If Rule 34 of the internet is “If it exists, there’s porn of it”, then surely Rule 35 is “If it can host porn, it will host porn”, a lesson Twitter’s new video service, Vine, has learned today.
Vine, which was launched last week, is a micro-video social network and app. The service felt the heat this morning, when a six second pornographic video clip was chosen as an Editor’s Pick video, usually reserved for the best of the best videos.
Twitter says the video was picked due to human error, as opposed to the editor genuinely enjoying the artistic vision of the porno.
“A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor’s Picks, and upon realizing this mistake we removed the video immediately. We apologize to our users for the error,” says a Twitter spokesperson to The Verge.
A search on the Vine app for tags like “nsfw”, “porn”, and even “banana”, will come up with other examples of x-rated content on the network. Most are identified and hidden by a black warning message, which requires the user to tap to view, however some appear to have fallen through the cracks of the algorithm and appear completely visible.
Apple, which has a strong stance against pornography in apps on its operating systems, has removed Vine from its own Editor’s Picks section. It’s stopped short of a full ban on the app, flying in the face of past decisions where the company removed apps for nudity, most recently in the case of the popular photography app, 500px.
What is Vine?
Twitter purchased video startup Vine last October, fuelling speculation the microblogging service was building a platform based around short video segments.
Vine users create six-second video loops, which can be shared on the stand alone social network, inline in Twitter feeds, or Facebook.
The Vine app (free in the Apple App Store) is easy enough to use. Loops and cutaways are taken care of by the software, the user just chooses what to record and how long to record it by keeping their finger tapped on the screen.
Here’s a Vine video I prepared earlier, I will let you decide how NSFW it is.
I’m Vining like a pro, yo. vine.co/v/b5duaziwdqu
— Sim Ahmed (@simantics) January 24, 2013
