Musk’s X Becomes XXX

Over the weekend, Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, changed its terms of service to officially allow users to post adult content. Prior to the rule change, the platform had an unofficial policy that permitted users to post such content, but it was neither explicitly allowed nor prohibited, as it operated in a gray area. Now, X users will be able to freely post NSFW content, as long as it is consensually created.

– “We believe in the autonomy of adults to engage and create content that reflects their own beliefs, desires, and experiences, including those related to sexuality,” states the updated X guidelines.

Anyone posting adult content will be required to label it as such on their account so that X’s filters can place a warning in front of it. X’s new guidelines also extend to nude content generated by artificial intelligence.

Rise of Pornography

Although X never explicitly allowed adult content, there has been an increase in such content following the launch of the Twitter Blue subscription program. The new paid tier of X allowed sex workers and porn actors to charge subscribers for content that was behind a paywall, similar to how creators monetize content on the social platform OnlyFans. Now, with the official rule change, it seems that X is mimicking OnlyFans in its desire to build stronger commercial relationships between creators and users who subscribe to their accounts. While OnlyFans, despite its reputation as a haven for pornography, which certainly prevails on the site, is trying to position itself as a platform where content creators of any kind can build closer relationships with paying clients. But let’s be honest, it is mostly about pornography.

Since Elon Musk acquired X in October 2022, he has been vocal that the company must pursue subscription revenue to diversify its income streams. This belief was a driving force behind the launch of Twitter Blue, now known as X Premium, an early version of X tailored to pornography. However, those earlier plans fell apart in the spring of 2022 when X’s content moderation teams realized they lacked the capabilities to adequately seek out material related to child sexual abuse and other forms of illegal sexually explicit content, according to a report by The Verge. As a result, the plans were put on hold.

Big Ambitions

Musk has big ambitions for X’s subscription business. In a presentation to investors, Musk proposed reducing X’s advertising business from 90 percent of revenue to just 45 percent by 2028. This would mean that subscription revenue would rise to $10 billion annually by that date. That figure would double X’s revenue of $5 billion in its last full year as a public company before Musk took it private.

Since then, it has been difficult to assess X’s progress against the metrics Musk set. However, some early reports from the early days of his tenure as the new owner of X indicate that the company has struggled to retain both users and advertisers. In October 2023, a year after Musk took ownership of the web, X’s monthly users decreased by 15 percent, and advertising revenue was down by 54 percent. More recent analysis showed that users were still leaving the platform en masse in the new year. In February, monthly users fell by 24 percent compared to the previous year.

Some of these declines can be attributed to Musk’s own behavior, which both users and advertisers found off-putting. At the same time, X is in trouble due to an increasingly poor user experience as bots, many of which promote sexual content, have become more prevalent on X. These automated accounts often leave the same sexually suggestive responses to posts across X. Bots have become so common on the site that they have become a defining feature of the platform. Now, those bots could be drowned out by authentic human accounts promoting the same kind of debauched content that is usually relegated to the hidden corners of the internet.