Twitter announces major updates to its privacy policy

Twitter announced that its privacy policy updates will not allow the sharing of its users’ private information and posts without consent.

The micro-blogging social media application stated that they are updating their current 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,” the statement read. “This includes threatening to expose private information or incentivizing others to do so.”

Beginning today, we will not allow the sharing of private media, such as images or videos of private individuals without their consent. Publishing people’s private info is also prohibited under the policy, as is threatening or incentivizing others to do so.https://t.co/7EXvXdwegG

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) November 30, 2021

It mentioned that the concerns regarding the misuse of media and information which is not available on other online platforms for using them as a way to harass, intimidate, and reveal the identities of individuals are growing with time.

“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,” Twitter added.

Through this new update, Twitter will take action in line according to their range of enforcement options after receiving the report of its users’ private information being shared.

The statement mentioned that Twitter’s current policies and rules cover abusive behaviour, adding that the upgrade will facilitate them to take action on media which gets shared without any explicit abusive content, provided it gets posted without the consent of the person depicted.