X, formerly known as Twitter, has taken a significant step towards embracing adult content following its acquisition by Elon Musk for a substantial $44 billion. Recent revelations have unveiled plans for NSFW (not safe for work) communities being experimented with on the platform.
Embracing Adult Content
Community administrators now have the ability to classify their groups as "Adult Content," a designation that acknowledges the presence of adult content on X. Sex workers and adult content bots have long been part of the platform's landscape. Internal data has indicated that approximately 13% of all posts contain NSFW material, marking it as one of the fastest-growing categories. To accommodate this trend, X is enabling Community admins to mark their groups as "Adult Content," ensuring their content isn't automatically filtered, which is now the default setting for all NSFW content on X's Communities.
Strategic Alignment
This shift is in line with X's strategy to elevate Communities as a pivotal element for user expansion. CEO Elon Musk has underscored the significance of Communities, noting its rapid user base growth and recent enhancements such as the integration of external user feeds.
Enhancements and Updates
The potential advantages of successful Communities are manifold: X could pose a challenge to established forum platforms like Reddit, and the user-generated content could provide valuable training data for Musk's AI chatbot, Grok. Apart from the NSFW tag, X is rolling out a series of updates to Communities. These updates encompass enhanced moderation tools, post sorting options, a dedicated Media tab for Android users, and features to explore trending content and discover new communities by topic.
Future Outlook
In the future, X aims to refine user discovery through initiatives such as promoting Communities on the For You tab and enabling moderators to access analytics and pin member posts. Additionally, upcoming features include audio chat rooms (Spaces) within Communities and user interface enhancements. While specific release dates for these features remain undisclosed, the flurry of updates indicates a strategic shift towards positioning Communities as a central component of X's platform.
