X, Formerly Twitter, Seems to be Testing Out ‘Adult Content’ Labels

Twitter has long had a more liberal stance on adult-themed material than its social media counterparts, well before self-appointed free speech champion Elon Musk bought it and renamed it X. When Facebook’s Instagram was mired in controversy for taking down images showing the merest hint of an exposed nipple, no such limits applied on Twitter. But now X is apparently taking a deliberate step to embrace, or at least carefully silo this material by requiring new groups to have a “NSFW” label or an “adult content” one. 

Can we cue an “XXX” rebranding?

Bloomberg reports that developers who regularly peer into X’s workings to see if anything has changed spotted new text in the app’s code that relate to adult material-themed groups. Alongside simple labels like “NSFW” and “skip for now” and a “time watched” counter, which would relate to how often a group’s material has been seen by X users, there are also the words “ban” and a threatening line demanding “you must enable this setting if your community contains adult-sensitive content,” or face having the content auto-filtered out of people’s streams. The “community” mention here is interesting, since it relates to a discussion group feature that was added to Twitter back in 2021, and which has, as website Mashable notes, “never really taken off.” X may be attempting to bring back communities–possibly a smart, timely move, since community-centric social site Reddit is in the news for its recent IPO.

While we can only speculate what all this means for now, it seems at least that X might be acknowledging users often share adult content on its site. It may also be planning to section this content away from the rest of the X social media experience. There could be several reasons for this, since advertisers and ad-sellers like Google are famously averse to such material. Also, possibly because of various state-level legislative efforts to enact age-limited access to the kinkier side of the internet–with recent headlines like Texas being “banned by Pornhub” in mind.

It’s even plausible that X is going to add yet another string to its bow and try to actually monetize the sharing of adult content. In an era when adult content social site OnlyFans is an A List celebrity-embraced brand name, and some entrepreneurial content creators on that app are making thousands of dollars per day, that would certainly help X distinguish itself from rivals like Instagram and Threads, run by nipple-shy Meta. But if this proves true, even Elon Musk may find it an uphill business struggle: though we’re in the 21st century, sex tech entrepreneurs, who sell content and products to millions of people, still find many barriers to running an adult-centric business.

All of this intrigue is also playing out as Reuters reports Musk’s xAI unit is preparing to roll out an updated version of its AI chatbot Grok to a subset of paying X users. Grok is controversial all by itself, marketed as a free speech, foul mouthed, rebellious “anti-woke” AI alternative to straight-laced chatbot efforts from rivals like OpenAI and Google. You’ll have to wait until next week to ask Grok version 1.5 what it itself thinks about kinky pixels and “free the nipple,” though.