As appealing to sensibilities as this might sound like a questionable shift towards less-than-savory adult content on X (formerly Twitter), the story seems less salacious than it may have initially appeared.

In fact, just a little while ago, Bloomberg reported that X will be launching a new feature that will allow users to build communities of adult content by allowing them to label their groups with "Adult Content."

As per Bloomberg:

"If users develop a community within the app, they are able to declare in the settings that their group "contains adult-sensitive content." The X groups will then include an "adult content" label. Users who do not make such a declaration could see some of the content filtered out or removed, according to the screenshots of the rules."

That started a lot of speculation that X might actually want to pivot on adult content on the app and find ways to facilitate new streams of revenue from potentially partnerships with adult content creators who are active across the app in any case.

However, X has since clarified that this is not actually a new shift in this direction as such.

As quoted by X:

To explain it better, this community is intended to make Communities safer for everyone by auto-filtering NSFW content. Users will only be able to search communities with NSFW content if they have specified their age.

That is a safety measure rather than the method to open doors to adult content in making it more discoverable and palatable within the app. It could be a byproduct either way, but it seems X isn't taking bigger strides to appeal to adult creators just yet.

It might, though. 

At that time, back in 2022, Twitter began to test whether the company would be able to enable adult content creators to sell subscriptions in the app to potentially try and tap into OnlyFans' $2.5b self-made content market.

Adult content, as already stated, is pretty very prominent on X and easily accessible. Thus, a good follow-through that might have allowed making more money for the platform would have been to monetize this, by going into this facet rather than turning a blind eye to it.

Unless, of course, Twitter management eventually decided that it couldn't do it.

Why?

According to The Verge :

Before finalising the greenlight for launch, Twitter called in 84 employees to create what it termed a 'Red Team'. The aim was "to pressure-test the decision to allow adult creators to monetise on the platform, by specifically focusing on what it would look like for Twitter to do this safely and responsibly". What the Red Team discovered was a project gone off the rails: Not only couldnt Twitter safely permit adult creators to sell subscriptions, but the company wasn't - and remains not - doing an adequate job of policing harmful sexual content on the site.
The most troubling findings from this research were child sex exploitation and naked pictures taken without the subject's consent, and since these were things that could not be effectively policed on the platform, letting porn be monetized was a massive gamble.

However X can still look this way if it really needs more revenue streams.

Way, way back in January, X had announced plans to build a new "Trust and Safety center of excellence" in Texas, to enhance its responsiveness in tending to these specific elements. Maybe, with that set up, X would be better placed to actually enact such a plan, though we've heard little more about this "center of excellence", nor has much progress seemingly been made.

Yet.

I do believe that environments like that could be taken as a step forward in allowing a separate, adults-only version of the application that could also allow more adult content and perhaps dealing with adult performers that could bring in more money to the application.

Of course, another risk is that advertisers would flee the app as a result. But seriously, X doesn't really want more advertisers because then they can place even more restrictions on its moderation decisions. Ideally, X would rather make more money off of users and creators instead.

So while that story in itself isn't necessarily a harbinger of such intentions, it might be another step in that direction. If X needs it.

And with X's ad revenue still down 50%, it may well need it, very soon.