Vine Experiments With Editorial Curation, Bans Sexually Explicit Content

Vine’s team is experimenting with offering its 40 million users hand-picked video lists by a dedicated editor based on specific categories, reported Mashable. Its app currently supports category pages but that content is based on user input.

Vine Editor’s Picks accounts share videos occasionally, which are also based on user input and a Vine team, rather than a single category editor. According to Mashable, single theme pages are in the company’s –and users’ – best interests as they will likely increase engagement among users who don’t normally share their own videos, and will potentially allow users to create their own lists.

Vine has posted a few of these listicle-like pages so far on its website, including 12 Gorgeous Vine Postcards That Will Make You Want to Travel, These Dogs Have Better Style Than Most Humans and, of course, the 27 Mesmerizing Dancers.

If the service makes it out of the experimental phase, it will be the social network’s first editorially-curated feature.

But don’t expect a porn category. Users who scour Vine for six-second skin flicks in a continuous loop will have to look elsewhere on the Internet — including Twitter’s vast offerings —  for cheap thrills. Vine announced in a blog post that it is banning sexually explicit content from the platform:

For more than 99 percent of our users, this doesn’t really change anything. For the rest: we don’t have a problem with explicit sexual content on the Internet – we just prefer not to be the source of it.

Gizmodo commented, “Finally a one percent you belong to!,” adding, “And if you must record yourself briefly in the buff, there’s always Instagram Direct.”

The wording of the Vine post is also crafted in a way that will stave off inevitable cries of censorship. Since its early days, Vine-owned Twitter has been at the forefront of user advocacy, refusing to honor requests by government officials to give up private user data.

Vine defines “explicit sexual content” as including “depictions of sex acts, nudity that is sexually provocative or in a sexual context, and graphic depictions of sexual arousal.”

Examples of what’s not okay to post:

• Sex acts, whether alone or with another person


• Use of sex toys for sex acts


• Sexually provocative nudity, for example, posts that focus on exposed genitalia or depict nudity in a context or setting that is sexually provocative (like a strip club)


• Close-ups of aroused genitals underneath clothing


• Art or animation that is sexually graphic (such as hentai)

Nudity in an artistic or documentary context or that is not sexually provocative (a mother breastfeeding her child) is still permissible, as is sexually suggestive dancing.

*featured image credit: Mashable

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Vine Experiments With Editorial Curation, Bans Sexually Explicit Content