Certain kinds of loli and shota content are now banned from being shared across Twitter. The social media service is cracking down on lewd artwork of lolis under a new policy to prohibit “child exploitation”.

The news comes courtesy of Big Globe Japan, who is reporting that the ban on lolicon and shotacon communities has led to a mass exodus of Japanese artists and users to a Pixv platform known as Pawoo.net.

The new policy was outlined over on the Twitter Japan terms of service page, where it clearly states…

“On Twitter, regarding the intent of child sexual exploitation, sharing, displaying, or otherwise linking to such material, regardless of consent, material related to or tied to such media is prohibited. “This also applies to promotion, praise, or otherwise, of child sexual exploitation where the child is the victim.” […] “This policy interprets a child or minor as any person under the age of 18. The portrayal or depiction of child exploitation include but are not limited or restricted to the following: “Visual material featuring a child performing sexually lewd acts, engaged in sexually suggestive situations, or indecent deeds “Or otherwise, any indecent or lewd acts featuring an underage person in an illustration, computer drawings, or realistic photographic depictions that contain a juvenile, etc., Or linking to sexual exploitation of children in a publication or third-party website.”

Obviously, this canvasses any kind of lewd loli artwork, drawings, CG imagery, or sketches. It’s also unclear if this only applies explicitly to NSFW loli art or if it also includes ecchi art or suggestive art as well.

With the new Twitter policy put into effect on February 24th, 2019, the company wasted little time in expunging users from the service hosting such material, which resulted in plenty of Japanese users taking flight to Pawoo.

Some users who follow various Japanese artists on Twitter explained that they saw their follower/following count drop drastically after the policy began being enforced. Pawoo user dotubo1 explained that it was safer to upload his lewd loli art to Pawoo than risk getting banned on Twitter, even though Twitter offered a much larger platform to grow his audience.

A few Japanese users are also began eyeing Gab.ai, even though Gab put a ban on lewd loli content last year, which ironically saw a lot of people sticking with Twitter because at the time they did not ban any kind of loli content.

Welp, loli/shota about to get lots of other porn banned on twitter. Artistic expression on twitter had a good run. — Upstairs Grave (@Whirblewind) February 25, 2019

As noted in the Big Globe article, a former member of the House of Councilors, Mr. Yamada Taro, spoke out against Twitter’s new rules, noting that a lot of non-lewd artwork could also get caught up in the filter, and anime and drawings are no longer safe, saying…

“Manga and anime seem to be included [in Twitter’s new rules]. “Information companies’ self-regulation seems to be rapidly increasing in a severe way. “[In connection with] GAFA, I will keep an eye on these trends from now on.”

What he’s referring to with GAFA is a measure that Japan wants to put into place where they can survey and identify communication between parties under big tech companies Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (i.e., GAFA).

The measure would apply to these companies even when their servers are not located domestically within Japan. This is due to Japan worrying about the way privacy data is handled and the way big companies can control user content without users properly understanding their privacy rights, as explained by Watanabe Research & Consulting.

Yamada Taro went on to say…

“Don’t you think it’s delusional to decide and judge what’s not acceptable? If you’re unlucky all anime drawings will be seen as minors or underage and potentially become unacceptable. “For example, even if you draw a healthy picture, Twitter might see it as the promotion of child exploitation and suspend the account.”

This is actually a very salient point. Many anime characters look young or “underage” according to some purveyors, which has resulted in some material being banned even when the characters in the anime or game or drawing aren’t underage. In fact, this recently happened on Reddit after the social media network had a site-wide ban on lolicon and shotacon content. A few non-loli sub-reddits were caught up in the ban-wave, and a few users posting non-lewd anime pictures of characters who weren’t underage were also banned.

Valve has also been doing something similar, banning games on the grounds of “child exploitation” because their employees perceive some of the anime-style characters to be underage, even when the games don’t feature any underage characters.

Some users are also extra paranoid because this comes right on the heels of the recent U.N., draft proposal to fight against child exploitation (despite the fact that the U.N., peacekeepers have been caught in multiple scandals raping children, as reported by the Associated Press). While fighting against real life child exploitation might seem noble, the U.N., draft has wide-sweeping implications that also included “drawings and cartoons” under its umbrella, which means that loli, shota, and anime content would be included in the resolution as well.

For now, Japanese Twitter users aren’t sticking around to see their accounts get axed. Many are already taking flight to Pawoo to post their artwork there, regardless of whether or not it contains loli content.

(Thanks for the news tip Tomato Tentacle)