
Vine places porn at the top of every user’s feed - taytus
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/28/vine-porn/
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joshstrange
> “I clicked on the video b/c I thought the warning was a joke,” wrote in the
> comments. I’m furious I had to see something like this.”

Really? And somehow it is Vine's fault you saw porn while clicking on a video
named "Dildoplay" with the tags "nsfw" "porn" "nsfwvine". I can't feel sorry
for you. Yes it is too bad that this showed up in the first place but lets not
start with the pitchforks. This was a simple mistake that was completely
avoidable by users who have 2 eyes and can read.

Like I said it shouldn't have been there in the first place but lots not act
like you accidentally clicked on a video that has all the correct warning of
it's content. "Officer, I didn't know that when I pulled the pin out of that
grenade that it would explode, I thought it was a joke".

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goblin89
Well, Vine is rated 12+ in App Store. “Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or
Nudity”. I'm not sure what are ramifications if an application violates
assigned ratings.

On a second thought, “Infrequent/Mild” is vague enough: does slash mean “or”?

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CrazedGeek
I'd imagine it's pulled ASAP. None of the major app store providers allow porn
on their stores, do they?

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jkaljundi
They allow browsers, but those are: "You must be at least 17 years old to
download this app."

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DanBC
I'd be interested to read why it was selected as an "Editor's pick".

There's also a small possibility an English law was broken.
(<http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12>)

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ChuckMcM
The comment that it was "Human error" was also interesting, perhaps someone
made it a favorite while logged in as the Editor? Of course the interesting
bit for me was that the system had a porn screen in place, it "knew" it was
porny since it required you to tap it to view it, so why does the program /
tool that makes it "Editor's Choice" not automatically reject as an error an
attempt to promote a porny video to that spot?

Google Video (the service that existed at Google before and to some extent
after :-) they bought YouTube) early on used an algorithm for picking the top
videos to put on the page based on views/ratings/comments etc but that early
algorithm had built in from the start a check for things being NSFW and thus
preventing them from ever making the list.

Seems like a brain fart. Either that or a poor attempt at getting publicity
for the service. That latter would be really lame if Apple pulls the App based
on the commotion.

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tantalor
_why does the program / tool that makes it "Editor's Choice" not automatically
reject as an error an attempt to promote a porny video to that spot_

This was the second mistake. There should be business rules in place to
prevent this. Most likely they rushed the app to production without
considering this case.

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huhtenberg
An offtopic, but check this out - <http://imgur.com/kIacbiR>

It's a list of external dependencies of the linked VentureBeat page. I've been
running RequestPolicy for a while now, but have never seen a website being
this frivolous with sharing their hit information.

~~~
shaggyfrog
Install Ghostery and watch as it blocks all 24 of those insidious little
things. And for every other site, too.

~~~
huhtenberg
Ah, no. Ghostery has its own problems, stemming from who wrote it.

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Evbn
Don't leave us hanging.

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huhtenberg
The Better Advertising Project, with the basic idea to profile end-user ad-
blocking activity on the Internet and to resell this data to advertisers. This
might be OK with some people, but for me, personally, it's just too close for
comfort.

~~~
shaggyfrog
Let's say they are re-selling this data that says who ad blocks.

And I'm ad-blocking everything.

So advertisers find out that an increasingly growing segment of the population
don't abide "traditional" Internet advertising.

This is bad for me why exactly? Honest question.

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huhtenberg
Why do you block ads? It's a leading question, and the answer is likely to be
that they are annoying.

But why are they annoying? If you drill down a bit, then it's not because they
blink, but because someone somewhere thought that you should see their ad.
Because they made a decision for you, without asking, and it's not a decision
that you would've made yourself. Similarly, any sort of reporting, anonymous
or not, falls into the same domain - someone somewhere decided that you should
be OK with it. I don't appreciate this. It's not what they _do_ , it's the
fact that they thought they _could_ do it. It's ethics. I don't have a problem
with someone accidentally farting in a room, but I would have a problem if
someone had a choice of walking out, thought it over and then proceeded to do
it anyway.

It might be OK with others, but it's not OK with me. HTH.

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dlokshin
One of the perils of being a startup, and instead of growing organically and
having these embarrassing moments early in front of a small number of hardcore
users (who will use you no matter what, and forgive you no matter what you
do), you get pushed out by a behemoth like Twitter.

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Irishsteve
While its embarrassing for Vine to have porn pop up in the top of users feed's
, and the societal norms say it's a "bad thing" for the company; I can't but
help feel that in actual fact this would attract far more users.

~~~
danso
I don't think so in this case...even if we assume that porn is a major driver
in tech (I think iOS's whitewashed dominance is a clear counter argument),
_six-second porn_ is likely not satisfying enough for porn aficionados to
stick around with. Even if there are some _great_ clips, it's still seems like
a lot of work to hit refresh-next-whatever (I don't know, I don't have the
app), nevermind wading through all the unsatisfying clips.

Meanwhile, the many users who do not want to see porn, either at all, or at
least during daytime hours, will have a negative user experience.

~~~
mnicole
I think you underestimate people here. They've been hitting refresh and
waiting for static images to load for a long time. Vinepeek makes allows you
to just sit back and watch, and with the addition of tag searching, I'd
imagine that sitting through this content isn't a chore at all considering the
lengths people will go to find new material to begin with.

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moondowner
There's an easy fix: add options panel with hashtags to filter out. And add
#porn as one of the defaults in it.

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jerf
Your solution depends on pornographer's honesty in tagging. They have tons of
incentive to be dishonest this way.

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untog
I'm genuinely confused as to what the incentive is for the people posting the
porn. They certainly aren't profiting from it- do they just have a vested
interest in seeing Vine fail?

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rexreed
It's an advertisement for viewers to "see more" -- there's lots of free porn
out there, and most of it is used to funnel a percentage of the viewers to
paid subscription sites where other / more similar content exists. Conversion
rates are not as low as you think.

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nextstep
I honestly feel that most users would not be offended by this, but might feel
embarrassed if this showed while they're showing the app to their parents or a
non-close friend. However, I'm sure that Apple (or their censors) take things
like this somewhat seriously, which is silly because this is the Internet!
There are going to be offensive things every now and then; that's what happens
when you democratize the creation of content. I wish Apple would take a more
hands-off approach and just throw-up some disclaimer that "online interactions
are not rated by Apple" and leave it at that.

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tlrobinson
Or just make age ratings opt-in. By default all apps would be "unrated" and
thus prohibited when parental controls are enabled. Apps that can guarantee no
adult content can request a rating review.

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Sym3tri
Am I the only one who installed this app AFTER reading this article :P

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SODaniel
I guess you could also describe this as 'Vine creates first real time video
priority engine to 'get it right'' for a large percentage of users.

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electrichead
I loved the ad I saw on the page (I am on a mobile device) proclaiming, "Need
an eye exam?" from Pearle Vision. Seems oddly fitting.

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MostAwesomeDude
Sounds like everything's working as intended here. It's not like the Internet
is used for anything besides anonymous slander and porn anyway.

Edit: And ponies.

~~~
ybrs
and lolcats

