Vine: Is Twitter's new porn problem overblown?

Vine, Twitter's video sharing app for easily digestible 6-second clips, has been the toast of the internet since it launched last week. Creative-types love it. Someone even took the time to build a fansite, Vinepeek, that automatically streams newly uploaded videos in real time.

But the Vine love-fest isn't all hearts and puppy dogs — even though there is a lot of that. A modest search for the hashtags #porn or #sex reveals a vulgar depository of NSFW clips rivaling any curious teenager's browser cache. On Monday morning, Vine upset more than a few fans when it floated an explicit video of people having sex to the top of its "Editor's Picks":

Twitter has responded to the criticism, telling The Verge that users can flag spam or inappropriate videos to be taken down:

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This particular goof-up has been fixed, but it still highlights a problem that app-makers continue to face as they amass audiences and scale quickly: Any company that leverages a pool of users to produce content will inevitably need to find a way to deal with trolls and troublemakers. Complicating matters is the fact that Apple, which explicitly bans NSFW content from its App Store, recently pulled 500px, a popular image-sharing app that also featured pornography.

Indeed, YouTube, Instagram, and other family-friendly services all faced similar NSFW hurdles at one point or another, but have since successfully instituted self-policing mechanisms to keep porn and other questionable content in check. Instagram, to its credit, does a fairly good job of taking down flagged content quickly and earnestly. With any luck, Vine will quickly learn from these experiences, too.