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Following a decision by Twitch officials to remove clips of streamer Heather Kent breastfeeding her child, the company has subsequently confirmed that breastfeeding on-stream isn’t a violation of the site’s terms of service.
“The Safety Ops team responded to reports of Adult Nudity,” a message to Kent said. “In this case there was a brief moment under question so the clip was removed. At that time, it was a difficult position for a Safety Ops admin to be put in during a review of an incident that has not previously occurred on Twitch,”
The message continued: “After further discussions between Partnerships, Safety Ops and Trusty and Safety there is alignment between all teams that breastfeeding is not and will not be against the ToS. As you so eloquently put it ‘breastfeeding is not lewd’ and we agree with you.”
The original issue arose when a clip of Kent was posted to the Livestreamfail subreddit, gathering negative attention from forum users. Twitch removed the clip later that day, according to a report on Kotaku. From there, Kent posted the clip on Twitter noting that society has “a long way to go in the fight to normalize breastfeeding.”
Kent hosts ASMR, painting, and “just hanging out” streams on her Twitch channel, under the name HeatheredEffect, where she has more than 16,000 followers.
