Jigyasa PrasharAccording to The Washington Post, Twitter accidentally suspended a number of accounts after far-right extremists began exploiting the platform’s new private media policy.
The platform has since conducted an internal investigation of the situation and made the required changes, sources state. Far-right activists are using Twitter’s new policy, which allows people to request takedowns of photos or videos that involve them, to erase photos of themselves taken during hate rallies. The regulation was implemented to “curb the usage of media to harass, intimate, and divulge the names of private individuals,” according to Twitter, which disproportionately impacts “women, activists, dissidents, and members of minority populations.” Extremists began exploiting Twitter’s new method quickly after it launched, according to The Washington Post. Far-right extremists allegedly utilized Telegram and Gab to organize against anti-extremist accounts that try to expose and follow white supremacists at hate rallies, with the goal of having these accounts deleted and personal images erased (via The Washington Post). As The Washington Post notes out, several radical researchers found out on the same day that Twitter’s policy went into effect that their accounts had been suspended for breaking the platform’s restrictions “against sharing the material of an individual from a nation with a recognized right to privacy law.” Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy allegedly told The Washington Post that the business has been targeted with a “substantial quantity” of false reports, which has resulted in “a dozen erroneous bans.”
Twitter has been chastised for its new policy’s ambiguous wording, which has repercussions for journalists and other users who have a genuine reason for putting other people’s images online. Twitter said in a thread on the feature’s first day that it “will consider whether the image is publicly available and/or is being covered by journalists,” and that “images/videos that show people participating in public events (like large-scale protests, sporting events, and so on) would generally not violate this policy.”
It’s unclear whether Twitter will take efforts to explain this policy, and whether it will specify what types of personal images are and aren’t permitted on the network.