X, formerly Twitter, made an update to its community guidelines last May 2024.
While posting not safe for work (NSFW) or X-rated content was never explicitly banned on the popular social networking platform X, it has formally announced this week that they are allowing users aged 18 and above to post and share adult material.
The platform’s Safety team tweeted: “We have launched Adult Content and Violent Content policies to bring more clarity of our Rules and transparency into enforcement of these areas. These policies replace our former Sensitive Media and Violent Speech policies – but what we enforce against hasn’t changed.”
“Adult Content covers our approach to sharing consensual sexual content and adult nudity. Violent Content covers violent speech and violent media to allow for a more holistic approach to combating violence in all forms,” it added.
On its Help Center site, X elaborated on the change in policy, which took effect last May 2024.
It said that “users should be able to create, distribute, and consume material related to sexual themes as long as it is consensually produced and distributed.”
“Sexual expression, whether visual or written, can be a legitimate form of artistic expression.,” X continued and stated that they believe in the autonomy of adults to engage with and create content that reflects their own beliefs, desires, and experiences, including those related to sexuality.
Although, they stated that they will “balance this freedom by restricting exposure to Adult Content for children or adult users who choose not to see it.”
The platform will continue to prohibit “content promoting exploitation, nonconsent, objectification, sexualization or harm to minors, and obscene behaviors” and in “highly visible places such as profile photos or banners.”
According to X, a post will fall under the adult content category, when it is a “consensually produced and distributed material depicting adult nudity or sexual behavior that is pornographic or intended to cause sexual arousal. This also applies to AI-generated, photographic or animated content such as cartoons, hentai, or anime.”
They also asked adult content creators to manually mark their posts as ‘sensitive material’ or X would adjust their account settings for them, although they have not specified how.
Despite the policy change, X said that its users under 18 or viewers who do not include a birth date on their profile are not able to click on and view posts marked as adult content.
X was founded as Twitter in 2006. In 2023, it was renamed to its current name upon its acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk, who seeks to make the platform the ‘everything app’ that covers messaging, photo and video sharing, and even mobile wallet.