Twitter Locks Kids Out of Its Vine Video App

After a porn scandal, Twitter has restricted the Vine video app to users 17 years of age or older. Twitter now requires people to certify they are at least 17 years old before running the Apple version of the company’s video app Vine.

Content Controversy and Policy

People flipped out last week when a Twitter staffer accidentally selected a pornographic Vine video as an “Editor’s Pick,” thus recommending it to all the service’s users. Twitter apologized for the mistake, but that doesn’t mean that adult content was banished from Vine. Indeed, there is nothing in Vine’s Terms of Service that prohibits sexually explicit videos.

Twitter says the iOS app is for adults because it contains ”frequent/intense sexual content or nudity,” among other things, signaling that Vine will continue to traffic in risqué content. To manage this, Vine even includes a mechanism that hides videos marked as inappropriate, requiring a second click to view them.

Platform Restrictions and Market Context

Apple reportedly pushed Twitter to put the age restriction in place, presumably because Vine can hypothetically be used to view porn, even though it’s not expressly designed for such content. Such measures are standard for similar tools; for instance, the iOS version of Google’s Chrome web browser, which can (conceivably!) also be used to view porn, is similarly restricted to adults only, as are other iOS web browsers.

Category	Requirement / Detail
Age Restriction	17 years of age or older
Platform	Apple iOS version
Reasoning	Frequent/intense sexual content or nudity

Audience Perception

Of course, like an “R” rating on a movie, a 17+ restriction on an app does not dampen its appeal to teenagers. This move could actually make Vine more common in high schools rather than less, if, that is, Twitter can convince teens to take any time away from SnapChat.