[HN Gopher] Expanding our private information policy to include ...
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Expanding our private information policy to include media
Author : ibejoeb
Score : 53 points
Date : 2021-11-30 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.twitter.com)
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| makeworld wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Not really "opposition", just further restriction than those
| laws have.
| mynameishere wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| Timing is interesting; the day after Jack steps down.
| golemotron wrote:
| 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.
| voxic11 wrote:
| This policy almost seems to be put in place as a response to
| everyone posting images of ghislaine maxwell with various
| politicians...
| paulgb wrote:
| 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.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Pretty wordy way of saying "Who, whom?"
| samuelizdat wrote:
| 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?
| mherdeg wrote:
| 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-fune...
| or 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.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I mean, as I understand it, this policy would only apply if the
| person in question objected to their picture being taken and
| disseminated.
|
| And, to be honest, I'm probably OK with that. At the very least
| I am _not_ convinced by older arguments of "you shouldn't have
| any expectations of privacy in a public place". I think there
| is a fundamental difference between other people being able to
| see you, heck even other people being able to take a picture of
| you, vs. it automatically being OK for others to disseminate
| your imagine to literally billions of people, recorded for all
| time.
| dsizzle wrote:
| Yes. See their announcement https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/to
| pics/company/2021/private-i...:
|
| >When we are notified by individuals depicted, or by an
| authorized representative, that they did not consent to
| having their private image or video shared, we will remove
| it. 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.
| adolph wrote:
| It's like DMCA for people. Can't wait for for the abuse
| circus.
|
| https://www.eff.org/press/releases/fifteen-years-dmca-abuse
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| This is a FUCK-TON of leeway.
|
| Imagine a situation where someone punches someone else that
| is recorded. Millions examples of that on the internet,
| lols were had, whatever and deleted. Afterward someone
| makes the claim that it is a hate crime and since twitter
| isn't the only place where media is stored, do they restore
| every single instance of the original set of tweets?
|
| What is the dividing line between them? When is something
| private versus something that is 'to the public interest'
| dsizzle wrote:
| Who did the deleting in your example? If it was by the
| poster, this doesn't seem relevant at all.
|
| If Twitter is the one deleting it, then I guess that's a
| judgment call at the time, but to me that sounds like
| it's in the public interest.
|
| You want there to be less leeway?
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Those photos are quite newsworthy.
| namlem wrote:
| The woman in the photo didn't consent to the kiss either
| apparently.
| justinclift wrote:
| From the wikipedia article,
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| LocalH wrote:
| It's not about "enjoyment". It's about documenting history
| in a very real and normal way. These are the photos that
| future historians will study. Would you rather them have a
| huge black hole because people decided "my privacy rights
| when I'm in public are more important than everything
| else", which I honestly see to be a _more_ entitled
| viewpoint.
| afthonos wrote:
| I'm not sure "people not yet alive have a _right_ to
| mundane details of your life" is the less entitled
| position, tbh. In their defense, they're not the ones
| making that argument.
| golemotron wrote:
| Fact is, there will be no black hole. As much as people
| try to put the genie back in the bottle with TOS and even
| law, the tech is not going away.
| gjulianm wrote:
| There is absolutely no lack of material of any kind to
| document this period of history. There will be no huge
| black hole just because we respect the privacy of people
| who don't want to appear in public photos.
| agallant wrote:
| True, but it was also relatively harder for pictures to become
| famous, and there wasn't massive face recognition systems to
| use the data in unexpected ways. Also, a lot more people are
| taking pictures, and though I'm not art-gatekeeping, it's fair
| to say that at least the motivational context for most
| photography is different now than it was historically.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| This isn't actually going to be used against most people
| posting street photographs, just the ones Twitter wants to get
| rid of for which there isn't already a tool in the TOS they can
| selectively apply. Goodthinkful citizens will not be affected.
| dsizzle wrote:
| It seems even more restrictive than that -- the person (or
| some authority) has to notify Twitter and request its
| removal. It's focused on preventing doxxing and abuse.
|
| >When we are notified by individuals depicted, or by an
| authorized representative, that they did not consent to
| having their private image or video shared, we will remove
| it. 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.
|
| https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/private-i.
| ..
| jcadam wrote:
| These rules seem targeted at independent/citizen journalists like
| Andy Ngo.
| bedhead wrote:
| 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.
| jf22 wrote:
| 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.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > There are so many other cities with more crime and violence
| but Chicago is the preferred choice when you want to agitate
| and alarm.
|
| I'm not sure what cities have more crime and violence than
| Chicago. But if commenting on Chicago is off limits, what
| cities do people have your blessing to comment on? I would
| never want to agitate and alarm.
| bedhead wrote:
| I'm from Chicago. The difference in the amount of crime vs
| what gets reported on in the Trip and local news is
| _astonishing_ , and the number of people I know (myself
| included) who have left Chicago in the last couple years is
| wild. So, I lived it.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| 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.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| 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.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Super lame
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Adding a consent provision for the sharing of media:
|
| >NEW: media of private individuals without the permission of the
| person(s) depicted.
| hbn wrote:
| 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.
| syshum wrote:
| I am sure this will only be enforced in 1 political direction
| as well
|
| If you show "private media" of a conservative that is "relevant
| to the community" but if you should "private media" of a
| liberal that will be in violation of this new rule I can assure
| you
| pjkundert wrote:
| Foolishness.
|
| It is purely a coincidence that "accidental" banning occurs
| overwhelmingly to people who put forth non-leftist
| viewpoints!
|
| Similarly, there is no increase in healthy footballers
| dropping dead on the field. You are simply imagining things.
|
| /s, for the ... slow.
| gorwell wrote:
| Indeed, `Twitter Safety` is explicit about their bias.
|
| `Feeling safe on Twitter is different for everyone` and `The
| misuse of private media can affect everyone, but can have a
| disproportionate effect on women, activists, dissidents, and
| members of minority communities.`
| ibejoeb wrote:
| SoHo Karen is ok. Project Veritas is not.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| 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.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The specific concern here is the phenomenon where people post
| viral videos of others they had a disagreement with in order
| to try and publicly shame them. I don't want to insist on
| calling this "cancel culture" if you don't like the label,
| but it's definitely a real thing and the targets face real
| off-Twitter consequences.
| syshum wrote:
| 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.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I think of cancel culture as a cultural shift away from the
| enlightenment culture explemplified by "I disapprove of
| what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
| say it."
|
| Codified with a question of "should you combat bad speech
| with good speech or with silencing?"
| syshum wrote:
| I think they are linked but I would define the cultural
| shift as something separate, canceling of people is a
| symptom / result of this cultural shift so they are
| linked.
|
| However there are other aspects of this shift that fall
| outside of cancel culture. For example the fact that a
| platform like twitter can have a CEO that publicly
| supports the rejection of the 1st amendment is also a
| symptom of this cultural shift, a few decades ago that
| would not have been possible, in fact it likely would
| have resulted in high level board meetings and a PR
| disaster in the 80's and 90's if a CEO of a large public
| company would have stated opposition to free speech.
|
| We has a nation (the US) have lost desire to uphold the
| cultural principle of free expression, the law has become
| a needed check on this cultural shift but sadly the law
| only survives as a check for 2 maybe 3 generations, if we
| do not do something to shift us back to being a culture
| that respects free expression the law will fall to the
| new culture of non-expression or controlled expression
| and a new dark ages will emerge
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Cancelling seems to refer to two types of actions,
| deplatforming, and punishing people for saying things you
| disagree with.
|
| I don't know why deplatforming requires proof of an identity.
| I think this is you adding to the definition of a word that
| doesn't follow how everyone uses it.
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(page generated 2021-11-30 23:01 UTC)