Twitter is updating its long-standing policy of the things that aren"t allowed on the platform under the new CEO, Parag Agrawal, who was appointed yesterday after Jack Dorsey announced his resignation.
As part of the newly updated policy, media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted is banned on the microblogging platform. Users, if depicted, can now notify Twitter that they have not consented to their private image or video being shared and Twitter will remove it.
However, exceptions are there to the policy. There could be instances where an account holder may share images or videos of private individuals in an effort to help someone in a crisis situation such as in the aftermath of a violent event or part of a newsworthy event due to "public interest value."
There could also be instances where an image is already publicly available or is being covered by mainstream media. A particular image could also be accompanying tweet text while ultimately adding value to the tweet text and is being shared in the public interest or is relevant to the community.
In such instances, Twitter will try to assess the context in which the content is shared and may allow images or videos on the service.
Towards the end of its blog, Twitter mentioned:
Feeling safe on Twitter is different for everyone, and our teams are constantly working to understand and address these needs. We know our work will never be done, and we will continue to invest in making our product and policies more robust and transparent to continue to earn the trust of the people using our service.
The policy already banned things like threatening to publicly expose someone"s private information, sharing credentials, asking for bounty in exchange for private information, and more. It also banned private information like home or physical location address, identity documents, phone numbers, financial account information, and other things like biometric data and medical records.