Twitter - which has always considered itself a bastion of free speech - may be dismissing up to 10 million user accounts in order to eliminate porn from the social media site.

 

Computer and tech analyst Robert Peck sounded the alarm, saying the purge could be coming soon.

 

"Bearish investors point out that one can still see users that are violating Twitter's [terms of service] and we would expect these users will need to be purged at some point," he argued. In Twitter's ToS, this means no violent or pornographic pics as part of a "profile image, header image, or background image."

 

As for actual tweeted content, however, users simply have to flag their tweets as including potentially offensive material. "We do not mediate content. All content should be marked appropriately as per our guidelines," the Twitter Media Policy states.

 

"Twitter is one of the few large social media platforms that doesn’t apply a lot of censorship rules to our images so by default it’s a network tool in the adult industry," explained adult actress Mercedes Carrera.

 

Actress Leya Falcon added: “To block my freedom of expression and not be able to show the world what I am doing when I was previously able to post anything without fear of being kicked off? That’s going to hurt.”

 

Rumor has it that Twitter is considering the change in order to bolster its flagging revenue. Reports indicate that the company's quarterly revenue fell short of expectations, with shares down by almost 24%. Businesses seem wary about having their ads associated with pornographic tweets, hence a growing unwillingness to advertise on the site.

 

Of course, Twitter would be smarter to keep the porn and simply tweak the algorithm that links tweets with ads. Because everyone knows what happens when the porn gets booted, right Yahoo! Groups?

 

Twitter’s Great Porn Purge of 2015: Porn Stars and XXX Companies Fear the Worst [The Daily Beast]

 

Here's Why Twitter's Porn Problem Freaked Out Brands [AdWeek]