Censorship and ‘art’ is debated
A teenage male and a ham and cheese Hot Pocket are at the center of controversy this month — and it is believed to have allegedly led to the ban of sexually explicit content on the six-second video application, Vine.
Twitter, the social network that owns Vine, made these changes to the application on March 6.
The change occurred ten days after a teenage male videotaped himself being intimate, first with a Pop-Tart box and later with a heated Hot Pocket. The teenager posted these actions on his Vine and Twitter profiles.
The young man claimed it was an attempt to gain more followers and become Internet famous, according to Huffington Post’s Christian Nilsson.
The Vine video spread like wildfire, becoming viral almost immediately, according to Nilsson. Although the young man accomplished his goal of becoming Internet famous, his fame was short-lived. Both Twitter and Vine removed his posts and suspended his accounts. Even Hot Pocket’s Twitter account, @hotpockets, blocked the teenage boy, as reported by Nilsson. According to CNN, Vine announced changes to the applications privacy policy March 6, following the incident. Although there has been no statement from Vine that this post was the cause of Vine’s new policy, the sequence of events suggests it was not a coincidence.
Erin D’Aleo / Graphics Editor
Haley McConville, a Keene State College senior, shared her opinion about Vine’s decision to change it’s privacy policies, and stated, “I think it depends on how explicit the content is. A lot of young kids use Twitter and Vine. I think it should be censored to some extent.”
Haley Mizzi, a KSC freshman, shared, “It doesn’t bother me personally and I feel like we can’t be told what we can and cannot say on social media.” Within four days after the app launched in January of 2013, a video featuring sexually explicit content was inadvertently posted on the “Editor’s Picks” section, as stated by DigitalTrends.com’s Trevor Mogg.
Several changes have been made to Vine’s policies to prevent such pornographic material on the application, but no official rules banning this content were made until now, according to CNN.com’s Heather Kelly.
According to CNN, there have been attempts by Vine to prevent such posts from making their way into the news or the public eye. For example, they raised the minimum age for an account from 12 to 17. A warning message was also added to posts that were reported as inappropriate, according to CNN.com’s Doug Gross. The warning requires a quick click before the video is shown.
A disclaimer on Apple’s App Store site was also added to the description of Vine, stating that the application contained “Frequent/intense sexual content or nudity.” Previously, it had been described as “infrequent/mild sexual content or nudity,” according to Heather Kelly’s article on CNN. The App Store has allegedly stopped the sale of other apps that involve sexually explicit content, but has not done so with Vine.
“If they [Apple] don’t own the app, I don’t think they should be able to censor that just because it gets downloaded onto their product. I don’t really think we need Apple to control or decide what is too inappropriate for us to see,” Mizzi stated.
Megan Bradley, a KSC freshman, shared her opinion, “Since it’s Apple’s products, I think they should be able to regulate what can be on their products.”
Vine’s new policy makes exceptions to nudity in documentarian, artistic and educational senses. They allow sexually suggestive content, but no explicitly sexual content such as any sexual acts alone, with people, or with objects, according to the application guidelines. Vine also banned any nudity including animation, according to Kelly’s CNN article titled “Twitter Bans Porn Videos on Vine.”
“I think companies should be more aware of what their media is being used for and therefore more responsible for censoring their own apps,” McConville said. Vine also allows users to flag posts they deem to be inappropriate.
If this new rule is not followed, the user will be suspended until that particular post is removed. If this rule is continually violated, the account will be suspended. According to statements from the Vine company, most of the users will not even notice a difference in the app. Vine claims the issue at hand is not the explicit sexual content on the internet, but simply that Vine prefers not to be the source of such content.
“Many people believe that the more followers or likes they have, the more liked they are…I don’t post anything to please anyone. I don’t care how many followers I have,” Bradley stated.
Taylor Howe can be contacted at thowe@keene-equinox.com