If Twitter wants to take a stand against sexual exploitation on its platform, it’s time for it to holistically enforce its policy against pornography.
Recently, a trend of fake pornographic videos of celebrities, generated by artificial intelligence algorithms, has emerged on social media sites. The social media platform recently made a public statement condemning the sharing of this content on their site, when a spokesperson told Motherboard:
“We will suspend any account we identify as the original poster of intimate media that has been produced or distributed without the subject’s consent. We will also suspend any account dedicated to posting this type of content.”
This is also in line with Twitter’s intimate media policy, which states, “you may not post or share intimate photos or videos of someone that were produced or distributed without their consent.”
It appears that Twitter is trying to combat non-consensually shared and AI-generated pornography, which the National Center on Sexual Exploitation applauds.
Unfortunately, Twitter is playing whack-a-mole with piecemeal policies instead of enforcing a comprehensive solution to sexually exploitive pornographic content.
First of all, the non-consensual sharing of pornography on Twitter will never be resolved unless the corporation enforced policies against all pornography. Many, if not most, victims of having intimate photos or videos shared without their permission are not initially aware of this breach of their privacy. Often by the time a victim does become aware, it is because the image or video has been rampantly shared online.
Trying to remove images one-by-one, for the few people who report it, is not only inefficient but also woefully ineffective if they want to stop non-consensual porn on their platform.
Second, even disregarding the child exploitation, revenge porn, and AI-porn that are regularly found on Twitter, Twitter is still filled with rampant links to, accounts about, and videos of child-themed, incest-themed, and rape-themed pornography. (For screenshot examples, visit the Proof section on this page.)
Some of the remaining problems include:
- Images of minors and/or adults posed to look like minors being used to advertise webcam pornography websites.
- Tweets with images of, and links to, animated dad and child-daughter incest websites.
- Videos of hardcore pornographic sex acts with incest and “forced sex” (aka rape) themes.
- Prostitution accounts advertising illegal commercial sex acts.
- Links to live webcam sex shows, many with themes of incest, minors, and”forced sex” (aka rape).
This social media company technically has a policy against pornographic material, but it is still regularly flooded with pornographic images, videos, and accounts which are not removed.
It's time for @Twitter to take a stand against sexual harassment and revenge porn by holistically enforcing policies against sexually exploitive content. #CleanUpTwitter Click To TweetTake action by emailing Twitter below to ask them to remove accounts, Periscope streams, and web links that include pornographic material or advertisements for pornographic material and/or prostitution.