A sudden announcement by X clarifying how it handles adult content has left some creators surprised and confused, wondering what has actually changed.
The policy update, announced Monday, detailed the company's policies around adult content and violent content and was widely received as another sudden shift under Elon Musk's chaotic tenure as the company's owner. But adult performers and their advocates say the written policy had mostly been in place for years.
"They were like, 'Oh, adult content is allowed on Twitter now,'" said Sydney Leathers, an OnlyFans model and community manager for SpankChain, which provides services for sex workers. "Everyone in sex work is like, 'Well, technically it kind of always has been.'"
What has changed under Musk, she said, are the platform's moderation practices, which have become even murkier as scammers posing as adult performers have inundated the platform.
"I definitely see people who don't realize that the bot accounts aren't real sex workers," Leathers explained. "I have wondered before, 'Is that going to make people annoyed?' Like, 'Oh, I'm so tired of seeing these sex workers?'"
Even before Musk took over, the platform then known as Twitter was one of the last refuges for adult content providers looking to find an audience on mainstream social media. While other platforms banned pornographic content, X has never explicitly done so. Still, sex workers say it has become increasingly difficult to grow and reach their followings.
X's recent post about the update said its new policies around both adult content and violent content would "bring more clarity" and "transparency into enforcement of these areas." The platform said it hasn't changed what it enforces against, and X didn't respond to a request for comment.
"We balance this freedom by restricting exposure to Adult Content for children or adult users who choose not to see it," the policy says. "We also prohibit content promoting exploitation, nonconsent, objectification, sexualization or harm to minors, and obscene behaviors."
Olivia Snow, a professional dominatrix and sex work, tech and policy researcher at UCLA, said X's new policy uses the same language as its previous sensitive content policy, which was put in place before Musk bought and took over the platform in 2022. Musk reportedly toyed with the idea of monetizing adult content, but the platform explicitly barred adult content from the program after introducing creator monetization in July 2023.
The only policy differences now, Snow said, were that X separated its rules around adult content from those around violent content and added a few more specifics in its definitions, like a nod to the existence of artificial intelligence-generated adult content.
Further complicating the situation is a recent post from Musk that seemingly disapproved of adult content. On May 20, he posted a meme that depicted Instagram as a strip club instead of a place to find "nice photos." "Post your family pics on X," he captioned it. Musk has since deleted the post.
After influencer Pearl Davis, who has supported banning porn, tagged Musk in a post on Monday asking for a "porn free mode," Musk replied that it was a "top priority."
X users can already adjust their content settings to avoid seeing adult content, and such posts are automatically censored for accounts registered as belonging to someone under the age of 18.
Trip Richards, an adult entertainer who mainly uses X to share sexually explicit content, said the announcement does offer some clarity for creators but that the platform is still restricting ways that sex workers can market and monetize their content.
"I also still can't use the features that other premium/blue users can, such as offering subscriptions or receiving ad revenue," he said in an email. "This means that our content is permitted in name only, but not given equal footing with other types of accounts and postings."
Mike Stabile, the director of public affairs for the Free Speech Coalition, the adult industry's trade association, told NBC News it's possible that X is looking to take advantage of the fact that many dedicated pornography websites have stopped operating in states that passed age-verification laws requiring users to prove they are an adult. Pornhub, one of the largest companies, announced its reasoning for pulling out of Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Montana, North Carolina and Mississippi in May.
"We're seeing consumers go to another site, to Reddit or Twitter where they can get adult content without age-verifying," Stabile said. "It's possible that X sees a hole in the market here."
The change also comes as pornographic content on X has more recently become synonymous with automated replies that appear almost instantly in response to many posts on the platform, often directing to a "link in bio" and sometimes containing sexual imagery. Stabile and sex workers who market their own content on X say they believe the proliferation of scammers and their methods has adversely impacted their engagement.
Still, Richards and Leathers said adult performers have to continue to use X, as it is the only major social media platform that permits their content at all.
Leathers said the fraught political, cultural and tech policy environment for adult content in the U.S. has contributed to the worst period of sexual censorship she has observed since she started sex work in 2013.
"For a lot of people, that's their main source of income and it's really upsetting," she said. "It's endlessly frustrating, and I don't really know what the answer is."