How Twitter’s letting porn bosses promote underage sex videos
TWITTER is allowing pornographers to openly promote explicit videos which claim to show teenagers and underage children.
Daily Mail reporters found dozens of obscene accounts boasting that they had images of schoolgirls, teenagers, and even ‘girls aged 12 to 16’.
Anyone could access the images on Twitter, without even logging in – meaning the material can easily be accessed by children of primary school age.
And they are not blocked by family-friendly internet filters.
In most cases, users have to click on a link to see the graphic content – but the descriptions were highly explicit on their own. One of the posts seen by the Mail claimed to show ‘brutally ******* skinny teen sluts’, while another had the caption: ‘free sex movies with girls age 12 to 16.’ Others offered an ‘Indian teen ****job’ and ‘developing teen porn’.
The reporters did not click on any of the links that purport to show youngsters, but other links immediately opened extremely graphic, pornographic videos unsuitable for minors to view. They gave them easy access to films of threesomes and other graphic material, with captions such as: ‘ebony lesbian [has her] ‘first **** experience’.
Porn actors and publishers use Twitter to promote themselves to people who live in houses with family-friendly internet filters in place. Those systems are designed to block porn, but they target ‘urls’, or web addresses, rather than specific content, so explicit material on ‘safe’ websites gets through easily.
Some porn actors claim they get nearly all of their business through Twitter. Many of them are trying to entice people to use money-making services such as explicit shows broadcast via webcams.
The web giant has theoretical rules in place banning under-13s from its platform.
However, users are not asked their age when they log in. The company simply says in its small print that users agree to its rules by signing up. Users can also search Twitter without an account of their own – as in almost all of the cases above.
Explicit images become even more readily available when users set up an account and switch off Twitter’s ‘Safe Search’ and ‘Quality’ filters, which are supposed to weed out ‘potentially sensitive content’.
They do not need to prove their age to do this – but without this filter, a quick search for terms such as ‘porn’ brings up obscene images directly in the user’s Twitter feed, without being hidden by a link.
Reporters quickly found close-ups of women and naked couples having sex.
Twitter allows porn on its website, but claims that sex peddlers must shield casual viewers from the most explicit images by posting a link and warnings about ‘sensitive mate- rial’ However, pornographers openly flout this rule – meaning that Twitter users searching for unrelated terms such as ‘school’ could be ambushed by explicit images if they have switched ‘safe search’ off.
Most users keep the filter in place, but some switch it off for a variety of reasons – many of them unrelated to pornography. The findings heap fresh pressure on Twitter, which is already under fire for failing to police its platform properly.
Earlier this week, it emerged that the social media giant is allowing self-confessed paedophiles to peddle their vile fantasies online.
Hundreds of men use the platform to discuss their sexual preferences for children, including which age groups attract them most.
But Twitter refuses to do anything about the accounts because the men claim that they do not act on their impulses.
In the case of porn, users are also able to label graphic images as ‘sensitive’, at which point it will be sent to Twitter’s team to review.
It removes profile photographs or background images that contain pornographic content. However, it does not do anything proactive to remove the explicit images pornographers publish in their Twitter ‘feeds’ – the stream of messages, pictures and videos they post.
The company said yesterday: ‘We limit the visibility of sensitive content using tools such as Quality Filter and Safe Search, which are active for 97 per cent of users.
‘These filters exclude potentially sensitive content, like adult material, along with accounts you have muted or blocked, from your search results. Users can report sensitive media to Twitter at any time.’’
‘Openly flout the rule’