We asked a Twitter spokesperson how the images were allowed to stay online for 30 minutes -- ages in a viral-hungry world -- and who actually removed them in the end. The spokesperson said the company doesn't comment on individual accounts, and pointed us to the following passage of its hateful-conduct policy: "The consequences for violating our rules vary depending on the severity of the violation and the person's previous record of violations. For example, we may ask someone to remove the offending Tweet before they can Tweet again. For other cases, we may suspend an account."

Kardashian is based in California, where a man was recently sentenced to 18 years in prison for operating a website trafficking in revenge porn.

The nude and body-shaming images were live on Instagram before making their way to Twitter, but Instagram shut down Kardashian's account relatively swiftly. "At Instagram we value maintaining a safe and supportive space for our community and we work to remove reported content that violates our guidelines," a spokesperson told Engadget.

Twitter has publicly struggled with its response to harassment on the platform, often failing to address users' concerns in a timely or productive manner. But, it isn't alone: Facebook, for example, is also still figuring out how to deal with violence and harassment in users' live videos and elsewhere. Facebook recently dealt with a surge in revenge porn and cases of sexual extortion, investigating 54,000 potential violations and disabling more than 14,000 accounts in January alone.