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As spotted by TechCrunch, X updated its guidelines to let users “share consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior” as long as it’s labeled and not in a prominent location, such as a profile picture or banner.
In the past, X — formerly known as Twitter — didn’t explicitly ban porn. It became a home for some NSFW creators following the launch of Twitter Blue (now X Premium), as creators could encourage followers to pay to view content, similar to OnlyFans. NSFW content could be another form of revenue for X, which has seen a dip in ad sales following Elon Musk’s takeover.
The platform will require users who “regularly post” NSFW content to adjust their settings to mark the images and videos they post as sensitive content. X’s rules apply to all adult content, whether AI-generated, photographic, or animated. By default, users who aren’t 18 or haven’t entered their birth date can’t view NSFW material. The new rules also ban content “promoting exploitation, nonconsent, objectification, sexualization or harm to minors, and obscene behaviors.”
X said in March that it would start letting NSFW communities apply an “Adult Content” label to prevent posts from getting automatically filtered. The platform also said it would start hiding likes on profiles, something that had often exposed accounts (Ted Cruz) for liking content that was adult or objectionable in other ways.
Despite the new terms of service changes, cracking down on rule-breakers will be easier said than done, which is something the Twitter team considered when exploring monetizing adult content in 2022. We’ve already seen explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift flood X in January, and the platform wasn’t immediately successful in stopping them from spreading.
Other social platforms have run into issues with maintaining NSFW communities. Tumblr most notably banned adult content in 2018 (before updating the policy to allow some adult material a few years later), not long after its app was removed from the App Store because of posts containing child sexual abuse material, and traffic quickly dipped. Meanwhile, payment processors like Mastercard and Visa cut off payments on Pornhub and started enforcing bans on other platforms, leading Patreon, eBay, and even OnlyFans to introduce stricter rules around the adult content they allow.
Update, June 3rd: Added tweet from @Safety.
