In an effort to make its anti-harassment policies more robust, Twitter has updated its private information policy to disallow users from posting photos and videos of private people without their permission.
The move comes a day after 37-year-old Parag Agrawal took over as the CEO, replacing co-founder Jack Dorsey.
“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,” the company noted in a blog post.
Twitter attributed the motivation behind this policy update to the 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,” it noted.
Twitter will take action when anyone reports a violation of the policy :
While this does not mean that users uploading photos of private individuals will need to submit a consent form while posting, Twitter will take action when anyone reports a violation of the policy.
“When private information or media has been shared on Twitter, we need a first-person report or a report from an authorized representative in order to make the determination that the image or video has been shared without their permission,” it said.
“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,” the company said.