Suggestions can be listed on User Voice where there are already multiple petitions.

Already many streamers have offered suggestions for Twitch tags that are missing, both on User Voice and on Twitter.

For the most part, though, streamers are elated to finally be able to use tags on their streams that match their identity.

One major improvement that’s required, however, is the need to use more than five tags. This limit does not allow for intersectionality, especially as Twitch tags are used to denote both content and identity.

Twitch did address this in their video. The limit of five is for design reasons, to increase discoverability, and for diminishing returns in adding more and more tags to a stream.

The team is also aware of gatekeeping which parts of your identity you can express on stream, though they will continue to explore options in this area.

For more gaming news, follow Gaymeo on Facebook. You can also email us with any news or tips on [email protected]

Register to save articles and more. It'll only take a minute and it's free.
JOIN US TODAY!