Twitter sinks

[pendell]

Washington Post Brings the Sarcasm

For a major global tech company, one of the few things more embarrassing than being forced to turn to porn to boost revenue is proving incapable of doing so.

Apparently the company wanted to create a "mature content" subscription service behind a paywall; it has been scuttled because of concerns about policing the platform, keeping illegal content off while also ensuring young users can't access adult material.

Probably a good thing for the world as a whole this idea fell through, though I wouldn't want to be a twitter shareholder today.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Rydiro]

Probably a good thing for the world as a whole this idea fell through, though I wouldn't want to be a twitter shareholder today.

I don't care much for Twitter, but why do you think a "mature site" would be bad overall?
I mean, assuming it's legal and minors have no access.

[crayzz]

I won't speak for Pendell, but for me, twitter is already a major source of online controversy associated brain rot; further integrating people's lively hoods into the site, for a field with a lot of controversy, exploitation, and competition would probably be bad in the long run.

[snowblizz]

I don't care much for Twitter, but why do you think a "mature site" would be bad overall?
I mean, assuming it's legal and minors have no access.

Presumably because

keeping illegal content off while also ensuring young users can't access adult material.

is something they can't manage today even when they don't allow any of it. Or in other words, trying to be content selective hasn't worked well for them so far, they probably aren't going to be effective at an even harder job.

[Rynjin]

I don't care much for Twitter, but why do you think a "mature site" would be bad overall?
I mean, assuming it's legal and minors have no access.

Aside the aforementioned issues the site already has with moderating illegal pornography, Twitter in general is just such a hell site full of extraordinarily fickle individuals that I cannot imagine anyone trying to use it as a primary service platform. There's a reason all of the mature content pages on Twitter are basically just advertisements for the associated OnlyFans and Fantia accounts.

[MetroAlien]

I don't care much for Twitter, but why do you think a "mature site" would be bad overall?
I mean, assuming it's legal and minors have no access.

Controversy and content minors probably shouldn't be exposed to, is precisely what Twitter is already known for. Otherwise we might as well be talking about some other platform.
As such, your question is too broad to answer meaningfully.

[Rydiro]

Controversy and content minors probably shouldn't be exposed to, is precisely what Twitter is already known for. Otherwise we might as well be talking about some other platform.
As such, your question is too broad to answer meaningfully.

That's true. I was just broadly asking for perspectives on this. I have no strong leaning either way.
Thanks for the answers.

[Radar]

I don't care much for Twitter, but why do you think a "mature site" would be bad overall?
I mean, assuming it's legal and minors have no access.

It immediately makes the scope of the service very narrow just as for example with the movies - producers of blockbusters are always careful not to get any rating more restrictive than PG-13. Most of the active social media users are young, so making a service that cuts the majority of potential clients is a risky idea.

Granted, adult sites of various kinds can be immensely lucrative, but the competition is very fierce and services with wider client base have higher potential for growth.

[tomandtish]

I have to second those who don't see the point, especially since there's a large amount of adult content (by which I mean xxx) available now. Some by verified members.

[Rydiro]

adult content [...] by *verified members.*

That got a chuckle out of me.

[pendell]

I have to second those who don't see the point, especially since there's a large amount of adult content (by which I mean xxx) available now. Some by verified members.

It's available, but we're talking about material provided by twitter (as opposed to on twitter) as a subscription service, to increase their bottom line. And for this they are legally liable both to ensure the material is legal and that the people accessing the service are of age. As discussed in the recent Elon Musk buyout of Twitter, ensuring a subscriber is a valid user is a harder problem than one would think.

As the original article noted, they don't know which is more embarrassing -- that twitter needs porn to save the company, or that they should fail at doing so.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[warty goblin]

To the extent Twitter has a core competency, thus kinda seems to be out of it. Twitter is basically a flat network, anybody can see and respond to anything. There's no community tools beyond what passes for Twitter-wide content moderation, because communities aren't really discrete managed things so much as amorphous clouds of people talking with/at each other.

OnlyFans is built around curated communities formed around specific content creators. It's all walled gardens you have to buy access to, and selling exclusive context is what drives engagement.

To replicate this you don't just need a subscription service, you need to give thr content creators a lot of power in their own spaces. Which is something Twitter could build, but at that point it isn't Porn on Twitter, it's a different porn distribution network owned by Twitter. Sure you can make retweeting teasers and stuff easy, but it doesn't seem a great use of the social network Twitter already has.

Particularly since a lot of the users of that network do so professionally, and really cannot have porn start showing up on their feeds, even if it is content they would like and seek out elsewhere. One of the advantages of the sex part of the internet being decoupled from the non-sex bits is that it makes it a lot easier to avoid crossing those streams. If you deliberately combine the two, you need, ironically, to rebuild a very effective barrier between them. Which rather defeats the purpose of combining them in the first place. You can't take advantage of network effects when you have to seal off one side of your network from the other.

(One also could question the appeal from the creator's side as well. Let's queue up to sell porn. On Twitter. The sight famous for dealing so brilliantly with creeps, stalkers, harassers, and other unpleasant people. )