And some of Twitter’s sexiest alts have huge followings. They’re not that different from the urge to create “finstas” (fake Instagrams) or private Snapchat accounts, pseudonymous accounts where users can, paradoxically, really be themselves.
“Alt” can be read as alternative or alter ego, but the word has its own life as the term for secondary account. And a faction of gay Twitter users have taken full advantage through their alts. Anyone, if their heart desires, can post nudes, selfies, and homemade videos of up to two minutes and 20 seconds. (Twitter, reached for comment, directed Vox to said media policy.) It’s a sex-positive policy on an increasingly sex-wary internet.
The platform may have banned a former president who helped stoke a deadly insurrection, but nonviolent, non-extremist, consensual nudes and sex videos are fair game, according to the site’s media policy. Twitter, I’ve come to learn, is a fantastic place to find, store, and share homemade gay porn.
