Twitter Blames ‘Human Error’ For Vine Porn Gaffe

Twitter has apologised after an adult video was chosen as an ‘Editor’s Pick’ on its new video service, Vine, which launched last Thursday.

Vine allows users to create and share six-second video clips that can be embedded into tweets and or viewed through a dedicated iPhone application, but even before this latest gaffe, it had attracted controversy for the amount of pornographic content that could be found on the service.

However these videos had to be specifically searched for by users, whereas an Editor’s pick video is given prominence on the main page of the iPhone application. Twitter has blamed “human error” for the incident.

Vine porn error

“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,” said a Twitter spokesperson. “We apologise to our users for the error.”

Last week, Apple removed 500px, a popular smartphone photography app, from its App Store over fears it could be used to view pornographic images and possibly indecent images of children. The developers denied the claims, admitting that although nude images could be viewed through the app, they were filtered through a safe search function which is turned on by default.

Earlier this month, Ofcom fined Playboy £100,000 for failing to protect children from potentially harmful pornographic material on two of its sites in the UK. Unlike other pornographic websites, Playboy’s websites are regulated by Ofcom and the Authority for Video On Demand (ATVOD) because they provide access to videos in a similar way to how adult services broadcast on television and therefore fall within UK jurisdiction.

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