Vine, Twitter Video Sharing App, Sprouts Porn

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Vine, the hot new short video sharing app for iPhone released by parent company Twitter, has quickly developed a seedy element: Shortly after the app’s launch on Thursday, several accounts began posting pornographic, sexually themed and generally not-safe-for-work (NSFW) content, in violation of the terms of Apple’s App Store. Conspicuously, one such video appeared among the top of the app’s Editors’ Picks as of Monday morning, according to The Verge

Vine quickly removed the offending video from that section of the app, with parent company Twitter blaming its inclusion on “human error,” but pornographic content and sexually-themed accounts can still be found readily throughout the app, including an account with the username “NSFW.” Vine does provide removable filters to block sexually-themed content, which can be bypassed by clicking on the filter (see below): 

The app is rated 12+ in Apple’s App Store, for, among other ones: “Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity,” and “Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes.” But Apple’s App Store standards are being called into question because the company has previously removed from the App Store other applications that include similarly filtered or obscured sexually-themed or nude content, including recently, a photography app known as 500px. Apple’s App Store recently promoted Vine as one of its own Editors’ Choice apps, so for now at least, Apple does not appear to have quite as many qualms about Vine’s apparent violations as with other apps. 

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