London - Twitter has apologised after pornographic footage was promoted as an ‘editor’s pick’ on its new video-sharing website.
A six-second clip appeared at the top of the home page of Vine, which enables users to share short videos.
It is just one of the hundreds of hardcore porn videos which have appeared on the site since it launched last Thursday.
Despite this, the social networking service has refused to automatically take down explicit clips – saying that would be censorship.
Children’s charities say the case illustrates just how easy it is for children to stumble across porn online, whether on computers at home or on their mobiles.
Twitter’s new service is designed to encourage members to share clips recorded on their smartphones.
It extends Twitter’s 140-character ethos to video, with clips limited to just six seconds.
But the ease and lack of restrictions on the app allows users to spread porn quickly.
Yesterday, one of the videos appeared on the Vine home page as an editor’s pick. Word spread and the image soon received a ‘popular now’ ranking. A Twitter spokesman said: ‘A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in editor’s picks, and upon realising this mistake we removed the video immediately.
‘We apologise to our users for the error.’
The risque video was posted by a user called NSFWVine – seemingly a reference to the ‘not safe for work’ warning some Twitter users deploy when posting rude content.
One user, Taylor Winkelmeyer, wrote on Twitter: ‘I clicked on the link because I thought the warning was a joke. I am furious I had to see something like this. Someone please tell me how to get it off my feed.’
Twitter said it would not automatically take down such material – saying sexual content is not specifically banned.
Apple takes a different stance and its App Store has removed providers containing pornographic material.
Twitter has more than 10million active users in the UK – one in six of the entire population. - Daily Mail