Images: Shutterstock / Composition: Samantha Cole
Last week, Twitter released a set of new media policy guidelines for how it's planning to respond to things like revenge porn and hate speech, all in an effort to be less of a trash fire for its millions of users.On Friday, the company updated the wording of those guidelines again—right on schedule with its calendar of combating all the awful shit people do on Twitter—to outline in more detail what constitutes adult content.Several outlets are reporting on this update as if it's a sweeping "ban" on porn (Buzzfeed updated its article on the guidelines but didn't remove the incorrect tweet). But Twitter isn't banning porn—rather, it says it's making its policies more robust around revenge porn and sending images of non-consensual nudity (dick pics in your DMs), with specific examples of what is and isn't considered "sensitive" material.Twitter already prohibited portraying sexual content in your profile photo or header image, but sexually explicit images are still allowed as tweets. You just have to mark it as "sensitive media." Sensitive media includes:Today's blog post and updated guidelines are part of Twitter's existing policies, he said: "We are sharing more than we have in the past to help provide clarity, and we've added a lot more detail so people can see examples of what would violate these policies as well as how we'd enforce them."
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- full or partial nudity (including closeups)
- simulating a sexual act
- intercourse or any sexual act (including illustrations)
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As porn performers and sex workers come off a confusing few weeks of news about Patreon's shift in policy, it's understandable that people in this community are on edge about how their work will live online. And Twitter's not always consistent with these rules—last week, Twitter suspended adult content creator Liara Roux for what it called violations of these guidelines, with little reasonable explanation from the company, and its suspension of actress Rose McGowan's account for speaking out against sexual assault led to the #WomenBoycottTwitter movement in October.But for now, on Twitter at least, it seems that sex workers are safe from the banhammer.Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.Read More: Adult Content Creators Are Fighting Patreon's New Anti-Porn Rules