Vine has gone some way towards keeping itself in Apple’s App Store by removing the All Posts section from its app—making porn a little more difficult to stumble across.
Porn has become a hot-button issue for the fledgling Twitter-owned video-sharing app. We spotted sexually explicit videos in the app on its launch day last Thursday, and the topic became even more prevalent when a porn clip wound up on the Editor’s Picks section Monday morning.
To stem the tide, Twitter started experimenting with ways to hide some of the explicit content, namely by hiding tags like #porn and #ass in the search function.
Following a Tuesday update, the option to view all Vine posts in real time has disappeared. It was previously viewable under the Explore tab in the app.
(Twitter did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication)
On one hand, All Posts offered anyone the chance to get an unfiltered look at what Viners were posting. Porn could pop up without warning.
Keeping such an option within Vine could have proven problematic for Apple, a notoriously prickly company when it comes to apps with sexually explicit material. The photography app 500px was pulled from the App Store after unfiltered NSFW content began creeping in.
So to keep on the right side of Apple, and to be able to actually function as a service, Vine may have had no choice but to cut the All Posts tool.
On the other hand, it was an endlessly surprising and fascinating glimpse into the lives of people the world over.
It’s a sad loss in many ways. At least for now we have Vinepeek, a third-party site which serves up vines (those six-second videos you might have been hearing all about over the last few days) as soon as they’re posted. However, it appears that Vinepeek only shows videos that Viners have shared to Twitter, meaning there are countless other compelling videos that remain marooned on Vine’s island.
Now, if only Vine could do something about the terrifying Tyra Banks, that’d be much appreciated.
Photo via Tyra Banks/Vine