{"id":2310,"date":"2022-11-29T13:56:27","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T13:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/?p=2310"},"modified":"2022-11-29T13:56:27","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T13:56:27","slug":"twitter-elon-musk-adult-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/?p=2310","title":{"rendered":"Twitter should cash in on adult content"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Twitter and Elon Musk have a revenue problem. They also may have a revenue solution: porn.<\/p>\n

Amidst hesitant advertisers<\/u><\/a>, widespread layoffs<\/u><\/a>, mass resignations<\/u><\/a>, and Donald Trump\u2019s recent reinstatement, many are understandably panicking at the possibility of Twitter\u2019s demise. Long before Elon Musk became the Chief Twit, unknown writers parlayed dedicated followings into book deals. Marginalized identities found each other and formed cultural communities around hashtags. Small businesses and indie media outlets drove traffic to their sites and products. Many are concerned about what will happen to their livelihoods if Twitter (and $44 billion) goes “poof.”<\/p>\n

To sex workers, this is nothing new. They\u2019ve been on this ride before. With ever-changing community guidelines and targeted legislation, the adult entertainment industry is regularly booted from social media sites with little-to-no explanation, frequently building accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers before starting back at zero.<\/p>\n

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Twitter is one of two major social media sites (the other being Reddit) that still allows porn. A recent internal report<\/u><\/a> estimates that 13 percent of Twitter\u2019s content is NSFW. Many of those accounts monetize their followings by sending fans to other sites. OnlyFans<\/u><\/a> reported $932 million in revenue for 2021 with creators getting paid out billions. That\u2019s a lot of money not going to the Big Blue Bird.<\/p>\n

Twitter\u2019s Red Team<\/h2>\n

A “Red Team<\/u><\/a>” of in-house researchers had been developing a way to cut in on that market share since at least early 2021. “Twitter loses a lot of revenue to OnlyFans,” says Dr. Olivia Snow<\/u><\/a>, a dominatrix and research fellow for the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. She consulted with Twitter employees earlier this year on an Adult Content Monetization product. “So this was going to be a way to cash in on that.”<\/p>\n

The idea was tabled back in May \u2014 a few weeks after Musk\u2019s too-good-to-be-true offer to buy the site. But earlier this month, The Washington Post reported internal communications about a yet-to-be-announced “Paywalled Video” product<\/u><\/a> that sounded a lot <\/em>like OnlyFans: videos uploaded directly to a tweet with a blurred preview that arrives in your timeline with a pre-set price to unlock. The ability for creators to sell to their fans directly on the platform \u2014 and for Twitter to take a cut \u2014 has monstrous revenue possibilities for the struggling social media giant.<\/p>\n

#PayForSomeOfYourPorn<\/h2>\n

Ginger Banks<\/u><\/a>, who has been in the adult entertainment industry for 13 years, would be excited for paywalled video on Twitter. “I have 300,000 people following me,” she told Mashable. “It\u2019s usually 1-2 percent that end up paying or subscribing [to my content]. It could be really big depending on how they roll it out!”<\/p>\n

Porn stars already know a lot of great marketing ploys to get people excited to spend money on them: games, rankings, limited purchases, raffles, cross-promotional “battles.” With a payment method stored on the platform, fans could seamlessly spend with a click or two. No more #LinkInBio or subversive threading strategies to boost impressions for offsite URLs. If Twitter has skin in the game by taking a cut of sales, the company would have an incentive to give those tweets an algorithmic boost.<\/p>\n

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\n How selling nudes on OnlyFans helped my body image issues
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“I have more faith in Twitter and Reddit being able to monetize adult content,” Banks continues. “They have adult content and they\u2019re in the fucking App Store. So, clearly, they have some sort of pull that these other websites don\u2019t have.” Apple typically does not allow apps where pornography is freely available. (It\u2019s why OnlyFans does not have a proper app.)<\/p>\n

When the world shut down in 2020, waves of newly unemployed people tried their hands (and other body parts) at porn. “A lot of people now know they can turn to [porn] during a period of non-work,” says Lotus Lain<\/u><\/a>, who serves as Industry Relations Advocate for the Free Speech Coalition<\/u><\/a>, the adult industry\u2019s trade organization. Lain suggests if Twitter implemented the Paywalled Video product \u2014 and allowed adult creators to use it \u2014 newbies “wouldn\u2019t even have to start an OnlyFans. It might be easier” to get your sexy side hustle up and running.<\/p>\n

Everyone in porn I talk to says the same thing: The more places they can monetize their content, the better. “The thing that I\u2019m cautious about is the lack of security at Twitter,” Lain told me a week after trust and safety head Yoel Roth resigned citing the new CEO\u2019s “lack of legitimacy<\/u><\/a>.” Lain continued, “I trusted whoever was in power before because it was a mixed group of executives. But now it\u2019s one guy\u2014one unhinged, megalomaniac guy. That<\/em> is what I don\u2019t trust.”<\/p>\n

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\n Elon Musk has made Twitter drastically worse, according to porn star Kendra Sunderland. <\/span>
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‘Elon Musk is obviously an idiot.’<\/h2>\n

Elon Musk dumped $44 billion into a pet project some suggest<\/u><\/a> he never truly wanted in the first place. And he promised<\/u><\/a> investors a return on their investment. Ninety percent of Twitter\u2019s revenue comes from advertising. Musk wants to change that. But the ideas he has publicly floated have been all over the place from charging government accounts<\/u><\/a> to bringing back Vine<\/u><\/a> to launching an edit function for Twitter Blue subscribers (which is actually a good idea). His rushed rollout of selling verified badges for $8\/month backfired so badly<\/u><\/a> that it was shut down after two days.<\/p>\n

Paywalled Video, if done correctly, could be a win for Musk, but an internal review deemed the feature as high risk due to concerns around copyrighted content, user trust issues, and legal compliance. Copyright concerns already abound<\/u><\/a> since the CEO slashed his content moderation team last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Elon is obviously an idiot,” says Snow. “He doesn\u2019t understand what normal human concerns are in any way, shape, or form. Every time I press a button on Twitter, I hear a \u2018boing\u2019 sound and a spring pops out. Little things are falling apart.”<\/p>\n

Snow has serious concerns about Twitter\u2019s OnlyFans-esque product under Musk. “I think it\u2019s super dangerous. I could see him going full steam ahead and launching a product that doesn\u2019t have any content moderation built in \u2014 or even the staff to do that. I can\u2019t imagine him being able to get the nuances of adult content or the privacy around it or the infrastructure necessary to make that work at all because he\u2019s an incompetent sociopath.”<\/p>\n

The nuances of adult content are many. Musk, a champion of artificial intelligence, probably won\u2019t appreciate the creative complexities of porn that often trip up<\/u><\/a> AI moderation programs. I myself had a video auto-removed from Instagram<\/u><\/a> of me unzipping my fly and pulling out\u2026a microphone. When I “appealed” the decision, it was quickly rejected and threatened with a ban. Anti-porn crusaders like Laila Mickelwait \u2014 who has posted<\/u><\/a> child sexual abuse material<\/u><\/a> directly to Twitter herself<\/u><\/a> \u2014 have ramped up<\/u><\/a> their push to scrub consensual sexual content from the internet. And since SESTA\/FOSTA legislation<\/u><\/a> put platforms on notice in 2018, social media platforms have cracked down on arbitrarily anything suggestive from sex educators to doulas to eggplant emojis<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Porn stars use these sites to build followings to funnel to monetized platforms, but they are routinely banned \u2014 even without sharing prohibited content. “The discrimination against sex work and porn is so institutionalized,” Banks offers. “There are so many walls, but all it does is force us to innovate.”<\/p>\n

Of course, none of this matters if there are no users left to buy your porn. In the wake of Musk\u2019s decisions about hate speech and reinstating Donald Trump, people have been fleeing Twitter for alternatives \u2014 newly-nude-again Tumblr<\/u><\/a>, conservative Twitter clone Truth Social, or the allegedly “civil” new player Post<\/u><\/a>. “I\u2019ve seen what happens when new websites rush to fill a void,” offers Lain. “You get a lot of wack-ass shit that spreads everybody out. Mastodon is not real!”<\/p>\n

Porn star Kendra Sunderland<\/u><\/a> thinks Musk has made the site drastically worse. And with nearly one million followers, Sunderland, a nine-year industry veteran, feels stuck. “There\u2019s nothing you can really do about [the changes he\u2019s making]. You have to just get over it.” Her Twitter is the only social media account that has not been shut down throughout her career. “I can\u2019t just leave Twitter. I have to use it for my work for as long as I continue in this industry.”<\/p>\n

Sunderland added, “We\u2019re all in a raft going down a river, and Elon is our guide.”<\/p>\n

Wary allies to porn<\/h2>\n

Paywalled video could make a lot of creative people a lot of money, not just the naked ones. Behind-the-scenes content, exclusive video podcast episodes, woodworking tutorials, stand-up comedy specials. And yes, pictures of your favorite porn star\u2019s titties. The product won\u2019t solve the $44 billion pickle Elon Musk finds himself in, but it would begin making Twitter less reliant on advertisers.<\/p>\n

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\n Porn, and porn sites, bolster racist tropes by design
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Private conversations between Mistress Snow and one Twitter department head \u2014 in screenshots obtained by Mashable \u2014 suggest that the company does<\/em> want to cash in on those OnlyFans fortunes. Even if sex workers have trouble believing it. “Because we don\u2019t defend adult creators publicly, we are seen as wary allies who could switch teams any moment,” writes the employee. Snow requested anonymity for this employee so they could speak freely.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t seem like Twitter will abandon adult content entirely. Its free speech fetishist owner would have a hard time explaining why the N-word is allowed in your mentions but cumshots are forbidden. But will porn be invited to the potential gold rush?<\/p>\n

“My instinct is that they\u2019re going to create [a way to monetize content] and we\u2019re not going to be able to use it,” predicts Banks. “But I\u2019d love to be proven wrong.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twitter and Elon Musk have a revenue problem. They also may have a revenue solution: porn. Amidst hesitant advertisers, widespread layoffs, mass resignations, and Donald Trump\u2019s recent reinstatement, many are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2311,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t