You may have noticed something striking: unlike many platforms, inside excitement Publishing pornographic content is allowed. Last spring, the company explored monetizing sexual videos as a bold shift, but that path stalled due to challenges in reliably detecting and blocking harmful material. The issues included sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity, which remained unconfirmed by independent sources but were reported by The Verge.
The proposal considered by the platform was to enable creators to sell paid subscriptions that grant fans access to private content. The model would let the platform retain a portion of those subscriptions, a move that could help offset potential financial losses. Executives weighed the risk of alienating core business partners against the possibility of establishing a new revenue stream.
To assess viability, the company assembled a dedicated team of 84 employees. In April, the team, informally dubbed the Red Team, concluded that the platform lacked effective monitoring tools to support a subscription-driven approach to adult content. They warned that the site could not accurately detect child sexual exploitation or non-consensual nudity on a large scale, which would complicate any effort to monetize such material. This assessment was shared in an internal document reviewed by The Verge in April.
sexual exploitation of minors
The Red Team highlighted a critical deficiency: existing safeguards were not sufficient to prevent the spread of illegal content involving minors, nor could the platform reliably verify the age of those creating sexual material. They warned that launching a porn-focused business would magnify these problems. The warnings centered on the sheer number of children at risk, a factor that ultimately derailed the project, which was suspended indefinitely in May shortly after the platform’s board and technology leader Elon Musk agreed to acquire the company for about 44 billion dollars (roughly 41 billion euros).
Despite the suspension, the issue of sexual exploitation of minors on the platform remained a major concern. The Verge’s reporting indicates that the directive offered little improvement, despite years of warnings from employees who urged leadership to strengthen detection tools for child pornography.
With billions of daily interactions among hundreds of millions of users, the platform stands as one of the most widely used social networks globally. Yet profitability has remained elusive, with several years showing losses. This precarious business model has contributed to lower investment in content moderation compared with rivals such as Facebook. Multiple insiders described the company as operating with technology that was described as fragile and inefficient, enabling the continued presence of significant illegal content.
In a later internal note, a Red Team member stated that proactive identification of violent content and inconsistent policies around adult material were ongoing problems. The report warned that security capabilities were inadequate to keep products safe and compliant at scale. The findings underscored a broader tension between growth ambitions and the imperative to protect users, especially minors, from exploitation.