Twitter prohibits sharing of personal media without consent

The social media company’s privacy policy already prohibits sharing of other people’s private information such as phone numbers, addresses and IDs

Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it will not allow sharing of personal media such as photos and videos on its platform without the consent of the person.

The social network company’s privacy policy already prohibits sharing of other people’s private information such as phone numbers, addresses and IDs.

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, Twitter said in a blog post.

The ban doesn’t apply to public figures if the media and tweet are of public interest, but content featuring those people may be removed if the site determines it’s been shared ‘to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence them.’

We will always try to assess the context in which the content is shared and, in such cases, we may allow the images or videos to remain on the service, it said.

If the image or video is publicly available, is being covered by news outlets, or ‘adds value to the public discourse,’ it may be allowed to remain on the site, Twitter said.

In its blog post, the company points out that people might share images of private individuals in a crisis situation to help them, and that could outweigh the safety risks.

The Twitter Safety team wrote in a blog post that although anyone can be impacted by private media being shared, it ‘can have a disproportionate effect on women, activists, dissidents and members of minority communities.’ If someone reports a photo or video that violates the policy, Twitter will remove the media and take action based on its enforcement options. Those include downranking the visibility of the tweet in replies and search results or telling the person who posted it to delete the tweet. Twitter also has the right to permanently suspend users who violate the policy.