Searches for Taylor Swift were heavily restricted on X (formerly Twitter) in late January. The social network took this measure as part of a more general plan aimed at preventing the dissemination of false pornographic images of the American singer.
That’s what’s called not doing lace. The social network X (formerly Twitter) decided at the end of January to block searches concerning the American singer Taylor Swift. Several requests containing his name are in fact unable to succeed. A provision confirmed by a manager of the community site.
To the Wall Street Journal, the platform indicates that this is a provisional arrangement, taken to “ prioritize safety “. As of January 29, it is actually impossible to get a result by just typing “Taylor Swift”. X returns to the Internet user an empty page with the words “ An error has occurred. Try reloading the page. »
Measures that can be circumvented
In practice, this restriction is not infallible. It is possible to display media or lists in the corresponding tabs. It is true, however, that nothing is returned in the other tabs (featured, recent, people). A modification of the query also makes it possible to deceive the filtering implemented by X.
Thus, by placing terms between the artist’s first and last name, the filtering is bypassed. This is the case of “taylor artificial intelligence swift”, “taylor deepfake swift” or “taylor ai swift”. However, the “taylor swift ai” and “ai taylor swift” attempts are blocked. Using punctuation can also help unlock research.
If there are some tips to get around this emergency moderation put in place by X, this does not mean that we will come across pornographic content with certainty. X also intervenes at the level of accounts that share these fakes, by closing them. The same goes for porn media, which is deleted.
“ Posting images of non-consensual nudity is strictly prohibited on X and we have a zero-tolerance policy towards this type of content “, wrote the social network in a tweet shared on January 26. The site has confirmed its policy of removing images of this type and of firm moderation against the accounts in question.
It is indeed not easy to come across these montages on X, dated January 29. Several searches carried out by Numerama have indeed revealed diversions of Taylor Swift, but which are not of a pornographic nature. However, we can still view questionable artificial images.
Taylor Swift is thus portrayed as an officer of Nazi Germany, but also as the “muse” of McDonald’s, or as an obese woman. She is also represented as a fan of Donald Trump, or even as a companion of Joe Biden. Other visuals, not shown here, show her as a cheerleader or cat lady.
The singer’s porn montages have not been seen on X at the time of writing this article – certain requests may allow access to them, if moderation has not yet passed. Those that remain on the platform have been cropped to avoid showing the sexual acts in question, or else blurred.
Fakes that abound on the web
The moderation deployed by X has a limited scope: these tricks can in fact be found elsewhere on the web, or via certain software, such as Discord. “Specialized” channels exist, in which people who are experts in content generation produce these visuals, sometimes for remuneration.
This use of AI has recently had a political echo, given the singer’s aura in the United States and around the world. The White House has said it supports legislation to protect people from false sexual images generated by artificial intelligence. That being said, Taylor Swift is the tree that hides the forest.
Celebrity pornography has existed for more than twenty years on the Internet, and it is mainly famous women who are the victims. At the time, tools like Photoshop were used to create these fakes. Since then, things have gotten worse, with realistic videos (deepfakes) or AI content.
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