Twitter's new video-sharing app Vine has a porn problem

Twitter’s newly launched six-second video app, Vine, seems have to become a porn hub within days of its launch. NYT’s Nick Bilton tweeted out

It seems that the app which is available on iPhone and iPod Touch and lets users create and share six-second clips, has too much content with explicit images on it. According to Vine’s terms of Service, posting pornographic or sexually explicit content is not against the policy. However, users can flag videos they find offensive and Twitter can add a warning asking users to bypass a clip if there are too many complaints. [caption id=“attachment_604236” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screengrab of Vine.[/caption] According to this post on TechCrunch, a Twitter spokesperson issued the following statement to them regarding the porn problem at 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.

As this post on the Atlantic points out this was bound to happen as the app can record reasonably high quality videos of anything you want, on-the-go, and post it publicly for all the Internet to see. The fact that the content can be easily created and then shared and made searchable via hashtags is what makes the app Vine so perfect for porn. Vine might soon run into trouble with Apple’s App Store as the policy makes it clear that “apps containing pornographic material, defined by Webster’s Dictionary as ’explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings’, will be rejected”.