Jamie F
Twitter’s new ‘statuses’ function, which it began testing last week (beginning July 25, 2022), has led to some users of the social media site having their feeds inadvertently flooded with hardcore porn.
The new function allows you to add a short phrase to a tweet, that sums up a mood or ‘vibe’ and acts similarly to a hashtag, directing you to more content with the same status tag if you click on it. An investigation by Vice found that some seemingly inoccuous, non-sex-related statuses were leading to cascades of porn images being shown.
They found that for some users, clicking on statuses called things such as “living the dream”, which had no overt links to sex or porn, led to their Twitter feeds becoming filled with hardcore adult content. The results were not consistent, with some users finding that clicking on the same statuses led to non-porn results being shown.
“Good morning” was another ‘statuses’ phrase that led to some of Vice’s testers being led to porn images.
As these findings occurred during the early public testing phase of the new statuses function, it’s likely that Twitter, which did not respond to Vice’s request for comment, will introduce measures to prevent porn being thrown into the feeds of those following statuses not directly looking for adult content.
Twitter is, however, one of the few global mainstream social media sites that allows porn on its platform, and is used by many adult content creators for promotion.
The Vice investigators deduced that it was content from explicit creators such as these, who post comments such as “living the dream” and “good morning” alongside porn images, that had led to the flood of porn some of them experienced.
They also pointed out that you can completely block porn from your Twitter feed by simply updating your ‘Display media that may contain sensitive content’ settings on the platform.
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