LAS VEGAS, NV — A popular clip site announced Monday that it has added the words “clips,” “4,” and “sale” to its prohibited-terms list, completing what company officials described as a years-long effort to remove nearly every word creators might use to describe the products they are attempting to sell.
“This is an important step toward making our marketplace safer, clearer, and substantially more difficult to use,” said a spokesperson for the popular clip site. “Creators may continue selling digital video content, provided they do not refer to it as digital, video, content, clips, something for sale, or anything that could reasonably help a customer understand what they are purchasing.”
The new restrictions were discovered by creators Monday morning after product descriptions containing phrases such as “new clip,” “four-minute preview,” and “on sale this weekend” were automatically rejected.
“I tried to upload a ten-minute spanking video,” said longtime creator Mistress Valerie Knox, 41. “The system rejected ‘spanking,’ then ‘paddle,’ then ‘impact,’ then ‘video,’ then ‘clip.’ Eventually my description was just ‘Woman. Tuesday. $12.99.’ That one went through.”
Company representatives said the expanding banned-terms list is designed to protect payment processors from accidentally discovering what the platform has been selling for the past fifteen years.
“Our financial partners are perfectly comfortable processing millions of dollars in adult-content transactions,” the spokesperson explained. “They simply prefer that nobody use words suggesting adult content is involved.”
Creators have responded by developing an increasingly elaborate vocabulary of euphemisms. Bondage videos are now commonly listed as “advanced household organization tutorials,” spanking clips as “rhythmic motivational seminars,” and fetish content as “special-interest educational media whose subject cannot be disclosed until after checkout.”
Some customers say the changes have made shopping difficult.
“Yesterday I bought something called ‘Premium Personal Development Session #47,’” customer Greg Dalton said. “I had no idea what it was, but the thumbnail looked promising.”
The popular clip site said additional prohibited terms are currently under review, including “buy,” “watch,” “download,” “adult,” “creator,” “customer,” and the dollar sign.
The company stressed that creators remain free to market their work using any language not appearing on the prohibited list.
As of press time, that consisted primarily of “the,” “and,” and several prepositions.