Twitch eliminates a controversial concept called blind play from its broadcasts. From now on, when searching for videos and/or streams, it will not be possible to use Blind Playthrough.
Since 2018, Twitch has a system that allows streamers to categorize their transmissions according to the content of their content and give their viewers an idea of what they are doing. These categories are still present in its recommendation system, and even until recently, “Blind Playthrough” was one of them; But as of now, it is gone.
The blind play was to assign first time games, where streamers played for the first time and didn’t want history elements or anything like that in the chat. They used this category frequently, but Twitch eliminated it for capacitive language, although it wasn’t until yesterday that Erin “Aureylian” Wayne commented on the change through Twitter.
“I’m glad to see that Twitch has heard all the feedback and eliminated the Blind Playthrough category for a more inclusive language in our community”, she said. You can still use the First Playthrough as an elective combined with no spoilers for the same thing. This category had already been criticized for its disability connotations, such as in June, AbleGamers COO and Steven Spohn talked about it in a lengthy thread about negative disability terms and language.
Blind Playthrough can easily be replaced by spoiler-free or undiscovered or first-time play because Blind Playthrough would be turning off your monitor, and that’s not what you do, Spohn said. ”As we used to say ‘there is” when someone was bad, using the disability for negative situations or feelings is common, but if we stop doing one, we can do it with these words as well. Think about the words you choose.
The change, according to Spohn, not only avoids a term that is harmful to certain people but now makes more sense since this category now says exactly that it is someone playing for the first time. Some streamers, however, are hoping for a somewhat more substantial change: “I really hope they add a category for people with disabilities so we can find more streamers to interact with,” said Dani Dawnstar.
I’m glad to see that Twitch continues to deliver on promises to fix and resolve problems and concerns from the disabled community,” Spohn said on Twitter. “It’s just the beginning.”
