X resides as much as its title. The platform, previously Twitter, is engaged on an addition to its Communities characteristic that may let X customers create teams for X-rated materials, in accordance with app researchers.
Researcher Daniel Buchuk of Watchful, which analyzes app improvement and efficiency, discovered the characteristic by reverse engineering the app. He shared screenshots with TechCrunch solely, which present what X’s NSFW Communities may appear like.
An impartial researcher, Nima Owji, additionally noticed the characteristic in improvement final month.
Twitter launched its Communities characteristic in 2021. It permits customers to put up inside smaller, interest-based subgroups, like a subreddit. When Elon Musk purchased Twitter final 12 months, he enacted sweeping modifications to the app’s brand identity, verification methods and creator monetization efforts — however some options, like Communities, remained stagnant.
X additionally hasn’t taken a lot initiative in working with its sizable inhabitants of on-line intercourse employees, who flip to the platform — one in all few that enables grownup content material — to advertise their paid choices from websites like OnlyFans.
“Twitter actually is the first promoting venue at this level for intercourse employees,” Dr. Olivia Snow, a dominatrix and researcher at UCLA’s Heart for Important Web Inquiry, instructed TechCrunch final 12 months. So, the platform’s more-lenient coverage on grownup content material is crucial for on-line intercourse employees to develop their companies.
X didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Grownup creators are allowed to put up specific content material on X, although they’ll’t monetize it on the platform. But when they’ll create their very own fan communities, this characteristic may give creators a extra direct technique to attain their viewers.
Regardless that X appears to be engaged on this NSFW Communities characteristic, that doesn’t imply it’ll come to fruition. Shortly after Musk took management of the platform, reverse engineers uncovered potential options that may enable creators to monetize paywalled movies or cost cash for DMs. These mockups seemed just like options on OnlyFans, which might be a technique for Musk to recoup his $44 billion funding: monetizing “X movies.”
However because it stands, X doesn’t appear poised to reverse its stance on grownup content material monetization. Even earlier than Musk’s takeover, Twitter had been engaged on an OnlyFans competitor, nevertheless it was shelved as a result of Twitter couldn’t adequately detect non-consensual content material and baby sexual exploitation (CSE). However X says it’s mitigating that dire downside. In response to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, in 2023 the platform suspended 12.4 million accounts for violating baby sexual exploitation insurance policies, up from 2.3 million accounts eliminated in 2022.