Twitter recently announced their addition to the Private Information Policy. They have included a new area of privacy called ‘private media’. Twitter already has a policy towards publishing someone else’s private information including phone number, address and IDs.
However, with the addition of private media, people will not be allowed to share content without the permission of the person depicted. This comes after the growing concerns about the misuse of media and information which is not available anywhere else being used to harass, intimidate and reveal the identities of the individuals.
Sharing personal media like images or videos has the potential to violate a person’s privacy which may further lead to emotional or physical harm. The misuse of private media can harm everyone, but it can have a disproportionate effect on women, dissidents, activists and members of the minority communities.
Under the private media policy, home addresses, physical location information, GPS coordinates, identity documents (government issued IDs, social security or other national identity numbers), contact information (email addresses, non public personal phone numbers), financial account information (bank account, credit card details) or any other form of private information is not allowed to be posted.
With the same policy, threatening someone to reveal their private information, sharing information about a person that would harm or gain access to someone else’s personal information, offering a bounty or financial reward in exchange for posting someone’s information or offering a bounty for not doing the same is also not allowed.
As soon as Twitter is notified by the people whose private media has been shared, that they did not consent for the same, Twitter will immediately remove it. However, this policy is abiding for public figures or people whose details are shared for a large public good. The company will also access the context in which the content has been shared.