X Updates Policy to Officially Allow Adult Content

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Facts

  • Elon Musk's social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has updated its guidelines to officially allow adult content if it's consensual and clearly labeled. The new policy states, 'Sexual expression, whether visual or written, can be a legitimate form of artistic expression.'1
  • Users who 'regularly post' adult content must update their settings to ensure their posts are marked as sensitive material. Users under 18 or who haven't entered their birthdate can't access such content.2
  • The new rules, which apply to photographic, animated, and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated pornography, also ban users from posting adult content in 'highly visible places' like profile photos or banners.3
  • While it is officially allowing porn, X never banned users from posting adult content. According to a Reuters report, 13% of all posts in 2022 had explicit content, which has reportedly risen in frequency due to bots.4
  • Posting on X has allegedly become a new source of revenue for adult content creators, particularly after Musk's launch of Twitter Blue, which allowed users to pay to see content.2
  • A study from the UK's Children's Commissioner last January also found that 41% of teenagers aged 16-18 discovered pornography on X, compared to 37% who found it on actual adult websites.5

Sources: 1Al Jazeera, 2Verge, 3thehill.com, 4TechCrunch and 5Guardian.

Narratives

  • Progressive narrative, as provided by Bedside Productions. As almost every other popular social media platform has either banned or limited ad revenue for adult content creators, X and its predecessor, Twitter, have rightly allowed sex workers to continue making a living. Consensual pornography is not some lude form of clickbait but rather an economic lifeline for sex workers. X should continue its tradition of offering a safe and reliable marketplace for the industry.
  • Conservative narrative, as provided by Fight the New Drug. Pornography is a destructive force that negatively impacts our brains, artificially alters sexual taste, and ruins relationships. While legally banning it has not proven effective, that doesn't mean the digital town square should be promoting it. People used to have to search for such content on the internet's fringes, but now, even children are bombarded by it in their social media feeds.