Twitter’s 6-second video service becomes a porn playground
Jan 28, 2013, 4:47 PM | Updated: Jan 29, 2013, 7:00 am
Since the launch late last week, Vine users have created thousands and thousands of six-second videos, including multiple mini-porn videos. Twitter apologized when one of the one of the inappropriate videos was featured as an "Editor's Pick." (Linda Thomas photo)
(Linda Thomas photo)
What can you do in a six second video? Tick tock, tick tock. Time’s up.
You could capture images of a yawning cat, kids holding hands, a man doing pushups, or almost anything pornographic.
Twitter has a new video app called Vine that encourages people to share six-second videos. Vinepeek is a web-based version. It’s oddly addictive to watch the world pass by in six-second chunks.
Since the launch late last week, Vine users have created thousands and thousands of videos, including multiple mini-porn videos.
That’s to be expected with any new social sharing tool. The issue is getting a lot of attention because Vine mistakenly featured a hard-core porn video in their Editor’s Picks section of the mobile app.
“A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor’s Picks, and upon realizing this mistake we removed the video immediately. We apologize to our users for the error,” Twitter said in an emailed statement.
They have since made it more difficult to search for such videos. Although when you find one, it’s easy to ignore the warning and click on it anyway. Twitter has user policies, but the company has to be pressed before they’ll censor anything.
The Vine app is rated 12+ for “infrequent/mild sexual content or nudity, fantasy violence, and other things that are questionable. As of today, it’s it was the fourth most popular free app in the Apple App Store.
For parents who might be concerned about Vine, other platforms that are popular with the pre-teen set – Tumblr, Snapchat and Pinterest – have similar issues.
While Vine is getting negative attention for the adult-themed videos, people are overlooking the creative uses for the new Twitter-owned service.
Users can make a video easily within Vine, so there’s nothing to upload. The editing functions allow users to stop and start a video recording.
People have created some interesting time lapse and continuous loop videos – making pecan brownies, for example, or steak tartare.
Another editor’s pick, the clean version, shows National Guardsmen walking through New York as a passerby says, “Wherever you’re coming from, thank you.” They respond in unison, “You’re welcome.”
It’s harmless, except for the reality that it’s a reflection of our shrinking attention span. All of these videos are six seconds.
Remember when people used to get 15 minutes of fame?
By LINDA THOMAS
