X has new rules that officially allow porn

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24170352/x-xxx-porn-adult-content-terms-of-service-policy-update

by nehagup • 2 years ago

41 99 2 years ago

nehagup• 2 years ago

So, are states like Texas, which need age verification, gonna ask for it for X too?

This could get pretty wild considering the whole bot situation and the way Red States are handling adult content these days...

freedomben6• 2 years ago

This could be a fascinating development to watch actually. Made much more interesting too by the fact that Elon has a lot of business in states like Texas and Florida. X is also increasingly viewed as a "right wing"[1] place, which might make states like Texas a lot more sympathetic to their "free speech" position because they won't feel like it's a "left wing" tactic to poison minds.

[1]: I'm not saying it is a right wing place, I have no idea as I have no data (not even anecdata because I don't really use it), but I've certainly noticed an uptick in people sharing that view on sites like HN since Elon took over. Have also heard that there is a decent balance of viewpoints on X. My guess is that both are probably true (and are not mutually exclusive), but again I have no data.

pavlov• 2 years ago

Are dedicated porn sites like PornHub and friends considered somehow left wing?

Or is it just that their NSFW freedom of speech isn't significant because it's not to the benefit of a billionaire that these politicians happen to like.

GeneralMayhem• 2 years ago

Past research ([1]) has shown that Twitter disproportionately boosts right-wing political content. Qualitatively, you can find whatever you want there, but Elon Musk's personal connection with and admiration for a number of right-wing individuals makes them stand out. In particular, Twitter under Musk has a clear pattern of not applying its moderation policies to high-profile accounts; in the current year, it is right-wing politicians who most frequently post hateful or blatantly false information, so failing to hold them to a normal standard amounts to a tacit approval of what they're posting.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2025334119

tzs2• 2 years ago

So, are states like Texas, which need age verification, gonna ask for it for X too?

I believe that the Texas law applies to sites where more than 1/3 of their content is sexual material harmful to minors. I don't know exactly how it defines "sexual material" and "harmful to minors", but I suspect that Twitter does not qualify as such a site.

WWWMMMWWW• 2 years ago

For Texas just have 2 gun pics per porn pic ... then you're OK.

MadVikingGod• 2 years ago

Well, I expect that Twitter will now be banned by every corporate filter in existence.

unstatusthequo• 2 years ago

And possibly the Apple App Store?

SassyBird3• 2 years ago

App Store allows and contains plenty apps with NSFW content.

wkat424210• 2 years ago

Well that's kinda tough now. A lot of companies still do their own comms on Twitter.

For the same reason we have spotify blocked at work, but not youtube because we publish our comms there. Which results in... people listening to music videos and wasting a ton of bandwidth for no reason (because they're downloading the video just for the music). A bit stupid but the powers that be are unwilling to unblock spotify.

akkad332• 2 years ago

You can use YouTube music for just listening to music

akkad332• 2 years ago

Twitter has always had NSFW content and adult content warnings as the article mentions. This change just clarifies the rules

mcphage• 2 years ago

However, a reason to leave the rules unclarified is that parties who want to look the other way are able to. I don't think it'll make much of a difference in this case, though.

rsynnott• 2 years ago

I mean, Twitter's always been full of porn.

consumer4512• 2 years ago

Wow, that seems like a sign of desperation, doesn't it?

I wonder how the other backers of the Twitter deal feel about financing pornography.

This includes Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, MUFG, Société Générale, Mizuho Bank, BNP Paribas, and the KSA.

SassyBird3• 2 years ago

What a world we live in that allowing NSFW content is seen as desperation, while monetisation through ads isn’t.

atonse• 2 years ago

But it does change the whole feel of a site and make it not palatable to large swaths of users. Because it's one thing if you can say "I just won't follow porn accounts" – it's a whole other thing if the feed is also algorithmic. So now there's a non-zero chance that scrolling through will result in something pornographic? For the record, I have no issue with that type of content, but there's a sense of "time and place" and having it separated.

If not properly gated (via special accounts that can be filtered out, etc, or profiles that have ratings baked in), this can become a mess very quickly.

bcrosby95• 2 years ago

Yes, a world we've lived in for the past 100+ years.

consumer4512• 2 years ago

It seems desperate because, for example, KSA is the second largest investor in X.

Porn is illegal in KSA. So this is going to get a bit awkward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_the_Middle_East

lifeinthevoid• 2 years ago

Would not be hypocritical at all, bet those execs never watch porn.

burnished2• 2 years ago

Probably great? Looks like this will end up with better labeled risque material.

nickthegreek• 2 years ago

This isnt new. Twitter has allowed adult content for a very long time.

labster• 2 years ago

First Twitter Blue, next Twitter Pink?

wkat424210• 2 years ago

Kinda nice actually. This is like the one thing Musk has done at Twitter that I agree with. I think sexuality is a normal part of life, we shouldn't be so fussy about it (within consent obviously). It's not even always for money, many people just enjoy it sharing their content.

However it should be behind a filter of course. Just like reddit does. So those who are interested can view it and the rest can avoid it.

arandomusername12• 2 years ago

Pornography is damaging to society/to those that view it.

https://news.byu.edu/intellect/pornography-use-at-any-level-... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9922938/

pavel_lishin• 2 years ago

Any studies from non-religious sources?

antegamisou• 2 years ago

Man this being downvoted seconds after being posted speaks volumes about how ubiquitous porn sickness on a site supposed to satisfy iNtElLeCtUaL cUrIoSiTy

So man cooomers ITT it's just sad.

thriftwy2• 2 years ago

. the research found that pornography use by men or women at any level negatively impacted romantic relationships

What if you don't have any, and nowhere to get? What if you're 14 and realistically any serious romantic relations are many years in the future for you?

wkat424210• 2 years ago

Considering most of the world views it and society is fine, I think I can posit the contrary.

And think of all those hippies from the 70s that would have sex parties in the park. They're all grown up now. Don't see them running around raping and murdering. Might run into them at the swinger club though :)

GaggiX2• 2 years ago

NSFW has always been allowed on Twitter or you would have to erase half of the artist community.

yjftsjthsd-h2• 2 years ago

That didn't stop Tumblr.

verticalscaler2• 2 years ago

Every Musk thread smacks of desperation since the histrionics on here the day he took over and fired all those indispensables.

The site will go down imminently! Traffic is cratering! Everyone I know have switched to mylittlepony tooting on mastodon!

I get it, you don’t like him, by all means. But stop manifesting reality.

Edit: awww you guys, sorry if I hurt your feelings. Twitter is down, tooting ftw! musk bad, I conform with all your pet issues and hatreds, please don’t shun me!

coolbreezetft24• 2 years ago

I don't recall anyone on here saying the site will just go down forever. The general consensus here was that there'd be more bugs/glitches and a general degradation in quality. This seems to have panned out

dang• 2 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40565397.

next_xibalba• 2 years ago

Isn't this just the codification of the long standing status quo? X has allowed nudity for as long as I've been a user.

jandrese• 2 years ago

Maybe they want people to stop reporting the "nudes in bio" Thot Bots? They are explicitly allowed now so you can't complain.

joseda-hg2• 2 years ago

I view it as a shift from implictly not forbidden to explictly allowed

Some NSFW based accounts regularly complain of shadowbanning and weird behaviours compared to SFW accounts

perihelions• 2 years ago

This is rather misleading: as the article explains, porn was always permitted on Twitter—it was never prohibited by Twitter's ToS. Actually, I'm rather confused what the substance of this story is. Is it just a finer sub-classification of the NSFW label system?

burnished2• 2 years ago

Sounds reasonable enough.

kazinator• 2 years ago

Nude photos of Musk can't be far behind.

throwaway5752• 2 years ago

What X does or does not do is increasingly irrelevant. They have a CEO who is good at creating attention for himself, but Twitter/X has substantially less active users than Pinterest now. I am almost surprised there is time to make this change while working on board vote politics on his $50B compensation package controversy at his other CEO job.

With all the downvote this clearly triggered some people in bad ways, but it is true. Twitter is about 250M, Pinterest is about 500M.

Twitter is down substantially in all publicly disclosed metrics / investor writedowns since the go private transaction. I don't know what it is about them that makes some people treat the company with deference it doesn't deserve, but it's a shrinking, niche social network.

TheChaplain• 2 years ago

Wish they could do something about the bot accounts. :/

dotnet004• 2 years ago

I like this, they never had rules explicitly against NSFW, but tech companies love their unstated rules and boundaries and it's nice to have somewhat of a reversal on that, as small as it is.

YouTube, Twitch etc all have such vague standards on NSFW that it's pretty common for streamers to be completely unsure if something that could be perceived as NSFW would be considered as NSFW by the platform. It leads to all sorts of disappointing self-censoring for no logical reason.

Edit: I wonder if the idea behind this is to make it so legitimate accounts feel comfortable labeling their NSFW media properly, so that X can deal with the bot problem by detecting unmarked NSFW media.

tennisflyi• 2 years ago

It wasn’t official before!? lol