# MSG-SHAFT-SEX — No adult or sexually explicit content

> Campaign content must not promote sexually explicit or adult content.

- **Rule ID:** MSG-SHAFT-SEX
- **Layer:** Message content (`MESSAGE_CONTENT`)
- **Checks:** `campaign.description + campaign.sample[] + campaign.message_flow`
- **Severity:** BLOCKING — Breaking this rule gets the submission rejected outright.
- **When it bites:** Gates approval — get this wrong and registration is refused
- **How it is detected:** AI judgement over the submitted form
- **Fix type:** Hard stop — not remediable, resubmission will not help
- **Required by:** Twilio, TCR, T-Mobile, AT&T, CTIA
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/message-content/msg-shaft-sex/

## Why this rule exists

The S in SHAFT, and the one letter with no path at all. Carriers treat adult content as unsuitable for a channel with no age verification at the transport layer, and Twilio codes it as not eligible for resubmission. Operators arrive here expecting the alcohol treatment — build an age gate, come back — and that expectation is the expensive part: acting on it burns a campaign that cannot be recovered, on top of the build.

## How to fix it

Do not build an age gate for this — it is not the fix, and no amount of verification makes adult content registrable on 10DLC under any use case. The only thing that clears the finding is that the content is not adult: if the campaign is a clinical or sexual-health service being read as adult, say who the recipients are and what the service does in the terms a clinician would use. Otherwise adult programmes need a different channel and a different carrier relationship entirely.

## Common mistakes

- Bandwidth's Proxy path and Infobip both publish a conditional age-gate code for sexual content, which reads as a route and is not one under the strict reading — spending a build cycle on it costs you the campaign at Twilio and gains nothing anywhere else.

## Provider rejection codes

| Provider | Code | Resubmission allowed |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Twilio (gen2) | `30953` | no |
| Bandwidth | `703` | no |
| Telnyx | `703` | no |

## Notes

Discharges the catalog's remediation constraint (MSG-167) as well as the content prohibition: the rule exists as much to withhold the age-gate path as to detect the category. Divergence recorded — Bandwidth Proxy 7006 and Infobip 7006 are conditional on a robust age gate, while Twilio 30953, Bandwidth DCA2 703, Bird 703, Telnyx 703 and AWS all refuse outright. Canonical resolution is terminal.