12 ms·

Expanding our private information policy to include media

86 points by ibejoeb 5y ago

NoblePublius 5y ago
So if I film you, say, bashing my head with a skateboard before I shoot you in defense of my life, Twitter will delete the video upon your request?
ibejoeb 5y ago
Adding a consent provision for the sharing of media: >NEW: media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted.
Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
This is going to be quite spectacularly broken here in the UK. It is entirely legal to publish a photo of, say, someone walking down the street without their consent. It is _not_ legal to do so in such a way that implies endorsement. So you could publish a photo of "people busy shopping in Oxford Street" without getting signed model release from everyone depicted in the photo. But you couldn't publish the same photo and claim "these are 500 happy people who've just bought the new ZogPhone at the Zog Store on Oxford Street!". That's fine. Typically, every summer, UK newspapers will print a front-cover photo of a crowded beach with a headline about "here's lots of people enjoying the sunshine". (We're British, we love talking about the weather.) And that's the case throughout UK media. I used to edit the best-selling magazine about inland boating. Every month, our cover would be a photo of someone happily steering their boat on a river or canal. We didn't get model release: we didn't need to under UK law. Those front covers can no longer be tweeted. Twitter now says: > Under our private information policy, you can’t share the following types of private information or media, without the permission of the person who it belongs to: > NEW: media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted. Is Twitter really going to take down the front page of the Guardian or the Financial Times because they haven't got signed model release for everyone in that crowd photo? I'm not convinced this has been thought through.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  "We recognize that there are instances where account holders may share images or videos of private individuals [...], or as part of a newsworthy event due to public interest value, and this might outweigh the safety risks to a person." And if that wasn't enough, there's also: "For instance, we would take into consideration whether the image is publicly available and/or is being covered by mainstream/traditional media (newspapers, TV channels, online news sites)" Which seems to explicitly cover "newspaper front pages" as an exception.
- darrenf 5y ago
  This seems to be explicitly covered in the post, here: > 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. For instance, we would take into consideration whether the image is publicly available and/or is being covered by mainstream/traditional media (newspapers, TV channels, online news sites), or if a particular image and the accompanying tweet text adds value to the public discourse, is being shared in public interest, or is relevant to the community.
  - none_to_remain 5y ago
    Pretty wordy way of saying "Who, whom?"
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  this is how it works in the US too, if you’re in public I can take a photo of you and use it in a lot of ways, I could print a copy and hand it to everyone on earth, but if it’s commercial you will need a signed release form
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Consent is implicitly given when you are in public. That's what "public" means, legally. It's a place where there is no expectation of privacy, which by moving into willingly, you are giving up any expectations of privacy willingly. By conducting yourself in public, you are consenting to the loss of privacy. Twitter should be fine if they're operating under local definitions of legal consent. If they're going to roll their own, things could get legally ugly - paparazzi could have legitimate claims of discrimination and financial damages.
hbn 5y ago
Well this sounds like a good way to perhaps put a damper on all the cancelling > 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. For instance, we would take into consideration whether the image is publicly available and/or is being covered by mainstream/traditional media (newspapers, TV channels, online news sites), or if a particular image and the accompanying tweet text adds value to the public discourse, is being shared in public interest, or is relevant to the community. Oh, never mind. It's now only allowed in situations of cancelling people.
- kordlessagain 5y ago
  Accounts on Twitter are not provably "people" and even the ones that are demonstrably a given personal identity are not necessarily or provably run and operated by that identity, exclusively. Thus, claiming any type of "canceling" of a "voice" or "identity" is a logical fallacy, given there is no proof of identity occurring on Twitter in any meaningful way. This logic comes about because of bad assumptions about what a platform is, how it works at scale and how personal rights and liberties are mapped to Internet services, especially those of government. Promoting the idea of "cancel culture" among the population is definitely a thing and easily digested and accepted as a truth, even thought it's really not.
  - syshum 5y ago
    I am not sure how any of your comment disproved cancel culture Cancel Culture is a form of targeted harassment, generally originating online but not exclusive to that domain, where a group of individuals take offense to comments, opinions, jokes or "hot takes" then having become offend proceed either in coordination with others or not to contact the target of their harassment employers, landlords, business associates, family members, schools, etc in an effort to interfere with the relationships (personal or business) they have with the target of the harassment. It is very much real, it is very much a reality, and it goes beyond simply "boycotts" of a business with a policy one dislikes. People continuing to deny the existence of cancel culture highlights either an extreme ignorance of the modern world, or a willful disingenuous gaslighting in order to aid and continue to perpetuate cancel culture. I will leave it open to debate which of the 2 you are.
voxic11 5y ago
This policy almost seems to be put in place as a response to everyone posting images of ghislaine maxwell with various politicians...
- paulgb 5y ago
  How so? It seems like politicians would certainly be covered by this exception: > 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. I think this is more an attempt at blocking targeted harassment of private individuals.
makeworld 5y ago
> media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted This is opposition to photography laws in the US and many other countries, that allows the publishing of photographs of private individuals, as long as they can be viewed from a public space.
- detaro 5y ago
  Not really "opposition", just further restriction than those laws have.
mynameishere 5y ago
This will allow them to selectively destroy whoever they want with their technology. Someone like Amy Cooper will turn out to be a public figure--Hunter Biden not so much.
- jcadam 5y ago
  Well, shoot everybody knows who you are now that that drunken tweet of yours from three years ago went viral thanks to a twitter rage mob. So, we reckon that makes you a public figure.
andrew_ 5y ago
Timing is interesting; the day after Jack steps down.
mherdeg 5y ago
Yeah this is interesting - street photography has historically not involved a lot of consent, and photographers who professionally shoot in public have generally defended their right to do so. Consider e.g. every photo in https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/books/rfk-funeral-train-softcover/ https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/books/rfk-fune... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square -- those folks didn't consent and can't. It's not newsworthy, it's just artistically interesting. Fair enough if Twitter doesn't want to be a platform for it.
- namlem 5y ago
  The woman in the photo didn't consent to the kiss either apparently.
  - justinclift 5y ago
    From the wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square: > The photograph does not clearly show the face of either person involved, and numerous people have claimed to be the subjects.
- golemotron 5y ago
  This is an unpopular view but I think that photos of strangers in public are a vital illumination of humanity. You see in people's faces, in the moment, the drama of excitement, love, apathy, boredom, anger - the full range of emotion and what it means to be a human in the world. Actors in movies or staged photos never give us that. They never glow in the way that a person in the street does who is surprised by a friend. Despite the take that these public photographs are "privacy" violations, I think they should be celebrated. Societally, we should get over ourselves a bit.
  - gjulianm 5y ago
    > Despite the take that these public photographs are "privacy" violations, I think they should be celebrated I don't know why your enjoyment of a photo should take priority over the right to privacy of people. In a world where anything could become a meme overnight, I would very much prefer my image to not be tweeted publicly without my consent, specially by people with a large audience. If the photographer wants to portray those emotions, make the photo and ask later, and delete them if the person doesn't want to have a picture taken of. I understand that for most people the risks will outweigh the benefits.
golemotron 5y ago
How does Twitter know whether someone has consented or not? They don't. It will start with takedowns due to people claiming that their pic was shown without permission and end with a de facto ban of photos of people. Way it goes.
- lovemenot 5y ago
  I don't know how Twitter plans to implement this, but I believe they could try to do so in good faith and using automation. 1. Target identifies disputed photo of themself. 2. Twitter issues a dispute ID / QR 3. Target sends in a fresh selfie with the dispute ID printed or on a screen alongside. 4. Twitter performs face analysis of both images and OCR of ID. 5. If faces match and ID is validated, Twitter takes down the disputed image.
  - golemotron 5y ago
    And it will be weaponized immediately to destroy citizen journalism.
    - lovemenot 5y ago
      Are you saying that any means for an individual to have their own image removed would be weaponisation? If so, I disagree. If you are saying that third-parties will scale up access to Twitter's automation in order to take down virtually anything they wish, well I don't see how the proposed system would be so readily exploited. To issue a take down, you'd need to be in possession of the face.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  There is literally no way Twitter will enforce this rule so heavy handedly. Especially since Tumblr, but even without that case study to learn from… a social media platform without human photos is so laughable a concept that I chuckled typing out those words.
d1sxeyes 5y ago
I seem to be in something of a minority here but I think this is eminently reasonable. Almost certainly this will be enforced only following a report. Which means I have a photograph of you which you did not consent to being in and you object to me sharing. I think in that case it's reasonable to expect me to justify why I should be allowed to share the picture. And I may be able to, but the burden of proof should be on me.
- onepointsixC 5y ago
  > Which means I have a photograph of you which you did not consent to being in and you object to me sharing. Then it's impossible to take pictures of public spaces. There's a reason why you do not have the benefit of privacy in a public space.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    That is fear mongering. Nothing stops you from taking the pictures, nothing stops you from posting the pictures. It only provides a mechanism to allow the unposting of specific reported pictures from twitter. You have to see one heck of a slippery slope to see this policy and jump immediately to "it's impossible to take pictures of public places.'
    - Kye 5y ago
      Accounts are already report bombed off Twitter for tweets that didn't in any way violate the rule they were tagged as violating, and appeals go nowhere. I do not have any trust in Twitter's ability to make this discernment.
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        Twitter doing a bad job of determining which photos are "in the public interest" and removing photoes that should not be removed still doesn't translate to "you can't take photos of public places" by any measure. At the very worst it just means that people stop posting photos on twitter to avoid one avenue of report bombing. I have repeatedly argued that we need legal user protections that protect users from large corporations arbitrarily enforcing their rules with no real appeal process or transparency. However, fear mongering with projections that have no basis in reality does not help move us in that direction.
xanaxagoras 5y ago
This will be enforced selectively to target both journalism Twitter finds inconvenient and political information that doesn't adhere to their politics. I'm glad I moved on from that dumpster fire some time ago.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bedhead 5y ago
Good news citizens of San Francisco and Chicago, your looting/shoplifting epidemic is about to vanish completely! Antifa riots? What are those? I mean, if you can't post pics and videos on Twitter, did it even really happen? The next step is Twitter will have a formal list of approved media outlets (gee I wonder which ones it might be) where if they publish it first, Twitter will allow it. Selective reporting seems to be one of the primary tools for media bias/activism, and this is Twitter figuring out their own way to selectively ban content they don't like instead of the current user generated openness.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  It doesn't entirely work until they manage step 3: make Twitter (and Google, Facebook and Amazon) the entirety of the internet. We saw some movements in that direction when Amazon and Apple colluded to remove the Parler Twitter competitor app. They don't (yet) control enough of the internet routing infrastructure to complete their vision, but it's definitely coming.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    Is parler supposed to just be a “Twitter competitor” now? Is that really an intellectually honest way to describe it and why it was removed?
    - bopbeepboop 5y ago
      Yes? Twitter fights their users to keep CSAM available, while Parler was pulled down for a handful of posts they claimed they’d have moderated if they discovered them. Hosting the people who host CSAM while banning the people who actively moderate but missed a few messages shows a clear political bias. AWS is fine hosting CSAM for Twitter, but Republicans for Parler is just disgusting. Apparently. https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/01/23/twitter-faces-lawsuit-over-failure-to-remove-child-porn-from-platform/ https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/01/23/twitter-faces-laws...
- jf22 5y ago
  I've always found people tend to mention "Chicago" as a sort of dog whistle. There are so many other cities with more crime and violence but Chicago is the preferred choice when you want to agitate and alarm.
samuelizdat 5y ago
Will this drive an increase traffic to things like the fediverse? If it drives people away, is this not good? If hegemonic tech-giants wish to over bureaucratize everything, is the ethical response to decentralize?
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  A fair amount of people will never leave twitter, and this will only work to continue to keep them disconnected from reality by selectively filtering more information.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Super lame
jcadam 5y ago
These rules seem targeted at independent/citizen journalists like Andy Ngo.
jawns 5y ago
Imagine if you take a picture of police doing something wrong in a public place with no legal expectation of privacy, and someone who happens to be in the photo, bystander or not, objects to being photographed under this policy.
- IanCal 5y ago
  Wouldn't that fall under: > 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.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    1. It’s not clear, at least to me, that this applies to police. They’re employed by the public, but I don’t know if I’d associate them with the common colloquial usage of public figures. That could just be me misunderstanding that usage. 2. The parent comment was about other, private individuals in the same photo. Given Twitter’s very spotty track record of inconsistent moderation (regardless of any real or perceived bias), any grey area here will certainly be a target—whether or not a successful one—for abuse of this new rule. I can, for instance, easily imagine it being used in an attempt to suppress images/video of police responses to confrontations between BLM protestors and pick-your-counterprotestors. 3. Moreover, I can imagine fabricated claims of such moderation action being taken, sewing all sorts of disinformation about events—real or likewise fabricated—and information about them that never existed, or existed in a significantly different form. 4. While I’m generally more in favor [than probably the average HN reader] of privately owned websites being able to moderate their sites as they deem appropriate… this particular example is the first I thought of where this rule as written may have significant, harmful consequences.
    - IanCal 5y ago
      For 1 and 2 it doesn't say they have to be public figures, just that it's in the public interest.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
This seems like it aids Police with free speech violating takedown requests. Police want that footage taken off Twitter, the officer only needs to tell Twitter they don't consent. Not that Twitter is a bastion of free speech, but law enforcement can just ask companies to act on their behalf. No violation. And Twitter is shielded from lawsuits. (IANAL, these are my admittedly simple and probably naïve assumptions) Edit: words
throwawaysea 5y ago
This seems like a policy change that targets Project Veritas. Not surprising since many of their leaks have been damaging to the political left, which Twitter and its employees (including the old and new CEOs) are politically biased towards. The exemptions they have set aside will be abused to allow things like leaks of Trump’s tax returns while silencing videos showing CNN’s biased electoral manipulation of viewers: > 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.

86 points by ibejoeb 5y ago

So if I film you, say, bashing my head with a skateboard before I shoot you in defense of my life, Twitter will delete the video upon your request?

ibejoeb 5y ago

Adding a consent provision for the sharing of media: >NEW: media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted.

Doctor_Fegg 5y ago

This is going to be quite spectacularly broken here in the UK. It is entirely legal to publish a photo of, say, someone walking down the street without their consent. It is _not_ legal to do so in such a way that implies endorsement. So you could publish a photo of "people busy shopping in Oxford Street" without getting signed model release from everyone depicted in the photo. But you couldn't publish the same photo and claim "these are 500 happy people who've just bought the new ZogPhone at the Zog Store on Oxford Street!". That's fine. Typically, every summer, UK newspapers will print a front-cover photo of a crowded beach with a headline about "here's lots of people enjoying the sunshine". (We're British, we love talking about the weather.) And that's the case throughout UK media. I used to edit the best-selling magazine about inland boating. Every month, our cover would be a photo of someone happily steering their boat on a river or canal. We didn't get model release: we didn't need to under UK law. Those front covers can no longer be tweeted. Twitter now says: > Under our private information policy, you can’t share the following types of private information or media, without the permission of the person who it belongs to: > NEW: media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted. Is Twitter really going to take down the front page of the Guardian or the Financial Times because they haven't got signed model release for everyone in that crowd photo? I'm not convinced this has been thought through.

zimpenfish 5y ago
"We recognize that there are instances where account holders may share images or videos of private individuals [...], or as part of a newsworthy event due to public interest value, and this might outweigh the safety risks to a person." And if that wasn't enough, there's also: "For instance, we would take into consideration whether the image is publicly available and/or is being covered by mainstream/traditional media (newspapers, TV channels, online news sites)" Which seems to explicitly cover "newspaper front pages" as an exception.
darrenf 5y ago
This seems to be explicitly covered in the post, here: > 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. For instance, we would take into consideration whether the image is publicly available and/or is being covered by mainstream/traditional media (newspapers, TV channels, online news sites), or if a particular image and the accompanying tweet text adds value to the public discourse, is being shared in public interest, or is relevant to the community.
- none_to_remain 5y ago
  Pretty wordy way of saying "Who, whom?"
micromacrofoot 5y ago
this is how it works in the US too, if you’re in public I can take a photo of you and use it in a lot of ways, I could print a copy and hand it to everyone on earth, but if it’s commercial you will need a signed release form
robbedpeter 5y ago
Consent is implicitly given when you are in public. That's what "public" means, legally. It's a place where there is no expectation of privacy, which by moving into willingly, you are giving up any expectations of privacy willingly. By conducting yourself in public, you are consenting to the loss of privacy. Twitter should be fine if they're operating under local definitions of legal consent. If they're going to roll their own, things could get legally ugly - paparazzi could have legitimate claims of discrimination and financial damages.

hbn 5y ago

Well this sounds like a good way to perhaps put a damper on all the cancelling > 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. For instance, we would take into consideration whether the image is publicly available and/or is being covered by mainstream/traditional media (newspapers, TV channels, online news sites), or if a particular image and the accompanying tweet text adds value to the public discourse, is being shared in public interest, or is relevant to the community. Oh, never mind. It's now only allowed in situations of cancelling people.

kordlessagain 5y ago
Accounts on Twitter are not provably "people" and even the ones that are demonstrably a given personal identity are not necessarily or provably run and operated by that identity, exclusively. Thus, claiming any type of "canceling" of a "voice" or "identity" is a logical fallacy, given there is no proof of identity occurring on Twitter in any meaningful way. This logic comes about because of bad assumptions about what a platform is, how it works at scale and how personal rights and liberties are mapped to Internet services, especially those of government. Promoting the idea of "cancel culture" among the population is definitely a thing and easily digested and accepted as a truth, even thought it's really not.
- syshum 5y ago
  I am not sure how any of your comment disproved cancel culture Cancel Culture is a form of targeted harassment, generally originating online but not exclusive to that domain, where a group of individuals take offense to comments, opinions, jokes or "hot takes" then having become offend proceed either in coordination with others or not to contact the target of their harassment employers, landlords, business associates, family members, schools, etc in an effort to interfere with the relationships (personal or business) they have with the target of the harassment. It is very much real, it is very much a reality, and it goes beyond simply "boycotts" of a business with a policy one dislikes. People continuing to deny the existence of cancel culture highlights either an extreme ignorance of the modern world, or a willful disingenuous gaslighting in order to aid and continue to perpetuate cancel culture. I will leave it open to debate which of the 2 you are.

voxic11 5y ago

This policy almost seems to be put in place as a response to everyone posting images of ghislaine maxwell with various politicians...

paulgb 5y ago
How so? It seems like politicians would certainly be covered by this exception: > 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. I think this is more an attempt at blocking targeted harassment of private individuals.

makeworld 5y ago

> media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted This is opposition to photography laws in the US and many other countries, that allows the publishing of photographs of private individuals, as long as they can be viewed from a public space.

detaro 5y ago
Not really "opposition", just further restriction than those laws have.

mynameishere 5y ago

This will allow them to selectively destroy whoever they want with their technology. Someone like Amy Cooper will turn out to be a public figure--Hunter Biden not so much.

jcadam 5y ago
Well, shoot everybody knows who you are now that that drunken tweet of yours from three years ago went viral thanks to a twitter rage mob. So, we reckon that makes you a public figure.

andrew_ 5y ago

Timing is interesting; the day after Jack steps down.

mherdeg 5y ago

Yeah this is interesting - street photography has historically not involved a lot of consent, and photographers who professionally shoot in public have generally defended their right to do so. Consider e.g. every photo in https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/books/rfk-funeral-train-softcover/ https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/books/rfk-fune... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square -- those folks didn't consent and can't. It's not newsworthy, it's just artistically interesting. Fair enough if Twitter doesn't want to be a platform for it.

namlem 5y ago
The woman in the photo didn't consent to the kiss either apparently.
- justinclift 5y ago
  From the wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square: > The photograph does not clearly show the face of either person involved, and numerous people have claimed to be the subjects.
golemotron 5y ago
This is an unpopular view but I think that photos of strangers in public are a vital illumination of humanity. You see in people's faces, in the moment, the drama of excitement, love, apathy, boredom, anger - the full range of emotion and what it means to be a human in the world. Actors in movies or staged photos never give us that. They never glow in the way that a person in the street does who is surprised by a friend. Despite the take that these public photographs are "privacy" violations, I think they should be celebrated. Societally, we should get over ourselves a bit.
- gjulianm 5y ago
  > Despite the take that these public photographs are "privacy" violations, I think they should be celebrated I don't know why your enjoyment of a photo should take priority over the right to privacy of people. In a world where anything could become a meme overnight, I would very much prefer my image to not be tweeted publicly without my consent, specially by people with a large audience. If the photographer wants to portray those emotions, make the photo and ask later, and delete them if the person doesn't want to have a picture taken of. I understand that for most people the risks will outweigh the benefits.

golemotron 5y ago

How does Twitter know whether someone has consented or not? They don't. It will start with takedowns due to people claiming that their pic was shown without permission and end with a de facto ban of photos of people. Way it goes.

lovemenot 5y ago
I don't know how Twitter plans to implement this, but I believe they could try to do so in good faith and using automation. 1. Target identifies disputed photo of themself. 2. Twitter issues a dispute ID / QR 3. Target sends in a fresh selfie with the dispute ID printed or on a screen alongside. 4. Twitter performs face analysis of both images and OCR of ID. 5. If faces match and ID is validated, Twitter takes down the disputed image.
- golemotron 5y ago
  And it will be weaponized immediately to destroy citizen journalism.
  - lovemenot 5y ago
    Are you saying that any means for an individual to have their own image removed would be weaponisation? If so, I disagree. If you are saying that third-parties will scale up access to Twitter's automation in order to take down virtually anything they wish, well I don't see how the proposed system would be so readily exploited. To issue a take down, you'd need to be in possession of the face.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
There is literally no way Twitter will enforce this rule so heavy handedly. Especially since Tumblr, but even without that case study to learn from… a social media platform without human photos is so laughable a concept that I chuckled typing out those words.

d1sxeyes 5y ago

I seem to be in something of a minority here but I think this is eminently reasonable. Almost certainly this will be enforced only following a report. Which means I have a photograph of you which you did not consent to being in and you object to me sharing. I think in that case it's reasonable to expect me to justify why I should be allowed to share the picture. And I may be able to, but the burden of proof should be on me.

onepointsixC 5y ago
> Which means I have a photograph of you which you did not consent to being in and you object to me sharing. Then it's impossible to take pictures of public spaces. There's a reason why you do not have the benefit of privacy in a public space.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  That is fear mongering. Nothing stops you from taking the pictures, nothing stops you from posting the pictures. It only provides a mechanism to allow the unposting of specific reported pictures from twitter. You have to see one heck of a slippery slope to see this policy and jump immediately to "it's impossible to take pictures of public places.'
  - Kye 5y ago
    Accounts are already report bombed off Twitter for tweets that didn't in any way violate the rule they were tagged as violating, and appeals go nowhere. I do not have any trust in Twitter's ability to make this discernment.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      Twitter doing a bad job of determining which photos are "in the public interest" and removing photoes that should not be removed still doesn't translate to "you can't take photos of public places" by any measure. At the very worst it just means that people stop posting photos on twitter to avoid one avenue of report bombing. I have repeatedly argued that we need legal user protections that protect users from large corporations arbitrarily enforcing their rules with no real appeal process or transparency. However, fear mongering with projections that have no basis in reality does not help move us in that direction.

xanaxagoras 5y ago

This will be enforced selectively to target both journalism Twitter finds inconvenient and political information that doesn't adhere to their politics. I'm glad I moved on from that dumpster fire some time ago.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bedhead 5y ago

Good news citizens of San Francisco and Chicago, your looting/shoplifting epidemic is about to vanish completely! Antifa riots? What are those? I mean, if you can't post pics and videos on Twitter, did it even really happen? The next step is Twitter will have a formal list of approved media outlets (gee I wonder which ones it might be) where if they publish it first, Twitter will allow it. Selective reporting seems to be one of the primary tools for media bias/activism, and this is Twitter figuring out their own way to selectively ban content they don't like instead of the current user generated openness.

commandlinefan 5y ago
It doesn't entirely work until they manage step 3: make Twitter (and Google, Facebook and Amazon) the entirety of the internet. We saw some movements in that direction when Amazon and Apple colluded to remove the Parler Twitter competitor app. They don't (yet) control enough of the internet routing infrastructure to complete their vision, but it's definitely coming.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  Is parler supposed to just be a “Twitter competitor” now? Is that really an intellectually honest way to describe it and why it was removed?
  - bopbeepboop 5y ago
    Yes? Twitter fights their users to keep CSAM available, while Parler was pulled down for a handful of posts they claimed they’d have moderated if they discovered them. Hosting the people who host CSAM while banning the people who actively moderate but missed a few messages shows a clear political bias. AWS is fine hosting CSAM for Twitter, but Republicans for Parler is just disgusting. Apparently. https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/01/23/twitter-faces-lawsuit-over-failure-to-remove-child-porn-from-platform/ https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/01/23/twitter-faces-laws...
jf22 5y ago
I've always found people tend to mention "Chicago" as a sort of dog whistle. There are so many other cities with more crime and violence but Chicago is the preferred choice when you want to agitate and alarm.

samuelizdat 5y ago

Will this drive an increase traffic to things like the fediverse? If it drives people away, is this not good? If hegemonic tech-giants wish to over bureaucratize everything, is the ethical response to decentralize?

vorpalhex 5y ago
A fair amount of people will never leave twitter, and this will only work to continue to keep them disconnected from reality by selectively filtering more information.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Super lame

jcadam 5y ago

These rules seem targeted at independent/citizen journalists like Andy Ngo.

jawns 5y ago

Imagine if you take a picture of police doing something wrong in a public place with no legal expectation of privacy, and someone who happens to be in the photo, bystander or not, objects to being photographed under this policy.

IanCal 5y ago
Wouldn't that fall under: > 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.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  1. It’s not clear, at least to me, that this applies to police. They’re employed by the public, but I don’t know if I’d associate them with the common colloquial usage of public figures. That could just be me misunderstanding that usage. 2. The parent comment was about other, private individuals in the same photo. Given Twitter’s very spotty track record of inconsistent moderation (regardless of any real or perceived bias), any grey area here will certainly be a target—whether or not a successful one—for abuse of this new rule. I can, for instance, easily imagine it being used in an attempt to suppress images/video of police responses to confrontations between BLM protestors and pick-your-counterprotestors. 3. Moreover, I can imagine fabricated claims of such moderation action being taken, sewing all sorts of disinformation about events—real or likewise fabricated—and information about them that never existed, or existed in a significantly different form. 4. While I’m generally more in favor [than probably the average HN reader] of privately owned websites being able to moderate their sites as they deem appropriate… this particular example is the first I thought of where this rule as written may have significant, harmful consequences.
  - IanCal 5y ago
    For 1 and 2 it doesn't say they have to be public figures, just that it's in the public interest.
commandlinefan 5y ago

brutal_chaos_ 5y ago

This seems like it aids Police with free speech violating takedown requests. Police want that footage taken off Twitter, the officer only needs to tell Twitter they don't consent. Not that Twitter is a bastion of free speech, but law enforcement can just ask companies to act on their behalf. No violation. And Twitter is shielded from lawsuits. (IANAL, these are my admittedly simple and probably naïve assumptions) Edit: words

throwawaysea 5y ago

This seems like a policy change that targets Project Veritas. Not surprising since many of their leaks have been damaging to the political left, which Twitter and its employees (including the old and new CEOs) are politically biased towards. The exemptions they have set aside will be abused to allow things like leaks of Trump’s tax returns while silencing videos showing CNN’s biased electoral manipulation of viewers: > 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.