Just a day after Jack Dorsey stepped down as chief executive officer at Twitter, the social media platform has announced a policy change. While we don’t think the two events are linked, the change that has been announced is an important one.
The change is to Twitter’s private information policy and it’s less of a change and more of an addition. That’s because now media containing private individuals cannot be posted to Twitter without the individual’s consent.
“While our existing policies and Twitter Rules cover explicit instances of abusive behavior, this update will allow us to take action on media that is shared without any explicit abusive content, provided it’s posted without the consent of the person depicted. This is a part of our ongoing work to align our safety policies with human rights standards, and it will be enforced globally starting today,” the Twitter Safety team wrote in a blog.
To be clear, Twitter isn’t going to be scanning photos and videos and alerting individuals in photos. Rather, if you spot yourself in a photo or video being shared on Twitter, you can notify Twitter that you didn’t consent to the posting of the media and it will be removed.
This policy doesn’t apply to public figures or individuals when the media and tweet text are shared in the public interest or “add value to public discourse”. However, Twitter makes it clear that if the media being circulated is being used to harass or intimidate, it may be removed in lined with Twitter’s policy against abusive behaviour.
“We recognize that there are instances where account holders may share images or videos of private individuals in an effort to help someone involved in a crisis situation, such as in the aftermath of a violent event, or as part of a newsworthy event due to public interest value, and this might outweigh the safety risks to a person,” the Twitter Safety team added.
The social media platform says that it will assess the context of why the media was shared and some media may remain on the platform.
We’re curious to see how much of a headache this becomes for Twitter. We say this because evaluating media isn’t an easy job and not even Facebook has managed to nail that process.
Make no mistake, this is a good change, but its value will be determined by how effectively Twitter enforces it.
It’s worth keeping this policy in mind moving forward especially if you regularly share media containing other people.
