Last week, Twitter debuted Vine, its new stand-alone video app. A few days later, Twitter was met with a graphic surprise: it’s darling new tool is now a porn hotspot.
Vine’s earliest videos were relatively boring. It didn’t take long for users to figure out something more interesting to share via the super-short videos: #porn. (As of this afternoon, Vine had disabled that particular hashtag.) A graphic video even climbed to the top of Vine’s ‘Editors Picks’ before being removed.
Twitter issued a short statement to TechCrunch’s John Biggs about the sudden explosion of racy content on Vine:
Users can report videos as inappropriate within the product if they believe the content to be sensitive or inappropriate (e.g. nudity, violence, or medical procedures). Videos that have been reported as inappropriate have a warning message that a viewer must click through before viewing the video.
Uploaded videos that are reported and determined to violate our guidelines will be removed from the site, and the User account that posted the video may be terminated. Please review the Vine Rules (http://vine.co/terms) for more information on these violations.
Wait, people are using the internet for porn? Apparently, yes:
Apple Has a Porn Problem, and It’s About to Get Worse
How Will Microsoft Solve its Impending Xbox Porno Problems?
Evidently, the Pentagon Has a Porn Problem
Instagram: Facebook’s Newest Porn Problem
Facebook Has Another Porn Problem
Of Course Flickr Has a Porn Problem
How Google Tackled Its Early Porn Problem
Google Rival has a Porn Problem
Could Veoh’s Porn Problem Haunt YouTube?
So what have we learned? Life finds a way, and porn finds the internet.
Keller is director of social media for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek.
