6 ms·

Vine places porn at the top of every user’s feed

45 points by taytus 14y ago

joshstrange 14y ago
> “I clicked on the video b/c I thought the warning was a joke,” wrote in the comments. I’m furious I had to see something like this.” Really? And somehow it is Vine's fault you saw porn while clicking on a video named "Dildoplay" with the tags "nsfw" "porn" "nsfwvine". I can't feel sorry for you. Yes it is too bad that this showed up in the first place but lets not start with the pitchforks. This was a simple mistake that was completely avoidable by users who have 2 eyes and can read. Like I said it shouldn't have been there in the first place but lots not act like you accidentally clicked on a video that has all the correct warning of it's content. "Officer, I didn't know that when I pulled the pin out of that grenade that it would explode, I thought it was a joke".
- wereHamster 14y ago
  > "[...] was [...] avoidable by users who have 2 eyes and can read." Your faith in humanity amazes me.
- Wilya 14y ago
  That's what you get when you spend tons of time teaching users that all content is curated and that they can click everywhere safely. I might have had the same reaction, to be honest. When I see a video called "Hot XXX girl" with an alluring thumbnail on Youtube, the first thing that comes to my mind isn't "this is porn", it's "this is a cheap way to get views to an uninteresting video". And I routinely get "You must be 18 or older to see this" warnings for videos/photos with as little as a hint of a naked breast. So, yeah, that's not very surprising.
  - megablast 14y ago
    This does not give you a reason to be outraged, surely you can see that?
- goblin89 14y ago
  Well, Vine is rated 12+ in App Store. “Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity”. I'm not sure what are ramifications if an application violates assigned ratings. On a second thought, “Infrequent/Mild” is vague enough: does slash mean “or”?
  - CrazedGeek 14y ago
    I'd imagine it's pulled ASAP. None of the major app store providers allow porn on their stores, do they?
    - jkaljundi 14y ago
      They allow browsers, but those are: "You must be at least 17 years old to download this app."
  - JagMicker 14y ago
    Does it make sense that an app. with the sole purpose of sharing user-submitted videos would somehow be devoid of any questionable/suggestive content? Isn't it kinda Apple's fault for insisting that apps conform to their age guidelines, when those apps involve user-submitted videos? I mean...who lets their 12- to 17-year-old use an app like Vine? Do they honestly believe nothing bad might come of that?
- untog 14y ago
  "Officer, I didn't know that when I pulled the pin out of that grenade that it would explode, I thought it was a joke". More like, "Officer, I didn't know that the stuffed toy I bought for my 12 year old child was in fact a grenade, and that picking up the toy would result in it exploding". There are two issues here. The first is that the app is rated 12+, and shouldn't be showing adult content. The second is that it's showing adult content unprompted- the most recent posts certainly don't have the warning attached, so people are getting porn sent to them without asking for it.
- smackfu 14y ago
  I don't think it's worth getting hung up on the warnings, since just looking at any hashtag you would guess has porn/nudity shows that most of it has no warning at all.
- SODaniel 14y ago
  "It wasn't me gov'na! I was just minding me own business and all of a sudden I found myself in this bordello with 3 women, undressed and in bed"
dlokshin 14y ago
One of the perils of being a startup, and instead of growing organically and having these embarrassing moments early in front of a small number of hardcore users (who will use you no matter what, and forgive you no matter what you do), you get pushed out by a behemoth like Twitter.
Irishsteve 14y ago
While its embarrassing for Vine to have porn pop up in the top of users feed's , and the societal norms say it's a "bad thing" for the company; I can't but help feel that in actual fact this would attract far more users.
- danso 14y ago
  I don't think so in this case...even if we assume that porn is a major driver in tech (I think iOS's whitewashed dominance is a clear counter argument), six-second porn is likely not satisfying enough for porn aficionados to stick around with. Even if there are some great clips, it's still seems like a lot of work to hit refresh-next-whatever (I don't know, I don't have the app), nevermind wading through all the unsatisfying clips. Meanwhile, the many users who do not want to see porn, either at all, or at least during daytime hours, will have a negative user experience.
  - __alexs 14y ago
    You are clearly not a Tumblr user. Porn GIFs are crazy popular there.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    I think you underestimate people here. They've been hitting refresh and waiting for static images to load for a long time. Vinepeek makes allows you to just sit back and watch, and with the addition of tag searching, I'd imagine that sitting through this content isn't a chore at all considering the lengths people will go to find new material to begin with.
- notahacker 14y ago
  Except that there already are thousands of sites for the discerning porn connoisseur that don't distract with cats or comic clips, and are unconnected with personal Twitter profiles people usually use for safe-for-work activities. It's reasonable to expect Twitter to take steps to make the porn much harder to find in the near future too. It's going to make it easier for Facebook to justify blocking the app too, assuming they want to, which might slow adoption through that channel.
moondowner 14y ago
There's an easy fix: add options panel with hashtags to filter out. And add #porn as one of the defaults in it.
- jerf 14y ago
  Your solution depends on pornographer's honesty in tagging. They have tons of incentive to be dishonest this way.
  - untog 14y ago
    I'm genuinely confused as to what the incentive is for the people posting the porn. They certainly aren't profiting from it- do they just have a vested interest in seeing Vine fail?
    - rexreed 14y ago
      It's an advertisement for viewers to "see more" -- there's lots of free porn out there, and most of it is used to funnel a percentage of the viewers to paid subscription sites where other / more similar content exists. Conversion rates are not as low as you think.
    - jerf 14y ago
      Expanding on rexreed's point, these are people peddling a vice with the characteristic of inhibiting the frontal cortex and tapping into the ancient hindbrain of the human brain. They can win statistically just by exposing you. Of course the human forebrain is not "helpless" against this assault, but it's still a game they can win on the margins. (I find it an effective defense to be offended that they would reach for that; this is also a good cognitive defense against "won't somebody please think of the children?", which comes up a lot because it works, it really does shut down rational thought if you don't see it coming and block it.) Same reason they spam this in email, and only some of the spam is "correctly" labeled.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/how-not-to-advertise-on-the-internet.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/how-not-to-advertis...) Breasts sell product.
DanBC 14y ago
I'd be interested to read why it was selected as an "Editor's pick". There's also a small possibility an English law was broken. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12)
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  The comment that it was "Human error" was also interesting, perhaps someone made it a favorite while logged in as the Editor? Of course the interesting bit for me was that the system had a porn screen in place, it "knew" it was porny since it required you to tap it to view it, so why does the program / tool that makes it "Editor's Choice" not automatically reject as an error an attempt to promote a porny video to that spot? Google Video (the service that existed at Google before and to some extent after :-) they bought YouTube) early on used an algorithm for picking the top videos to put on the page based on views/ratings/comments etc but that early algorithm had built in from the start a check for things being NSFW and thus preventing them from ever making the list. Seems like a brain fart. Either that or a poor attempt at getting publicity for the service. That latter would be really lame if Apple pulls the App based on the commotion.
  - tantalor 14y ago
    why does the program / tool that makes it "Editor's Choice" not automatically reject as an error an attempt to promote a porny video to that spot This was the second mistake. There should be business rules in place to prevent this. Most likely they rushed the app to production without considering this case.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    I bet it automatically rejects porn for featured spots now. Features like that tend not to get put in until somebody screws up. It's too easy to think, "nobody will ever do this in the first place."
- Freestyler_3 14y ago
  It still requires an action to watch it. I don't think that law applies to this, but who knows... doubt we will see this in court.
SODaniel 14y ago
I guess you could also describe this as 'Vine creates first real time video priority engine to 'get it right'' for a large percentage of users.
nextstep 14y ago
I honestly feel that most users would not be offended by this, but might feel embarrassed if this showed while they're showing the app to their parents or a non-close friend. However, I'm sure that Apple (or their censors) take things like this somewhat seriously, which is silly because this is the Internet! There are going to be offensive things every now and then; that's what happens when you democratize the creation of content. I wish Apple would take a more hands-off approach and just throw-up some disclaimer that "online interactions are not rated by Apple" and leave it at that.
- criley 14y ago
  "I like using Apple products with my children because I know their aggressive moderation will help keep inappropriate material out of the hands of my children". Chances are Apple's policy is intentional and while tech communities of 20-25 y/o white single upper-middle class males tend to call for open access and no censorship, not all demographics of Apple users necessarily agree...
- criley 14y ago
  "I like using Apple products with my children because I know their aggressive moderation will help keep inappropriate material out of the hands of my children". Chances are Apple's policy is intentional and while tech communities of 20-25 y/o white single upper-middle class males tend to call for open access and no censorship, not all demographics of Apple users necessarily agree...
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  Or just make age ratings opt-in. By default all apps would be "unrated" and thus prohibited when parental controls are enabled. Apps that can guarantee no adult content can request a rating review.
MostAwesomeDude 14y ago
Sounds like everything's working as intended here. It's not like the Internet is used for anything besides anonymous slander and porn anyway. Edit: And ponies.
- ybrs 14y ago
  and lolcats
huhtenberg 14y ago
An offtopic, but check this out - http://imgur.com/kIacbiR http://imgur.com/kIacbiR It's a list of external dependencies of the linked VentureBeat page. I've been running RequestPolicy for a while now, but have never seen a website being this frivolous with sharing their hit information.
- shaggyfrog 14y ago
  Install Ghostery and watch as it blocks all 24 of those insidious little things. And for every other site, too.
  - huhtenberg 14y ago
    Ah, no. Ghostery has its own problems, stemming from who wrote it.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Don't leave us hanging.
      - huhtenberg 14y ago
        The Better Advertising Project, with the basic idea to profile end-user ad-blocking activity on the Internet and to resell this data to advertisers. This might be OK with some people, but for me, personally, it's just too close for comfort.
        shaggyfrog 14y ago
        Let's say they are re-selling this data that says who ad blocks. And I'm ad-blocking everything. So advertisers find out that an increasingly growing segment of the population don't abide "traditional" Internet advertising. This is bad for me why exactly? Honest question.
        14y ago
Sym3tri 14y ago
Am I the only one who installed this app AFTER reading this article :P
electrichead 14y ago
I loved the ad I saw on the page (I am on a mobile device) proclaiming, "Need an eye exam?" from Pearle Vision. Seems oddly fitting.

45 points by taytus 14y ago

> “I clicked on the video b/c I thought the warning was a joke,” wrote in the comments. I’m furious I had to see something like this.” Really? And somehow it is Vine's fault you saw porn while clicking on a video named "Dildoplay" with the tags "nsfw" "porn" "nsfwvine". I can't feel sorry for you. Yes it is too bad that this showed up in the first place but lets not start with the pitchforks. This was a simple mistake that was completely avoidable by users who have 2 eyes and can read. Like I said it shouldn't have been there in the first place but lots not act like you accidentally clicked on a video that has all the correct warning of it's content. "Officer, I didn't know that when I pulled the pin out of that grenade that it would explode, I thought it was a joke".

wereHamster 14y ago
> "[...] was [...] avoidable by users who have 2 eyes and can read." Your faith in humanity amazes me.
Wilya 14y ago
That's what you get when you spend tons of time teaching users that all content is curated and that they can click everywhere safely. I might have had the same reaction, to be honest. When I see a video called "Hot XXX girl" with an alluring thumbnail on Youtube, the first thing that comes to my mind isn't "this is porn", it's "this is a cheap way to get views to an uninteresting video". And I routinely get "You must be 18 or older to see this" warnings for videos/photos with as little as a hint of a naked breast. So, yeah, that's not very surprising.
- megablast 14y ago
  This does not give you a reason to be outraged, surely you can see that?
goblin89 14y ago
Well, Vine is rated 12+ in App Store. “Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity”. I'm not sure what are ramifications if an application violates assigned ratings. On a second thought, “Infrequent/Mild” is vague enough: does slash mean “or”?
- CrazedGeek 14y ago
  I'd imagine it's pulled ASAP. None of the major app store providers allow porn on their stores, do they?
  - jkaljundi 14y ago
    They allow browsers, but those are: "You must be at least 17 years old to download this app."
- JagMicker 14y ago
  Does it make sense that an app. with the sole purpose of sharing user-submitted videos would somehow be devoid of any questionable/suggestive content? Isn't it kinda Apple's fault for insisting that apps conform to their age guidelines, when those apps involve user-submitted videos? I mean...who lets their 12- to 17-year-old use an app like Vine? Do they honestly believe nothing bad might come of that?
untog 14y ago
"Officer, I didn't know that when I pulled the pin out of that grenade that it would explode, I thought it was a joke". More like, "Officer, I didn't know that the stuffed toy I bought for my 12 year old child was in fact a grenade, and that picking up the toy would result in it exploding". There are two issues here. The first is that the app is rated 12+, and shouldn't be showing adult content. The second is that it's showing adult content unprompted- the most recent posts certainly don't have the warning attached, so people are getting porn sent to them without asking for it.
smackfu 14y ago
I don't think it's worth getting hung up on the warnings, since just looking at any hashtag you would guess has porn/nudity shows that most of it has no warning at all.
SODaniel 14y ago
"It wasn't me gov'na! I was just minding me own business and all of a sudden I found myself in this bordello with 3 women, undressed and in bed"

dlokshin 14y ago

One of the perils of being a startup, and instead of growing organically and having these embarrassing moments early in front of a small number of hardcore users (who will use you no matter what, and forgive you no matter what you do), you get pushed out by a behemoth like Twitter.

Irishsteve 14y ago

While its embarrassing for Vine to have porn pop up in the top of users feed's , and the societal norms say it's a "bad thing" for the company; I can't but help feel that in actual fact this would attract far more users.

danso 14y ago
I don't think so in this case...even if we assume that porn is a major driver in tech (I think iOS's whitewashed dominance is a clear counter argument), six-second porn is likely not satisfying enough for porn aficionados to stick around with. Even if there are some great clips, it's still seems like a lot of work to hit refresh-next-whatever (I don't know, I don't have the app), nevermind wading through all the unsatisfying clips. Meanwhile, the many users who do not want to see porn, either at all, or at least during daytime hours, will have a negative user experience.
- __alexs 14y ago
  You are clearly not a Tumblr user. Porn GIFs are crazy popular there.
- mnicole 14y ago
  I think you underestimate people here. They've been hitting refresh and waiting for static images to load for a long time. Vinepeek makes allows you to just sit back and watch, and with the addition of tag searching, I'd imagine that sitting through this content isn't a chore at all considering the lengths people will go to find new material to begin with.
notahacker 14y ago
Except that there already are thousands of sites for the discerning porn connoisseur that don't distract with cats or comic clips, and are unconnected with personal Twitter profiles people usually use for safe-for-work activities. It's reasonable to expect Twitter to take steps to make the porn much harder to find in the near future too. It's going to make it easier for Facebook to justify blocking the app too, assuming they want to, which might slow adoption through that channel.

moondowner 14y ago

There's an easy fix: add options panel with hashtags to filter out. And add #porn as one of the defaults in it.

jerf 14y ago
Your solution depends on pornographer's honesty in tagging. They have tons of incentive to be dishonest this way.
- untog 14y ago
  I'm genuinely confused as to what the incentive is for the people posting the porn. They certainly aren't profiting from it- do they just have a vested interest in seeing Vine fail?
  - rexreed 14y ago
    It's an advertisement for viewers to "see more" -- there's lots of free porn out there, and most of it is used to funnel a percentage of the viewers to paid subscription sites where other / more similar content exists. Conversion rates are not as low as you think.
  - jerf 14y ago
    Expanding on rexreed's point, these are people peddling a vice with the characteristic of inhibiting the frontal cortex and tapping into the ancient hindbrain of the human brain. They can win statistically just by exposing you. Of course the human forebrain is not "helpless" against this assault, but it's still a game they can win on the margins. (I find it an effective defense to be offended that they would reach for that; this is also a good cognitive defense against "won't somebody please think of the children?", which comes up a lot because it works, it really does shut down rational thought if you don't see it coming and block it.) Same reason they spam this in email, and only some of the spam is "correctly" labeled.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/how-not-to-advertise-on-the-internet.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/how-not-to-advertis...) Breasts sell product.

DanBC 14y ago

I'd be interested to read why it was selected as an "Editor's pick". There's also a small possibility an English law was broken. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12)

ChuckMcM 14y ago
The comment that it was "Human error" was also interesting, perhaps someone made it a favorite while logged in as the Editor? Of course the interesting bit for me was that the system had a porn screen in place, it "knew" it was porny since it required you to tap it to view it, so why does the program / tool that makes it "Editor's Choice" not automatically reject as an error an attempt to promote a porny video to that spot? Google Video (the service that existed at Google before and to some extent after :-) they bought YouTube) early on used an algorithm for picking the top videos to put on the page based on views/ratings/comments etc but that early algorithm had built in from the start a check for things being NSFW and thus preventing them from ever making the list. Seems like a brain fart. Either that or a poor attempt at getting publicity for the service. That latter would be really lame if Apple pulls the App based on the commotion.
- tantalor 14y ago
  why does the program / tool that makes it "Editor's Choice" not automatically reject as an error an attempt to promote a porny video to that spot This was the second mistake. There should be business rules in place to prevent this. Most likely they rushed the app to production without considering this case.
- mikeash 14y ago
  I bet it automatically rejects porn for featured spots now. Features like that tend not to get put in until somebody screws up. It's too easy to think, "nobody will ever do this in the first place."
Freestyler_3 14y ago
It still requires an action to watch it. I don't think that law applies to this, but who knows... doubt we will see this in court.

SODaniel 14y ago

I guess you could also describe this as 'Vine creates first real time video priority engine to 'get it right'' for a large percentage of users.

nextstep 14y ago

I honestly feel that most users would not be offended by this, but might feel embarrassed if this showed while they're showing the app to their parents or a non-close friend. However, I'm sure that Apple (or their censors) take things like this somewhat seriously, which is silly because this is the Internet! There are going to be offensive things every now and then; that's what happens when you democratize the creation of content. I wish Apple would take a more hands-off approach and just throw-up some disclaimer that "online interactions are not rated by Apple" and leave it at that.

criley 14y ago
"I like using Apple products with my children because I know their aggressive moderation will help keep inappropriate material out of the hands of my children". Chances are Apple's policy is intentional and while tech communities of 20-25 y/o white single upper-middle class males tend to call for open access and no censorship, not all demographics of Apple users necessarily agree...
criley 14y ago
"I like using Apple products with my children because I know their aggressive moderation will help keep inappropriate material out of the hands of my children". Chances are Apple's policy is intentional and while tech communities of 20-25 y/o white single upper-middle class males tend to call for open access and no censorship, not all demographics of Apple users necessarily agree...
tlrobinson 14y ago
Or just make age ratings opt-in. By default all apps would be "unrated" and thus prohibited when parental controls are enabled. Apps that can guarantee no adult content can request a rating review.

MostAwesomeDude 14y ago

Sounds like everything's working as intended here. It's not like the Internet is used for anything besides anonymous slander and porn anyway. Edit: And ponies.

ybrs 14y ago
and lolcats

huhtenberg 14y ago

An offtopic, but check this out - http://imgur.com/kIacbiR http://imgur.com/kIacbiR It's a list of external dependencies of the linked VentureBeat page. I've been running RequestPolicy for a while now, but have never seen a website being this frivolous with sharing their hit information.

shaggyfrog 14y ago
Install Ghostery and watch as it blocks all 24 of those insidious little things. And for every other site, too.
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  Ah, no. Ghostery has its own problems, stemming from who wrote it.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Don't leave us hanging.
    - huhtenberg 14y ago
      The Better Advertising Project, with the basic idea to profile end-user ad-blocking activity on the Internet and to resell this data to advertisers. This might be OK with some people, but for me, personally, it's just too close for comfort.
      - shaggyfrog 14y ago
        Let's say they are re-selling this data that says who ad blocks. And I'm ad-blocking everything. So advertisers find out that an increasingly growing segment of the population don't abide "traditional" Internet advertising. This is bad for me why exactly? Honest question.
        14y ago

Sym3tri 14y ago

Am I the only one who installed this app AFTER reading this article :P

electrichead 14y ago

I loved the ad I saw on the page (I am on a mobile device) proclaiming, "Need an eye exam?" from Pearle Vision. Seems oddly fitting.