Vine bans porn clips, but breastfeeding is fine
The Twitter-owned short-video service has banned "explicit sexual content" in an update to its rules, but it permits non-sexual nudity like breastfeeding.
Vine has banned "explicit sexual content" in a new update to its terms and conditions. "For more than 99 percent of our users, this doesn't really change anything. For the rest: we don't have a problem with explicit sexual content on the Internet -- we just prefer not to be the source of it," the Twitter-owned short-video service announced on its official blog.
"We introduced Vine to make it easier for people to find, watch, create and share videos right from their mobile phones," the company says. "As we've watched the community and your creativity grow and evolve, we've found that there's a very small percentage of videos that are not a good fit for our community."
A further post on on the Twitter Help Center site helpfully spells out exactly what it means by sexual content, including "sexually provocative nudity", "aroused genitals underneath clothing" and "sexually graphic" art or animation.
Keen to avoid the kind of hot water Facebook found itself in when it banned breastfeeding photos, a short list of permitted forms of nakedness allows "nudity that is not sexually provocative" and "nudity in a documentary context", giving the example of naked protesters.
Vine's post encourages users to report violating videos using the "..." button on the app.
Users who contravene the new policy will have their accounts suspended, with repeat offenders facing a permanent ban, pending a possible appeal.