Within days of the app’s launch it’s become a popular platform for sharing six second clips which relate to key words such as #dick, #porn, #tits or anything else you can basically not watch with your boss looking over your shoulder – unless you have a particularly cool/weird boss.
As Nick Bilton of the New York Times Tweeted: “Friend: “So are people using Vine for porn yet?” Me: “Nah, I don’t think so.” Friend: “Check the hashtag #porn.” Both: “Holy ****!”
In addition to the concerns over the lashings of adult content, Vine accidentally posted a porn clip as an Editors Choice today. The company later apologised, saying:
“A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor’s Picks, and upon realising this mistake we removed the video immediately. We apologise to our users for the error.”
It’s dead easy to post a video using the app, as TNT tested last week.
TNT’s first #Vine vid – a behind the scenes at TNT’s office including gratuitous pants crash zoom. vine.co/v/b5tOlU16UnD
— TNT Magazine(@tntmagazine) January 25, 2013
The only censorship for the rude clips is that users can flag them, and if enough do so Vine will put a warning at the start of it. The app’s terms of service don’t ban sexually explicit content.
A TechCrunch post quoted this statement from a spokesman for Twitter, who own Vine,
“Users can report videos as inappropriate within the product if they believe the content to be sensitive or inappropriate (e.g. nudity, violence, or medical procedures). Videos that have been reported as inappropriate have a warning message that a viewer must click through before viewing the video.
Uploaded videos that are reported and determined to violate our guidelines will be removed from the site, and the User account that posted the video may be terminated. Please review the Vine Rules (http://vine.co/terms) for more information on these violations.”
The main problem for Vine is Apple, however, who do have a strict policy against pornographic material and can choose to remove apps who break this from their store.