Butts, breasts, and genitals now explicitly allowed on Elon Musk’s X

Adult content has always proliferated on Twitter, but the platform now called X recently clarified its policy to officially allow "consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior."

X's rules seem simple. As long as content is "properly labeled and not prominently displayed," users can share material—including AI-generated or animated content—"that is pornographic or intended to cause sexual arousal."

"We believe that users should be able to create, distribute, and consume material related to sexual themes as long as it is consensually produced and distributed," X's policy said.

The policy update seemingly reflects X's core mission to defend all legal speech. It protects a wide range of sexual expression, including depictions of explicit or implicit sexual behavior, simulated sexual intercourse, full or partial nudity, and close-ups of genitals, buttocks, or breasts.

"Sexual expression, whether visual or written, can be a legitimate form of artistic expression," X's policy said. "We 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."

Today, X Support promoted the update on X, confirming that "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."

Seemingly also unchanged: none of this content can be monetized, as X's ad policy says that "to ensure a positive user experience and a healthy conversation on the platform, X prohibits the promotion of adult sexual content globally."

Under the policy, adult content is also prohibited from appearing in live videos, profile pictures, headers, list banners, or community cover photos.

X has been toying with the idea of fully embracing adult content and has even planned a feature for adult creators that could position X as an OnlyFans rival. That plan was delayed, Platformer reported in 2022, after red-teaming flagged a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to the launch: "Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale."

The new adult content policy still emphasizes that non-consensual adult content is prohibited, but it's unclear if the platform has gotten any better at distinguishing between consensually produced content and nonconsensual material. X did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment.

For adult content to be allowed on the platform, X now requires content warnings so that "users who do not wish to see it can avoid it" and "children below the age of 18 are not exposed to it."

Users who plan to regularly post adult content can adjust their account's media settings to place a label on all their images and videos. That results in a content warning for any visitor of that account's profile, except for "people who have opted in to see possibly sensitive content," who "will still see your account without the message."

Users who only occasionally share adult content can choose to avoid the account label and instead edit an image or video to add a one-time label to any individual post, flagging just that post as sensitive.

Once a label is applied, any users under 18 will be blocked from viewing the post, X said.

Any users who fail to regularly apply a label to adult content risk X changing their media settings for them. This can be easily changed back, X's policy noted, but X also reserves the right to permanently update a user's media settings. If caught sharing prohibited adult content, such as in a profile picture or live video, users risk suspension or their account being placed in read-only mode. In some cases, violative live videos may be removed.

X seemingly plans to moderate much of this content through user reporting but "may also use automated techniques to detect and label potentially sensitive media and to detect and label accounts that frequently post potentially sensitive media."

This can result in moderation mistakes that wrongly flag content or lock or suspend accounts, decisions that X allows users to appeal.

Of course, inconsistent content moderation can also result in the system failing to flag violative content. Earlier this year, X struggled to contain nonconsensual AI sex images of Taylor Swift, ultimately blocking all searches for the celebrity, a solution that would likely be unavailable for the average X user reporting nonconsensual images.

Bad actors constantly evolve their practices to avoid moderation triggered by automated filters online. X's policy change comes after months of the platform being dominated by porn spam bots that Rolling Stone warned can't be blocked fast enough, consistently evading X's spam filters. These spam bots typically have profile pictures showing "scantily clad women teasing explicit images of themselves," advertising things like "pussy in bio" or "hot link in bio," Rolling Stone reported.

These spam bots are presumably looking to deceive users or scrape data. They've become largely unavoidable on the platform, Rolling Stone notes, prompting a meme and jokes from X users befuddled by "the mystery" of "why we’re suddenly faced with so many suspicious accounts promising graphic content in these exact terms." NPR reported that Elon Musk's decision to slash the content moderation team could be part of the reason that porn spam is seemingly everywhere on X.

While X seems to be allowing for more adult content than ever, the platform maintains that unwanted sexual content and graphic objectification is still banned, empowering users to report both bots and legitimate creeps responding to their posts. Users can report any account sending unsolicited adult content, unwanted sexual comments, solicitations for sex, or "any other content that otherwise sexualizes an individual without their consent," an X policy on harassment and abuse said.

Some advertisers could be turned off by the platform's decision to allow even more adult content amid the porn bot problem. It's also possible that too much adult content on the platform could result in restrictions or even removal of X from app stores. But over the past two weeks since the policy was updated, the change seems to have largely gone unnoticed by both advertisers and app stores.

For X users hoping to distinguish their accounts by sharing non-spammy adult content from these swarms of porn bots or other bad actors on the platform, X seems to expect that content labels and media settings will help legitimate accounts avoid undue moderation.