Twitter officially bans porn videos on Vine

If you need to take your clothes off in front of other people, you're going to have to go elsewhere

Twitter has had a porn problem on Vine literally since day one. In fact, I remember reading stories about it literally an hour after it debuted. The company took care of the problem pretty quickly restricting certaing certain hashtags and updating it with a higher age restriction.

Those moves apparently were not enough, however, so it has now taken the final stepped and banned adult material from the service outright through an update to both its rules and terms of service on Thursday.

"Pornography and Sexually Explicit Content: You may not post content that is pornographic or sexually explicit—even if it is of yourself or marked as sensitive," it now states in Vine's rules.

This change, the app admits, will not affect 99% of the Vine population, only "a very small percentage of videos that are not a good fit for our community."

"We don’t have a problem with explicit sexual content on the Internet –– we just prefer not to be the source of it," Twitter said.

It should be noted that this is not a blanket ban, and in its “Vine explicit sexual content FAQ” it outlines what is, and is not, considered to appropriate content.

Example of what is acceptable are nudity in a documentary context, such as videos of nude protestors; nudity in an artistic context, like nude modeling in an art class; nudity that is not sexually provocative, for example a mother breastfeeding her child; and cothed sexually suggestive dancing.

What will get you suspended?

Posting any sex acts, whether alone or with another person; any use of sex toys for sex acts; sexually provocative nudity, for example, posts that focus on exposed genitalia or depict nudity in a context or setting that is sexually provocative, like a strip club; close-ups of aroused genitals underneath clothing; and art or animation that is sexually graphic, such as hentai.

Other users are able to report any explicit content.

If a  users violates the policy, they mave their account suspended. They will be eligible for account restoration only after they have removed the violating posts and certified that their account complies with the Vine Rules.

Of course, violating the rules repeatedly could lead to permanent suspension.

Like I said earlier, Vine has had to deal with this problem from the very start.

Basically, right after Vine debuted, people started putting up videos of themselves naked, either alone or with other people. In a really embarrassing move for Twitter, one pornographic video was even accidentally chosen as one of Vine's editor picks!

Twitter became aware of the problem quickly, and tried to weed out inappropriate videos by restricting a number of hashtags, including #porn,  #sex, #boobs, and #booty. Apple removed the video-sharing app from its Featured Section, until Vine was updated with an age restriction for those under 17.

After that, the problem seemed to subside. Hopefully these new rules will put an end to it altogether.

(Image source: creepypasta.wikia.com)