Twitter's Vine, an app that allows you to create six-second videos, launched late last week to much excitement. Within hours, thousands of people on Twitter were tweeting short videos. Vinepeek, a new site that lets you watch streams of so-called Vines from around the world, even sprang up.
But some of those short videos began to include pornography.
Over the weekend technology websites, including Business Insider, The Verge and TechCrunch reported that a search for "#porn" in the new app brought up many videos with hardcore porn.
Vine says that users can report this content and the video will be covered with a warning message. "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)," Twitter said in a statement to ABC News. "Videos that have been reported as inappropriate have a warning message that a viewer must click through before viewing the video."
More: Vinepeek.com: An Unmoderated Glimpse Into Life Around the World
Twitter and Vine said they will only remove the video if it violates its guidelines. "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," Twitter said. Vine's Terms of Service does not explicitly say anything about pornography or nudity. A search by ABC News for #porn within the app brought up at least 10 pornographic clips, many of which were not covered up by the warning message.
To make matters worse, this morning a pornographic video containing images of oral sex was marked as an "Editor's Choice" in the Vine app. Twitter apologized in a statement: "A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor's Picks, and upon realizing this mistake we removed the video immediately. We apologize to our users for the error."
Users noticed the misplaced and pornographic video. Many tweeted about the issue and one user complained in a review in Apple's App Store: "If my kids got a hold of this I would be so mad. There is no way to block users or make sure unwanted videos stay off."
The review brings up issues surrounding the app's presence in Apple's App Store. Apple has long limited apps with pornography. Just last week it pulled the 500px photo-sharing app because of complaints about nudity.
"The app was removed from the App Store for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines," Apple's Tom Neumayr said in a statement to ABC News last week. "We also received customer complaints about possible child pornography. We've asked the developer to put safeguards in place to prevent pornographic images and material in their app."
Vine, however, has been one of the top apps in the App Store since it was released last week, receiving Apple's Editor's Choice award. It is rated 12+, for teenagers or older, with a warning of "infrequent/mild sexual content or nudity." 500px was able to resubmit its app after putting stricter filtering settings in place and adjusting the rating of the app
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