SAN FRANCISCO, CA, March 7, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – People who like to send explicit videos via social media will have to do it without Twitter’s help from now on. The massively popular microblogging site, which got caught up in the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal when the then-Democratic congressman sent pictures of his genitals to a 21-year-old girl, says it is done hosting porn on its proprietary “Vine” video service.
Vine announced the change in a blog post, explaining, “As we’ve watched the community and your creativity grow and evolve, we’ve found that there’s a very small percentage of videos that are not a good fit for our community.”
As a result, Vine said, “we’re making an update to our Rules and Terms of Service to prohibit explicit sexual content.”
Added the company: “For more than 99 percent of our users, this doesn’t really change anything. For the rest: we don’t have a problem with explicit sexual content on the Internet –– we just prefer not to be the source of it.”
The decision to change the rules comes after a number of previous controversies regarding pornographic imagery on the video site. Just after its launch on iTunes a year ago, Vine was pulled from the featured apps section by Apple after a pornographic video was made one of Vine’s “editors’ picks.” The app’s age rating was subsequently raised from 12+ to 17+, and Vine took precautions to segregate pornographic content from conventional content by blocking hashtag searches for sex-related keywords.
But last month, Vine was again in the news for porn after a teenage boy filmed himself engaging in self-gratification with a microwave pastry. The video went viral, exposing hundreds of thousands of people to a darker side of Vine they might not have otherwise known existed.
Under the updated terms of service, users are forbidden from posting “explicit sexual content,” including “depictions of sex acts, nudity that is sexually provocative or in a sexual context, and graphic depictions of sexual arousal.”
Click “like” if you say NO to porn!
The company provided the following list of examples of banned content:
- Sex acts, whether alone or with another person
- Use of sex toys for sex acts
- Sexually provocative nudity, for example, posts that focus on exposed genitalia or depict nudity in a context or setting that is sexually provocative (like a strip club)
- Close-ups of aroused genitals underneath clothing
- Art or animation that is sexually graphic (such as hentai)
However, nudity will still be allowed as long as it is documentary or “artistic” in format, and not sexual in nature. For example, a Vine clip of an actively nursing mother would be considered appropriate. The company will also permit sexually suggestive dance videos in which people are fully clothed.
Vine users who violate the new policies will have their accounts suspended until they comply. Failure to comply may result in being permanently banned from the service. Accountholders who previously posted explicit content have one week to remove it or face suspension.
The new rules for Vine do not apply to Twitter at large – users there may still post explicit imagery and links, just as long as they flag it accordingly and do not use Vine to do it. A Twitter spokesman told ZDNet that the company believes Vine users are “different” than Twitter users as a whole, and said they want them “to be comfortable” using the app.
To read the new Vine guidelines, click here.
To contact Vine, click here.