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Following a recent uptick in what seems to be bots making sexually suggestive posts on X, Elon Musk’s social media website appears to be giving up on policing them. The website formerly known as Twitter updated its policies over the weekend to allow “consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior” on the app, albeit with certain guardrails in place to at least nominally protect underage users.
The move does follow X’s past treatment of suggestive content, in that the site has never been known to crack down on porn. But with “pussy in bio” showing up uninvited under so many otherwise tame posts, the move to officially allow nudes could be seen as a bad sign for people who might want to use X in SFW environments.
Technically, these posts should also count as spam, and this author would argue that consent should also take the viewer into account, not just the people involved in making the content. With that in mind, here’s the best ways we’ve found to clear your X timeline of porn.
Try reporting it
Again, even if porn is allowed, if a bot posts a nude on your post and links you to an outside site, that should count as spam. Your first port of call in this case should be to report it.
First, click on the three-dot menu in the top-right of the post, then click Report post next to the flag icon. There, choose Spam. Click the Next button to submit your report, where you’ll be prompted to Mute or Block the poster.
Instead of Spam, you could alternatively report the post for Abuse & Harassment or Sensitive or disturbing media. X only allows you to choose one reason for reporting, so pick the one that fits best. Abuse & Harassment is best reserved for suspected illegal content, like that involving child sexual abuse material, while Sensitive or disturbing media might be better applied to nudity not clearly placed behind a content warning.
Your mileage will vary on reports. I report pretty much any porn bot that wanders its way into my comments, and it has yet to stop them. Regardless, it’s good practice to help protect your fellow users.
Enable the Sensitive Content filter
X has its own built-in filter for sensitive content, although it still has its limitations and can be a bit draconian, since it puts a blanket ban on anything the site considers “sensitive content,” which can bundle violence and gore in with porn.
If you’re OK putting a general clean filter on your profile, open X in a browser (I could not see this option in the app), click on your profile icon, click on Settings and privacy, and open the Privacy and safety menu. From there, click Content you see, then make sure “Display media that may contain sensitive content” is unclicked.
This won’t stop accounts from posting nudes in your replies, but it will force you to click through before you’re able to view them.
While here, you can also click Search settings and toggle on Hide sensitive content to keep flagged posts from showing up in your searches.
This isn’t a perfect solution, since it affects your eyes only and doesn’t keep spam from interacting with you. It also relies on users either flagging their own posts as sensitive or Twitter’s system detecting sensitive posts before they get to your screen, but every little bit helps.
Try setting your account to under 18
This one is best used by parents on their kids’ accounts. Essentially, it works as the same as the above method, but prevents you from being able to click through to see the sensitive material.
It’s also super easy. When setting up an account, either don’t enter a birth date or ensure your birth date puts you under 18 years of age. X will consider you a minor, and will do its best to keep you from viewing adult content.
Mute suggestive words
To more selectively keep porn off your X feed, try instead blocking posts containing specific suggestive words.
Once again, navigate to your settings, open Settings and support, click on Privacy and safety, and open Mute and block. Here, you’ll be able to manage your Muted words, where you can try adding terms like the infamous “pussy in bio.”
It’s not a perfect solution, for a few reasons. First, you can only mute these words in your timeline, rather than in replies to your posts. Second, bots are clever and it can be hard to predict every term they’ll use. Instead of saying “pussy in bio,” for instance, they might say “pu$$y in bi0.”
Still, it doesn’t hurt to toss a few terms in here. You’ll be able to choose whether to apply the mute to anyone or just to people you don’t follow, and for how long you want the mute to be active.
Use a parental control or porn blocking app
While X once supported block lists, which would allow communities to create and share files that would mass block certain users, the feature is no longer active. The best alternative now lives in external apps, such as Canopy.
These apps run on your device and all work in different ways, so be careful when signing up to make sure your choice doesn’t infringe on your privacy too much.
Canopy is a paid option, but is one of the more general use ones out there. When active, it monitors your screen with an AI algorithm and censors out offending images in real time. Note that this will require giving the app some high-level permissions, although Canopy’s FAQ promises the company will “never sell your data” and only uses what it considers necessary “to provide you with a superior product.”
Canopy is a paid service starting at $7.99 per month for individual users, but is a good choice when you still want to use X for SFW content, as an app that relies on blocklists might keep you from visiting the site on the whole.
