Twitter banning 10 million porn-peddling accounts

Is move to clean up its accounts a bid to attract more advertisers?

Twitter is reportedly about to enact a large-scale cleanup operation of its user base, apparently looking at removing up to 10 million users who routinely share pornographic material on the site.

Twitter currently has no formal policy against the display and sharing of pornographic or violent imagery as tweets, though users are forbidden to use such images as profile or background images.

Such shared content is currently labelled as containing "sensitive content", but otherwise allowed.

The reports are based on a prediction made by analyst Robert Peck from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, who believes that after CEO Dick Costolo's recent (leaked, memo-based) claims that he will start "kicking people off right and left" for such abuse, it's time for Twitter to make good on the promise.

"Twitter's technology should hopefully be able to identify these users, but it may take some time," said Peck.

Peck's prediction comes after Twitter recently reported disappointing 2015 Q1 financial results, including a net loss of $162m, which the company blamed on a "lower-than-expected contribution" from "newer direct response products".

The promise of a "strong pipeline" of "increased value" for direct response advertisers would do well to include a more family-friendly environment for customers to receive content.

But with 308 million users and counting, does a cull of the 10 million worst offenders really spell a significant difference for Twitter, or more a PR play to look like the company is doing something?

Further, Twitter could find itself losing the favour of a genuinely robust set of users.

"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," said adult actress Mercedes Carrera.

"I don't think adult content is the reason Twitter's stock plummeted but adult content is always an easy scapegoat in society, always."