Vine penalized for explicit content; removed from iTunes Editor’s Choice
After news of pornographic videos on Vine surfaced, Apple was swift to take action against the app, but it wasn't the kind we were expecting.
Yesterday, we reported that Vine had been fast developing a problem of the explicit kind, with several pornographic videos appearing on the service in less than a week from launch. We also reported that Apple wasn’t going to stand for such activity and would probably remove the app from its App Store.
While the morality-brigade didn’t come down as hard as we’d expected, and the Vine app can still be found in the app store, it has been promptly removed from the “Editor’s Choice” category. While the move is not surprising in its effect, we are somewhat curious as to why the app hasn’t been removed when the 500px app was promptly ejected from the app store for having nude content, even though it was artistic.
It would seem that Apple has a hard time distinguishing between actual pornographic content and artistic nudes, seeing how Vine still continues to be available through the app store, despite having clearly pornographic content on it, while 500px only had content of the artistic nature, relatively hidden away. Perhaps Twitter’s ownership of the app has stayed Apple’s hand on the guillotine.
Whether Apple will take further action against Vine is yet to be determined, but it is clear that Vine (being a product of Twitter, a supposed propoent of the freedom of speech) is unlikely to take any strict action against those spreading objectionable content over the app’s network.