Should Twitch Streamers be promoting "sketchy" or "ethically ambiguous" gambling sites?

The more I get immersed into the world of Twitch, the more I start to realize that I have no idea what's happening on Twitch. Case in point, I had no idea that Twitch streamers were getting sponsorships from casinos. Which casinos I have no clue, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that casinos are sponsoring Twitch streamers because some command a lot of attention. 

Recently there have been some people who have been vocal about not liking the idea of casinos sponsoring streamers or streamers accepting their sponsorships because of they "sketchy" and "ethically ambiguous". With the debate picking up steam and not looking like it's going to die down anytime soon, I think it's probably a good idea to actually consider whether or not streamers should accept, or be sponsored by Casinos. 

Sponsorships and Making Money on Twitch

For anyone who doesn't know how Twitch works, here's a quick rundown. Once you start a channel, you start your path to becoming big time Twitch streamer. Twitch has milestones that you must reach in order to being an affiliate and partner. For both you must stream a certain amount of hours and have a certain amount of followers. Once you reach the affiliate status you can start earning on Twitch by accepting subscriptions. 

Once you become a Twitch partner, you start to see an increase in your revenue options. Twitch partners have more way to earn money including a share of the revenue of ads played on their channels. Partners have a dashboard in which they can control the frequency of the ads. 

Now, at any point in time someone can sponsor a Twitch channel, but by the time a sponsor gets wind of a particular Twitch streamer they are already making millions of dollars because they have a lot of viewers and subscribers which is why the sponsor approaches the streamer in the first place. Sponsorships can equal big money and sometimes for doing something as little as making sure the logo for the company is visible on the screen at all times during the the stream and/or taking time to shout out the product a few times during the stream. 

Overall for the right people, Twitch is a very lucrative opportunity so you can see why people would want to do it, but at what point should streamers be cognizant of the sponsorships they accept, if at all??

Where should streamers, or Twitch, Draw the line?? 

Getting right down to brass tacks, I think this is one of those situations where Twitch needs to consider having a rating system just like TV and film. The reason I think it's about time they implemented the system is because Twitch is meant for a general audience, and while most people probably assume that adults are mostly on Twitch, you have to really consider that some of top streamers play videogames that adolescences play, so they will watch their favorite streamer play whatever game for whatever reason and do you really want your kid glued to a screen that has ads for gambling? What about alcohol? There's laws against marketing certain products in a certain way, and what I mean by that is that Camel had to change their logo because people felt it was enticing kids to smoke cigarettes. There have been other products that ran into the same problem and I agree that certain products shouldn't be marketed towards kids, but on the same note, I know that you can't keep kids from all marketing so they will see a beer commercial on TV, but they won't see a Trojan commercial right after Sesame Street because those are the rules. 

Those same set of rules should be applied to Twitch because some streamers are very cognizant of the amount of eyes that are on them and work tirelessly to make sure they are making general audience friendly content whereas some streamers are just doing things for the sake of getting new subscribers and followers that they don't consider the ramifications of their actions, who those actions impact, and why it matters. Those people should be allowed to keep doing what they are doing, but they shouldn't be allowed to stay in a general audience setting. 

I curse a lot, so if Twitch hit me with something like a PG-13 rating, I'd be cool with it because I don't talk about anything sexual in nature and I try to just focus on creating a stream where like minded people can come hangout, chat, and play videogames with me, but I understand that some people might be turned off by my use of curse words and that's okay. They should be warned with a PG-13 rating and if my channel can't go into the general discovery and I want it to, then I need to work on not cursing so much. I'm not going to stop cursing so much, I'm just saying that if they implemented a rating system it would allow for parents to control the content their kids see. 

There's plenty of software out there for parents to use to make sure that mature content is blocked from the computer and if Twitch added a similar system that marked users to be flagged by those parental safety controls, you will have way less kids accessing a Twitch channel that has suggestive or mature content. This would also allow for streamers to keep peddling all the smut they want and Twitch could even do what YouTube does and limit the revenue share anyone with sexually suggestive or explicit content with. 

For instance, once someone who has a sexually explicit channel reaches partner status, they can get subscriptions, but they don't get any ad of the Twitch approved sponsors or ads on their channel as they would need to secure their own way to get that additional revenue outside of their subscriptions. I know some might say this isn't fair, but there are tons of other sites to go to like PornHub, RedTube, and OnlyFans where you can pretty much make the same money minus the revenue from ads, I think; not 100% sure so don't quote me on that, but the point is there are other places aside from Twitch to post and stream sexually explicit material. 

In a perfect world, people would be cognizant at all times of the things they do and say, but that's not the case. We live in a world where most times it's always someone else's fault and they should just find some way to deal with it. I think the Twitch platform has gotten big enough to where now categories just aren't enough to separate the explicit material from the general audience and I think in order to really get out in front of it, they need to create a rating system and create rules and guidelines because people are always going to push the envelop and if Twitch doesn't want to see advertisers disappear or face any major backlash, they need to get out ahead of this before something worse happens.