On Thursday last week, Twitter released its own standalone social video app, Vine. As with just about any functional digital platform, over the weekend the new service began attracting pornographic content.
Vine, which is currently only available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, allows users to create and share six-second looping videos. New York Times journalist Nick Bilton first tweeted about it after finding that a search for pornographic hashtags on the service surfaced explicit videos.
Twitter, which acquired Vine towards the end of last year, has always been a staunch advocate for freedom of expression. Both services do not expressly forbid sexually explicit content. Vine's terms of service state:
"You are responsible for your use of the services, for any content you post to the services, and for any consequences thereof. The content you submit, post, or display will be able to be viewed by other users of the services and through third-party services and Web sites. You should only provide content that you are comfortable sharing with others under these terms."
Vine videos can, however, be flagged by users as "inappropriate" and if enough complaints are received, Twitter adds a warning to the beginning of the video which users have to click on before it begins to play.
Double standards?
While the propagation of pornographic material on a service driven by user-generated content is hardly surprising, the case of Vine is particularly interesting given the fact that it is currently available only via iOS and as such the app is subject to Apple's App Store guidelines.
As noted by The Verge, Apple's recent pulling of the popular photo sharing app 500px due to "pornographic images and material" raises questions over how Apple will deal with Vine - or if its policies are simply unevenly enforced.
Referring to the pulling of 500px from the App Store, Apple said: "The app was removed from the App Store for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines. We also received customer complaints about possible child pornography. We've asked the developer to put safeguards in place to prevent pornographic images and material in their app."
Apple's actual App Store guidelines state: "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."
Another social video app, Viddy, was also pulled from the App Store about a year ago for containing content not dissimilar to that which has now appeared on Vine.
The fact that Apple is yet to comment on the Vine issue, and that the app remains featured in the App Store as an 'Editor's pick' has already led to some speculation over the privileged relationship Twitter enjoys with Apple due to the deep integration of the service with iOS.
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