Porn Stars Are Enthusiastically Petitioning to Get Porn Back on Vine

Is how we masturbate linked to our internet freedom?

by kate hakala

After Twitter announced last week that it would begin a motion to ban all pornographic content on their six-second video site Vine, we bid a fond farewell to the form's greatest explicit content. Citing in a blog post that ultimately porn was "not a good fit for our community," Vine became just one of the many outlets that have taken an actively anti-porn stance in the last year. Tumblr's crackdown on NSFW-friendly tags, Facebook's arbitrary censorship of nudes, and the UK's opt-in porn legislation all point to a larger trend of social venues being uncomfortable with acting as the gatekeepers of explicit content.

With porn accounting for an estimated 4 percent (doesn't seem huge, but it is) of the entire internet's makeup, what's encouraging social sites to eliminate what is arguably its most popular kind of picture and video content? The porn ban could be about keeping social networks family-friendly, but to popular adult performer Conner Habib (whose Vine account contains a lot of playful penis-filled clips), the Vine porn lockdown is about internet censorship.

This week, Habib began a petition on Change.org to stop the Vine and Twitter censorship. "We are disturbed by the precedent set on Vine for other applications and websites, including Twitter. We are also disturbed that we are not allowed to choose what we view. Vine's perception of its users as a community that advocates censorship is wrong," Habib writes on his petition description. He's demanding full restoration of adult content on Vine and the return of the adult content warning system that was previously in place and seemingly working just fine. At the time of writing, Habib currently has 1,090 of his 1,500 desired signatures.

As one commenter pointed out on Habib's petition, the porn ban is funny, and a bit arbitrary, in light of the explicit content a user can find through pictures and links on Twitter itself, nevermind the videos on Vine. With its 232 million users, Twitter (compared to the 40 million users on Vine) wields an enormous power, and further action taken by the social networking behemoth to limit social smut could shape the future of where and how we consume internet pornography. "Right now, masturbation is deeply linked to internet freedom, and threats of internet censorship," Habib wrote in a feature for VICE last October. 

Habib argues that Vine porn bans not only limit a user's creativity, but detract from the diverse experiences of self pleasure. From the looks of it, Twitter — chock full of both porn performers and consumers — agrees with him.

Dear Society we live in the 21st Century where Nude is no longer Taboo! #StopVineCensorship https://t.co/qZGWsP7nds

— Husbear (@holdn2aces) March 10, 2014

#StopVineCensorship @vineapp There is nothing comfortable to people about the slippery slope of censorship.

— Jessy Adams (@JesseJo) March 8, 2014

Also, so sad that Vine will now be censoring content. The internet should be a marketplace of ideas. #StopVineCensorship

— Maggie Mayhem (@MsMaggieMayhem) March 7, 2014

Vine bans porn. Now I have like 23 free hours in a day. Anybody wanna do brunch? #StopVineCensorship https://t.co/R1ENg7yy5s @ConnerHabib

— H. Alan Scott (@HAlanScott) March 7, 2014

Well @vineapp just became obsolete. Lol #StopVineCensorship

— Santistevan (@igetso_ooc) March 7, 2014

 

Image via ConnerHabib.com