Twitter is taking action against hardcore pornography on its new six-second video app, Vine, banning searches for explicit content and deleting X-rated users.
The social network made efforts to clean up the porn-hit video app after apologising for a "human error" that showed a graphic sex clip on its homepage on Monday.
NSFWVine, the user behind the pornographic video, appeared to have been blocked from Vine on Tuesday morning – but not before they had uploaded more than 30 explicit videos to 500 followers. However, the person behind the account denied that it had been blocked.
An individual who responded when the Guardian messaged the NSFWVine Twitter account said they were not "really expecting" Vine to select the clip as an editor's pick on the homepage.
NSFWVine launched two websites asking users to submit pornographic videos to Vine less than 72 hours after Twitter launched the app, internet registration records show. "The plan is to have others submit their NSFW vine clips, so the site is a collection of NSFW vine clips. $ will be from ads," the person behind the account told the Guardian.
They claimed Twitter had not been in contact about the explicit material despite making a public apology over it.
The person behind the account defended uploading pornographic videos to the site, and said it was the responsibility of Twitter and Vine to make them difficult to find.
The individual said in an email: "Twitter/Vine should really take steps to make it possible to filter out and block such content, so it can be out of reach for children, but I believe there are a lot of adults who would like the opportunity to share and view such content, and I bet they have gotten a lot of app downloads because of the media attention regarding porn on there. Maybe a safe search filter or something could be a possibility. Like Google have, which works well in my opinion."
The San Francisco-based company moved to block searches for tags including "#porn", "nsfw" and "boobs" in a further effort to rid Vine of its porn problem. The app is still available for free for Apple iPhones and iPods, although it was quietly removed from the app store's editor's picks section late on Monday.
Vine's launch last week inspired several spin-off sites that display an unmoderated stream of the rolling videos, including Vinepeek, launched by the London-based startup PXi Ventures.
The director of Pxi Ventures, Peter MacRobert, said he was "disappointed" that porn had started appearing on Vine, but added that he was a fan of the service.
He told the Guardian: "Vinepeek simply re-broadcasts a feed from Vine, and at the moment the original content is not tagged in any way to indicate that it may contain adult themes.
"Ideally, we would like to work with Vine to get an indication of a clip's suitability (for example, a meta tag) – allowing our viewers to make a choice before viewing the content."
A Twitter spokesperson said: "We're in the process of changing how users find and view sensitive content. We're experimenting with a number of approaches and will continue to iterate."
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