Twitter’s New Photo-Removing, Anti-Doxxing Privacy Policy
Twitter (via Dave Mark, Hacker News):
As part of our ongoing efforts to build tools with privacy and security at the core, we’re updating our existing private information policy and expanding its scope to include “private media.” Under our existing policy, publishing other people’s private information, such as phone numbers, addresses, and IDs, is already not allowed on Twitter. This includes threatening to expose private information or incentivizing others to do so.
[…]
When we are notified by individuals depicted, or by an authorized representative, that they did not consent to having their private image or video shared, we will remove it. This policy is not applicable to media featuring public figures or individuals when media and accompanying Tweet text are shared in the public interest or add value to public discourse.
Update (2021-12-03): Nick Heer:
Chad Loder is maintaining a thread of legitimate public interest stories that are being curtailed because of this policy. Accounts are being locked from months-old retweets of photos being taken by journalists in public. Twitter’s whole thing is its firehose of information, its misapplication of this policy is kneecapping the use cases that make the platform so valuable.
Update (2021-12-13): Twitter:
Images/videos that show people participating in public events (like large scale protests, sporting events, etc.) would generally not violate this policy.
To be clear, we require a first-person report of the photo/video in question (or from an authorized representative). After we receive a report, that particular media will be reviewed before any enforcement action is taken.
