Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Twitter bans posting images, videos of people without their consent

Twitter has announced that they are updating its existing private information policy and expanding its scope to include “private media.”

Under Twitter’s existing policy, publishing other people’s private information, such as phone numbers, addresses, and IDs, is already not allowed on the platform. This includes threatening to expose private information or incentivizing others to do so.

However, the company said that there are growing concerns about the misuse of media and information that is not available elsewhere online as a tool to harass, intimidate, and reveal the identities of individuals.

“Sharing personal media, such as images or videos, can potentially violate a person’s privacy, and may lead to emotional or physical harm. The misuse of private media can affect everyone, but can have a disproportionate effect on women, activists, dissidents, and members of minority communities.,” said Twitter in a blog post.

Hence, when they receive a report that a Tweet contains unauthorized private media, they will now take action in line with their range of enforcement options. Further, the new update will allow Twitter to take action on media that is shared without any explicit abusive content, provided it’s posted without the consent of the person depicted.

The platform will be requiring a first-person report of the photo/video in question (or from an authorized representative). After they receive a report, that particular media will be reviewed before any enforcement action is taken.

Sharing images is an important part of folks' experience on Twitter. People should have a choice in determining whether or not a photo is shared publicly. To that end we are expanding the scope of our Private Information Policy. ?

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) November 30, 2021