Gender, sexual orientation, colour, nationality, ability, mental health, and more will be among the new tags available this week to help categorize Twitch streams.
Announced in a blog post Twitch said it will add the new tags and remove the “ally “ references from its LGBTQIA tag, in favor of a new standalone ally tag.
“The simple fact is we should have done this sooner,” the platform said, thanking its trans community for advocating for a transgender tag. Twitch apparently refused to add a transgender tag because of fears of targeted harassment.
From next week there will be over 350 new tags to choose from including: “transgender, Black, disabled, veteran, and Vtuber, among many others.”
Twitch also mentioned that “These additions won’t change how tagging works and are completely optional. They simply give creators more choices.”
Twitch said that when they launched their tag system in 2018 they did so to “boost discovery, to help creators describe their content and to help viewers find streams they’re interested in. We intentionally designed that system for creators to be able to describe what they were streaming, not who they were or what they stood for.
We have maintained this distinction since that time, and we were wrong. When viewers talk about why they love Twitch, they don’t just talk about the content. They talk about creators, what they care about, and the communities they have built. By expanding tags, we are giving creators more ways to be discovered and viewers more ways to find communities that they want to call home.”
Twitch included that the Twitch community is a diverse one and the tags should celebrate that.
They collaborated with “third-party” organizations including GLAAD, The Trevor Project, AbleGamers, SpecialEffect, and other professionals to promote underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and marginalized communities.
Twitch also said “We know implementing the request for tags is taking far longer than it should, and we sincerely thank you for your persistence, feedback, and patience. Now and always, it helps us make a better Twitch for everyone.”
Twitch will go online on the 26th of May at 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 a.m. ET/5:30 p.m. BST. TV/twitch to elaborate on these tags and answer as many queries as possible.
Countless Twitch users will appreciate the new Tags, which will allow many streamers to connect in ways that were previously impossible.