Vine, The New Video And Photo Sharing Service From Twitter, Has Become A Porn Hub Just Four Days From Its Inception

It only took four days for Twitter’s new video sharing application, Vine, to become a tool for spreading sexually explicit videos on the internet—and many of its users have complained.

Vine is Twitter, Inc.’s answer to video sharing, allowing users to explore various categories with Twitter’s hash-tagging system. Since Vine’s Jan. 24 debut, “#sex,” “#porn” and other tags advertising prurient content allows anyone using the service to quickly find graphic videos with explicit sexual content. The popularity of the tagging system, with which Twitter users are already familiar, has made it easy to distribute, find, and even accidentally stumble upon, pornographic material.

The San Francisco-based micro-blogging service has advertised Vine as censorship-free, and it currently relies on users to flag content as inappropriate, but it doesn’t say how many flags are necessary for an objectionable post to carry a warning or be removed.

Unlike Twitter’s main product, there is currently no other way to block questionable content on Vine other than country-specific systems that prevent content illegal in certain countries. Otherwise, like the Twitter terms, Vine's terms of service hold users responsible for the content they post.

“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,” Vine’s service terms state.

According to experts, the pornographic content would put Vine in trouble with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), which has a very stringent and explicit ban on posting porn and graphic content through its services. Last week, Apple reportedly disabled a photo sharing app called 500px saying that searching nude photos was easily facilitates, in violation of Apple’s stringent no-porn policy.

Meanwhile, the Twitteratti has been busily debating Vine’s porn problem. Apple iPhone and iPad owners wondered whether Apple would pull Vine off its devices.

"Vine is the newest porn search engine," tweeted Henri Viiralt.

Tristan Mathers averred: "I hope #vine doesn't get pulled for people posting porn. They can't stop being from doing **** like this! I actually like the service."

Some users expressed their shock and dismay, albeit in a subdued tone.

Anton Koekemoer ‏remarked: "Shocker. People are uploading porn to Vine."

NathanMaggard wrote: "So #vine is super-addictive. A good but for twitter (minus the copious amounts of #porn)."