Following the recent revelation of X’s intentions to experiment with NSFW adult communities on the platform formerly known as Twitter, the company has officially announced that community administrators now have the ability to designate an “Adult Content” label in their settings. They can use this feature to stop the automatic filtering of their communities’ content. Otherwise, all explicit content will soon be filtered across X’s communities by default. Communities are smaller groups within X that have their own feeds separate from the main timeline.
The recent findings seem to validate the previous investigations conducted by researchers and reverse engineers. They suggest a shift towards a social network that will openly embrace the adult content that has long existed on the platform.
X is known for its significant presence of NSFW (not safe for work) content, serving as a prominent platform for sex workers, and hosting a considerable number of adult content-focused bots and spam. Reuters obtained internal documents in 2022, which revealed that approximately 13% of Twitter posts featured NSFW content, such as explicit photos, videos, and other forms of pornography. In addition, the documents revealed that adult content was experiencing rapid growth on the platform, while news and sports were on the decline.
The New York Intelligencer also recently highlighted the increase in spam bots on the service now known as X. These bots would promote NSFW content by including links in their profiles, leading them to frequently respond to posts with messages containing explicit terms like “nudes in bio” or “pics in bio.”
As part of the recent updates to X’s Communities, there is now an option for NSFW-focused communities to designate themselves accordingly. This enables them to shield their content from automatic filtering, just like other communities.
An engineer posted the changes on X, and Musk reshared them, commenting, “Many upgrades to X Communities!”
Owner Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino emphasized communities as a crucial aspect of X’s growth strategy during an all-hands meeting last fall.
Based on a transcript obtained by The Verge, Musk acknowledged that the Communities product was experiencing rapid growth but emphasized the need for further improvements to make it truly compelling. He mentioned that X was experiencing significant growth in communities and had recently introduced new features, such as the option to include any X account’s feed in the community feed. For instance, his statement suggests that a video game-focused community might contemplate incorporating the accounts of prominent video game reviewers or commentators. The X executives had not disclosed any plans for NSFW communities at that time.
If X were able to make Communities a successful product, it could potentially serve as a strong contender against larger forum sites like Reddit. Additionally, it could host training data for Musk’s xAI-run chatbot Grok, which currently has exclusive access to X content.
In addition to the announcement that community administrators can now indicate the inclusion of adult content, X will be implementing a ban button on the Reported Posts page. This will be accompanied by more informative messages that explain why you may not be eligible to join a particular community. X will also be introducing temporary and permanent bans for spammers, as well as tools to sort posts by trending, most recent, and most liked. Android users will also have access to a media tab for communities. Additionally, X will be addressing various bug fixes and making minor improvements.
The list of upcoming features for communities was quite comprehensive, as it mentioned that users will soon have the ability to browse through top posts and top communities across all communities. Additionally, there will be tools available to help users discover the top communities and posts based on specific topics. The For You tab will highlight and suggest communities to users who might find them interesting, thereby assisting them in expanding their following. Mods will have access to Community Analytics and can pin multiple members’ posts. Additionally, admins will have the ability to set spam filter levels, access simplified reporting and moderation pages, and enjoy audio spaces in communities, among other features.
The post proposes a fresh user interface for posts, and there might be upcoming replies as well.
X did not respond to inquiries regarding the expected arrival time for any of the items mentioned as “soon.”
