13 ms·

Twitter photo-removal policy aimed at improving privacy goes into effect

73 points by BostonFern 5y ago

yosito 5y ago
I wonder if Twitter will begin to enforce this by requiring photos of people to be tagged, and the subject of the photos to "consent" to Twitter using their photos. If so, and if Twitter behaves like any other tech company in using manipulative tactics engineered to extract "consent", I can only see this ending badly for privacy.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  This will also be abused by politicians, while it will largely be ignored for normal people.
  - DnDGrognard 5y ago
    I can think of one UK MP who would try to abuse this.
  - morsch 5y ago
    I don't think the new policy applies to politicians[1], though of course they may still try to abuse it. [1] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/private-information-policy-update https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/private-i... This policy is not applicable to media featuring public figures...
    - yostrovs 5y ago
      Is Jeffrey Epstein a public figure? Or only the people that used his services?
basisword 5y ago
People always focus on the big hypotheticals with these kinds of features. The big potential abuses that could stifle speech and damage democracy. I think it’s interesting to instead think about the number of individuals this might help. People being bullied, harassed, doxxed, etc. It could be life changing for them.
- newsclues 5y ago
  Censorship is life changing for everyone
  - celdon25 5y ago
    If it’s an actual case of doxxing or canceling, as the parent comment is alluding to as a hypothetical, then dismissing this as censorship does a disservice to those who have to deal with the real censorship (of opinions) that is happening elsewhere on the internet, including on Twitter. Taking down a Karen video shouldn’t be compared with real censorship (i.e of opinions) when these videos are weaponized to ruin lives over a bad day, and serve little other material value.
    - newsclues 5y ago
      Or we can just refuse to tolerate any censorship
- stillkicking 5y ago
  People always focus on the big issues because they are not hypothetical at all. We are talking about a platform that has had dubious fact check warnings attached to tweets for a year now, which mainly seem to serve to reinforce a false consensus and prevent open debate. People being bullied, harassed, doxxed, etc are a distraction from this larger issue, and will not benefit from this, because the only ones you ever hear about are people with enough influence and clout to turn being a target into being a public victim.
  - celdon25 5y ago
    I don’t know. I had an unflattering photo of myself posted without permission once, and the guy tagged my handle that I use for business rather than the other account. It was good that the guy took it down when I asked. But he could have declined and it would have been a problem for me but not so much for him. This sort of thing happens more than you would think and is not hypothetical.
- 5y ago
freeflight 5y ago
So I guess we will see much more of this [0] and then it won't be a "mistake" but rather "protecting these peoples privacy!" [0] https://nypost.com/2021/03/24/twitter-censoring-detention-center-photos-at-border-was-a-mistake/ https://nypost.com/2021/03/24/twitter-censoring-detention-ce...
uniqueuid 5y ago
It's frustrating to see how tech is consistently unable to implement systematic yet fair solutions that are possible in law. Not that people aren't genuinely trying - but the nature of automation and the design of platforms just seem at odds with working privacy. German law, for example, generally protects people's privacy (i.e. you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public). But it implements fine-grained exceptions for people of national importance - either globally (i.e. politicians who remain so) or temporarily (i.e. you may take photographs of such people for a time but no longer when they have ceased to be famous).
- jfk13 5y ago
  > you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Is there a clear definition of "a photo of people"? Taking a close-up portrait of a random stranger in public would be one extreme (and I guess most people would agree it should require permission). Presumably a photo of my kids and their friends having fun at the park is still clearly "a photo of people", and therefore also requires permission. But if I take a photo of a street scene in Berlin, do I have to get permission from every passer-by who happens to appear? How about a landscape photo where I only realise later, on reviewing the picture, that there were a couple of hikers on a distant hill? To my mind, that's not "a photo of people", yet there are people in the photo. Somewhere between the extremes, it seems to me there's an awfully wide grey area.
  - okasaki 5y ago
    Yeah, who knows. It's arbitrary and probably depends mostly on how long it's been since the judge has had a meal* when they are making their decision. For some bizarre reason things like this are thought of as very enlightened when done in Europe, but would be seen as authoritarian and dystopian if done anywhere else. * https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-b...
    - newaccount74 5y ago
endisneigh 5y ago
If they really believed this they’d make it so any photo with any face must be approved before being shown by those in the photograph. This is an intractable problem and just exists as another lever to arbitrarily punish people.
thinkingemote 5y ago
Since we have not had in person conferences or tech meet ups for 2 years it will be interesting to see all the tweets about them in the future not having any of the usual photographs of the crowd, people in the corridors on laptops and participants in sessions, at social events. I wonder what other behaviours we have forgotten that used to occur? No photos of people in a pub, at a cafe, on vacation. This might make Twitter a less appealing place for the average person. Imagine if Facebook did this.
ElectronShak 5y ago
But Twitter, you haven't even fixed what's "Trending", specifically in the local context. For example, the word "Jane" is trending in your country, Jane is a well known politician who has probably said something interesting. You click the word to see whatsup...twitter returns some random posts that mention "Jane" probably basing on number of likes This would be a nice ticket to fix...
freakynit 5y ago
So basically they just removed the ability for people to hold people in power accountable by making their mischievous acts known in public, while it is known that "proper, lawful" channels would not have worked due to conflict of interest..?
- gjulianm 5y ago
  "Public figures are exempt from the policy, Twitter said"
  - pwned1 5y ago
    Is the president's son smoking crack with a hooker a public figure?
    - gadders 5y ago
      Or a guy mowing down a Christmas Parade in his car?
      - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
        A guy did that? The news told me an SUV did it and it was an accident. Nothing to see here, move along.
        datavirtue 5y ago
        An SUV that "was not being chased by police." Wonder what the truth is.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    Let’s be clear, is Epstein a public figure?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
LongTimeAnon 5y ago
13% of the blackmail found in photos controls 50% of Big Tech policy decisions. Hi, Ghislaine Hoch.
101008 5y ago
Is this a response to J.K. Rowling's concerns a few days ago? Three people supporting trans rights took a photo in the front of her house, showing the address, and published it on Twitter. In a Twitter thread published by Rowling, she mentions people reporting it to Twitter Support helped to get it removed [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1462758324177444870 https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1462758324177444870 or backup: https://www.rowlingindex.org/work/ttfaddr/ https://www.rowlingindex.org/work/ttfaddr/
- krona 5y ago
  Public figures are exempt from the policy.
  - yostrovs 5y ago
    Is there a definition of a public figure? Is writing a book enough? Is having an opinion enough? Is stepping out of the house enough for a public figure to be photographed and published about?
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    In this case it counts as trying to silence her so it would likely be removed. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/private-information-policy-update https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/private-i...
- mansion7 5y ago
  More likely it is a response to Andy Ngo, Project Veritas, and accounts like Libs of TikTok.
rexreed 5y ago
Why do we hold companies like Twitter in high regard? More so, why do we consider what is primarily a media company to be valued and considered as a technology company when in many regards it is more like the Washington Post or NY Times than it is like Google? I think the whole framing of Twitter as a tech company needs to be rethought and they need to be valued and considered in the same vein as media companies.
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  I don’t really see how Twitter is anything but a glorified Internet forum with some high profile posters.
aboringusername 5y ago
Wouldn't this be an actual ideal use case for facial recognition? Apple wanted to do CSAM before upload, Twitter could do consent-checking before posting. Users might consider saying "I do not want my images being public" and can be prohibited before posting. Taking it down after it's posted is useless, it'll be in caches all over the world and by that time, it's too late. For example, every reddit post ever posted (or near enough) are scraped in real time (pushbullet, bigquery etc) so the take-downs need to happen before it hits public APIs. I also think we need to enforce consent, and begin taking action against tech firms - if I did not consent and they allowed it to be published, they should be held to account. They need stronger measures to ensure consent was freely and fairly given.
protomyth 5y ago
A lot of political blogs think it is designed to remove memes ahead of an election. It likely won't be fairly enforced.
theknocker 5y ago
>aimed at improving privacy Why is a publicly funded entity doing PR for fucking Twitter?
devmor 5y ago
It's already being heavily used to censor citizen groups that expose white supremacist terror organizations. Just as expected.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Whether this was the CEO's first act of business or not, people should be genuinely scared of him. He doesn't give a fuck about the First Amendment and thinks it's his job to dictate what a healthy conversation is and who gets to participate [0]. People should be abandoning this company immediately, but the sad part is that many of its most active users agree with him ideologically. At least Jack gave the appearance of giving a fuck about free speech. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/18/1012066/emtech-stage-twitters-cto-on-misinformation/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/18/1012066/emtech-s...
- prawnsalad 5y ago
  I don't know much him nor have I read that entire transcript, but one of the main jobs for a CEO is to set the direction and tone for a companies services. They can say/do whatever they want wrt free speech and their own messaging platform.
  - thewakalix 5y ago
    Can't an act fall under both "they are legally allowed to do this" and "we should be scared of anyone who'd do this"?
fortran77 5y ago
The one thing I see a lot on Twitter is people "retweeting" the wrong photo of the wrong person. I saw all sorts of people being pictured as that school shooter last week. Whatever we think of this policy, anyone who tweets or re-tweets a photo of an uninvolved person in a breaking news case should be, by their policy, permanently banned (or shadowbanned). (And also misinformation, like what Spike Lee did: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/spike-lee-reaches-settlement-for-tweeting-wrong-address-for-george-zimmerman/2012/03/30/gIQAGB6QlS_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/spike-le... )
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
"privacy". Uh huh. This will be applied unevenly. Pics that violate this that support one political cause will be allowed, pics that violate this that support the opposite will be banned.
fumar 5y ago
Is it time to create new platforms that decentralize power? If we agree that some level of social digital connections are important, then why should corporations be in charge? Shouldn’t it be a democratic solution?
gnoll_of_gozag 5y ago
this is already being abused https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1465831941157052416 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1465831941157052416 https://twitter.com/NotToadMckinley/status/1466013348898693122 https://twitter.com/NotToadMckinley/status/14660133488986931... https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466155751328530437 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466155751328530437 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466218599626854404 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466218599626854404 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466232833815420930 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466232833815420930
sumosudo 5y ago
And so it begins. The degenerates already are using it to their advantage: https://ibb.co/yX61n4T https://ibb.co/yX61n4T

73 points by BostonFern 5y ago

I wonder if Twitter will begin to enforce this by requiring photos of people to be tagged, and the subject of the photos to "consent" to Twitter using their photos. If so, and if Twitter behaves like any other tech company in using manipulative tactics engineered to extract "consent", I can only see this ending badly for privacy.

dmitriid 5y ago
This will also be abused by politicians, while it will largely be ignored for normal people.
- DnDGrognard 5y ago
  I can think of one UK MP who would try to abuse this.
- morsch 5y ago
  I don't think the new policy applies to politicians[1], though of course they may still try to abuse it. [1] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/private-information-policy-update https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/private-i... This policy is not applicable to media featuring public figures...
  - yostrovs 5y ago
    Is Jeffrey Epstein a public figure? Or only the people that used his services?

basisword 5y ago

People always focus on the big hypotheticals with these kinds of features. The big potential abuses that could stifle speech and damage democracy. I think it’s interesting to instead think about the number of individuals this might help. People being bullied, harassed, doxxed, etc. It could be life changing for them.

newsclues 5y ago
Censorship is life changing for everyone
- celdon25 5y ago
  If it’s an actual case of doxxing or canceling, as the parent comment is alluding to as a hypothetical, then dismissing this as censorship does a disservice to those who have to deal with the real censorship (of opinions) that is happening elsewhere on the internet, including on Twitter. Taking down a Karen video shouldn’t be compared with real censorship (i.e of opinions) when these videos are weaponized to ruin lives over a bad day, and serve little other material value.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    Or we can just refuse to tolerate any censorship
stillkicking 5y ago
People always focus on the big issues because they are not hypothetical at all. We are talking about a platform that has had dubious fact check warnings attached to tweets for a year now, which mainly seem to serve to reinforce a false consensus and prevent open debate. People being bullied, harassed, doxxed, etc are a distraction from this larger issue, and will not benefit from this, because the only ones you ever hear about are people with enough influence and clout to turn being a target into being a public victim.
- celdon25 5y ago
  I don’t know. I had an unflattering photo of myself posted without permission once, and the guy tagged my handle that I use for business rather than the other account. It was good that the guy took it down when I asked. But he could have declined and it would have been a problem for me but not so much for him. This sort of thing happens more than you would think and is not hypothetical.
5y ago

freeflight 5y ago

So I guess we will see much more of this [0] and then it won't be a "mistake" but rather "protecting these peoples privacy!" [0] https://nypost.com/2021/03/24/twitter-censoring-detention-center-photos-at-border-was-a-mistake/ https://nypost.com/2021/03/24/twitter-censoring-detention-ce...

uniqueuid 5y ago

It's frustrating to see how tech is consistently unable to implement systematic yet fair solutions that are possible in law. Not that people aren't genuinely trying - but the nature of automation and the design of platforms just seem at odds with working privacy. German law, for example, generally protects people's privacy (i.e. you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public). But it implements fine-grained exceptions for people of national importance - either globally (i.e. politicians who remain so) or temporarily (i.e. you may take photographs of such people for a time but no longer when they have ceased to be famous).

jfk13 5y ago
> you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Is there a clear definition of "a photo of people"? Taking a close-up portrait of a random stranger in public would be one extreme (and I guess most people would agree it should require permission). Presumably a photo of my kids and their friends having fun at the park is still clearly "a photo of people", and therefore also requires permission. But if I take a photo of a street scene in Berlin, do I have to get permission from every passer-by who happens to appear? How about a landscape photo where I only realise later, on reviewing the picture, that there were a couple of hikers on a distant hill? To my mind, that's not "a photo of people", yet there are people in the photo. Somewhere between the extremes, it seems to me there's an awfully wide grey area.
- okasaki 5y ago
  Yeah, who knows. It's arbitrary and probably depends mostly on how long it's been since the judge has had a meal* when they are making their decision. For some bizarre reason things like this are thought of as very enlightened when done in Europe, but would be seen as authoritarian and dystopian if done anywhere else. * https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-b...
  - newaccount74 5y ago

endisneigh 5y ago

If they really believed this they’d make it so any photo with any face must be approved before being shown by those in the photograph. This is an intractable problem and just exists as another lever to arbitrarily punish people.

thinkingemote 5y ago

Since we have not had in person conferences or tech meet ups for 2 years it will be interesting to see all the tweets about them in the future not having any of the usual photographs of the crowd, people in the corridors on laptops and participants in sessions, at social events. I wonder what other behaviours we have forgotten that used to occur? No photos of people in a pub, at a cafe, on vacation. This might make Twitter a less appealing place for the average person. Imagine if Facebook did this.

ElectronShak 5y ago

But Twitter, you haven't even fixed what's "Trending", specifically in the local context. For example, the word "Jane" is trending in your country, Jane is a well known politician who has probably said something interesting. You click the word to see whatsup...twitter returns some random posts that mention "Jane" probably basing on number of likes This would be a nice ticket to fix...

freakynit 5y ago

So basically they just removed the ability for people to hold people in power accountable by making their mischievous acts known in public, while it is known that "proper, lawful" channels would not have worked due to conflict of interest..?

gjulianm 5y ago
"Public figures are exempt from the policy, Twitter said"
- pwned1 5y ago
  Is the president's son smoking crack with a hooker a public figure?
  - gadders 5y ago
    Or a guy mowing down a Christmas Parade in his car?
    - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
      A guy did that? The news told me an SUV did it and it was an accident. Nothing to see here, move along.
      - datavirtue 5y ago
        An SUV that "was not being chased by police." Wonder what the truth is.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Let’s be clear, is Epstein a public figure?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

LongTimeAnon 5y ago

13% of the blackmail found in photos controls 50% of Big Tech policy decisions. Hi, Ghislaine Hoch.

101008 5y ago

Is this a response to J.K. Rowling's concerns a few days ago? Three people supporting trans rights took a photo in the front of her house, showing the address, and published it on Twitter. In a Twitter thread published by Rowling, she mentions people reporting it to Twitter Support helped to get it removed [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1462758324177444870 https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1462758324177444870 or backup: https://www.rowlingindex.org/work/ttfaddr/ https://www.rowlingindex.org/work/ttfaddr/

krona 5y ago
Public figures are exempt from the policy.
- yostrovs 5y ago
  Is there a definition of a public figure? Is writing a book enough? Is having an opinion enough? Is stepping out of the house enough for a public figure to be photographed and published about?
- cinntaile 5y ago
  In this case it counts as trying to silence her so it would likely be removed. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/private-information-policy-update https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/private-i...
mansion7 5y ago
More likely it is a response to Andy Ngo, Project Veritas, and accounts like Libs of TikTok.

rexreed 5y ago

Why do we hold companies like Twitter in high regard? More so, why do we consider what is primarily a media company to be valued and considered as a technology company when in many regards it is more like the Washington Post or NY Times than it is like Google? I think the whole framing of Twitter as a tech company needs to be rethought and they need to be valued and considered in the same vein as media companies.

whywhywhywhy 5y ago
I don’t really see how Twitter is anything but a glorified Internet forum with some high profile posters.

aboringusername 5y ago

Wouldn't this be an actual ideal use case for facial recognition? Apple wanted to do CSAM before upload, Twitter could do consent-checking before posting. Users might consider saying "I do not want my images being public" and can be prohibited before posting. Taking it down after it's posted is useless, it'll be in caches all over the world and by that time, it's too late. For example, every reddit post ever posted (or near enough) are scraped in real time (pushbullet, bigquery etc) so the take-downs need to happen before it hits public APIs. I also think we need to enforce consent, and begin taking action against tech firms - if I did not consent and they allowed it to be published, they should be held to account. They need stronger measures to ensure consent was freely and fairly given.

protomyth 5y ago

A lot of political blogs think it is designed to remove memes ahead of an election. It likely won't be fairly enforced.

theknocker 5y ago

>aimed at improving privacy Why is a publicly funded entity doing PR for fucking Twitter?

devmor 5y ago

It's already being heavily used to censor citizen groups that expose white supremacist terror organizations. Just as expected.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

Whether this was the CEO's first act of business or not, people should be genuinely scared of him. He doesn't give a fuck about the First Amendment and thinks it's his job to dictate what a healthy conversation is and who gets to participate [0]. People should be abandoning this company immediately, but the sad part is that many of its most active users agree with him ideologically. At least Jack gave the appearance of giving a fuck about free speech. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/18/1012066/emtech-stage-twitters-cto-on-misinformation/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/18/1012066/emtech-s...

prawnsalad 5y ago
I don't know much him nor have I read that entire transcript, but one of the main jobs for a CEO is to set the direction and tone for a companies services. They can say/do whatever they want wrt free speech and their own messaging platform.
- thewakalix 5y ago
  Can't an act fall under both "they are legally allowed to do this" and "we should be scared of anyone who'd do this"?

fortran77 5y ago

The one thing I see a lot on Twitter is people "retweeting" the wrong photo of the wrong person. I saw all sorts of people being pictured as that school shooter last week. Whatever we think of this policy, anyone who tweets or re-tweets a photo of an uninvolved person in a breaking news case should be, by their policy, permanently banned (or shadowbanned). (And also misinformation, like what Spike Lee did: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/spike-lee-reaches-settlement-for-tweeting-wrong-address-for-george-zimmerman/2012/03/30/gIQAGB6QlS_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/spike-le... )

loudtieblahblah 5y ago

"privacy". Uh huh. This will be applied unevenly. Pics that violate this that support one political cause will be allowed, pics that violate this that support the opposite will be banned.

fumar 5y ago

Is it time to create new platforms that decentralize power? If we agree that some level of social digital connections are important, then why should corporations be in charge? Shouldn’t it be a democratic solution?

gnoll_of_gozag 5y ago

this is already being abused https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1465831941157052416 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1465831941157052416 https://twitter.com/NotToadMckinley/status/1466013348898693122 https://twitter.com/NotToadMckinley/status/14660133488986931... https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466155751328530437 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466155751328530437 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466218599626854404 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466218599626854404 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466232833815420930 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466232833815420930

sumosudo 5y ago

And so it begins. The degenerates already are using it to their advantage: https://ibb.co/yX61n4T https://ibb.co/yX61n4T